Guy Davis: Blues at the crossroads
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Oct. 5, 1999) -- For Guy Davis, blues music is about a lot of things, but primarily it is a form of storytelling.

"I love the storytelling quality of the blues," said Davis, the blues singer and guitarist who performs tomorrow night in a blues double-bill with Duke Robillard at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams at 8.

"I love the preaching quality of the blues," said Davis in a recent phone interview. "Some of the finest stories you'll ever hear are in the church when the preacher is telling you the stories from the Bible. In the blues you'll hear the same sort of repetition like when the preacher will say something and he'll repeat himself and look around the room to make sure people understand him.

"In the blues you always get that repeat. You hear the repeat of the first line, or if not the first line, like with John Lee Hooker, he might just repeat certain words.

"There's a repetition where the bluesman is seeking clarity in his communication. I like that kind of drama. I like being drawn into a story, even if the story has no words, even if it's just being played with the fingers on the strings."

Listening to Davis talk about the blues, it comes as no surprise to hear that he likes storytelling, as he is a masterful storyteller himself, both in person and in song. His latest album, "You Don't Know My Mind" (Red House), includes several original story-songs full of drama, narrative and repetition, including "Georgia Flood," which begins, "Oh let me tell you a story/For there's no one else alive/Who can tell you about the Savannah flood of 1925, of 1925."

On this and his two other recordings for Red House, "Call Down the Thunder" and "Stomp Down Rider," Davis accompanies himself on acoustic guitar on original and classic blues by the likes of Robert Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter and Mance Lipscomb. "Stomp Down Rider" captures the deep, gruff-voiced Davis live in a solo performance; the other two albums are studio recordings featuring rootsy, tasteful instrumental backup by musician friends including Olu Dara and Pete Seeger.

That Davis wound up being a performer dedicated to preserving and perpetuating traditional African-American music makes total sense when one learns that his parents are the actors, directors, writers and social activist team of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. The young Davis grew up immersed in Black art and culture in a home whose guests included Malcolm X, Paul Robeson and Huey Newton.

Although he is perhaps best known as a blues performer, Davis has also enjoyed a successful career on the stage, particularly in efforts that have combined his love of acting and the blues. He made his Broadway debut in 1991 in the Zora Neale Hurston/Langston Hughes collaboration, "Mulebone," which featured the music of Taj Mahal, whom Davis credits with pointing him toward the blues.

Subsequent theatrical efforts included the role of the legendary bluesman in an Off-Broadway run of "Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil," for which he won the Blues Foundation's W.C. Handy "Keeping the Blues Alive Award." Davis's self-penned, one-man show, "In Bed with the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters," garnered raves when it opened in New York in 1994, as did his appearance on stage with his parents the next year in "Two Hah Hahs and a Homeboy."

What ties all these efforts together is Davis's commitment to the blues. "There is something in the blues that is deep, fine, rough," he said. "It's earthy and it smells of turpentine."

At the same time, Davis also is attracted to the blues for its mystical quality. He even tells a story about a genuine mystical experience he had involving the blues, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, the crossroads and black history.

A French TV crew was making a documentary about the blues, and they hired Davis as a kind of walking, talking head to escort the film audience on a search for the crossroads where blues pioneer Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for magical musical powers.

"All I had to do was walk around where they were pointing the camera," said Davis. "Walk on the railroad tracks, walk near swamps, visit the blues museum in Clarksdale."

On the last day of filming, the crew and Davis headed out for the Mississippi Delta plantation where electric blues pioneer Muddy Waters was born.

"As we were crossing the field to get to the shack where Muddy Waters grew up, I looked around and all the cotton had been picked. It was all just stubs. And as we were crossing the field I just knew that something was waiting for me in the shack. Something special, something that frightened me.

Davis didn't know what to expect, but he resolved not to touch the structure. "I knew there was some energy there, and I couldn't say what it was, but I wasn't going to put my flesh against it."

While the film crew set up the cameras in front of the cabin, Davis snuck behind it with a pair of pliers and started pulling out a nail. He hadn't come all this way not to return with some sort of souvenir. But the nail wouldn't budge no matter how hard the healthy six-footer tugged. He tried another nail, and it wouldn't come out, and was trying a third when the film crew called him to begin shooting.

Davis came around to the front of the shack, picked up his guitar, and sang a song. "Then my job was just to stand up, walk around the cabin slowly, and give my impression about the cabin, what I was seeing," he said.

As he turned the first corner, he accidentally put his hand against the wall. "Something jumped out of the wall, some energy, right into my hand, up my arm, into my chest. I began to sob, to just cry and sob.

"I recall feeling that this is it. This is the place. The camera crew was talking about the where was the crossroads where Robert Johnson met the devil. It certainly wasn't outside of Muddy Waters's shack. But this was the crossroads for me. I was at a personal crossroads right there.

"As I rounded a couple more corners just crying and crying, it became clear to me just what the blues was. The blues was about the life of the people who lived in this cabin and in all other shacks like it. The life that they lived was as hard as the wood that the cabin was made out of, and as tough as the nails that were in the wood.

"None of this has to be proveable by any other means as far as I'm concerned. I came to a crossroads where I understood the blues. The blues became a real thing to me there. I had already studied it and worked out songs with my fingers on the guitar, but it wasn't the same as getting a sense of where this music came from and feeling it. So I took that as my turning point, my crossroads.

"It was also my permission to compose the blues. I had composed songs for years before that. But I had permission now."

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[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Oct. 15, 1999. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1999. All rights reserved.]