{"id":23805,"date":"2022-10-04T05:30:03","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T09:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23805"},"modified":"2022-10-05T07:33:35","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T11:33:35","slug":"eb-davis-ambassador-of-the-blues-part-2-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/04\/eb-davis-ambassador-of-the-blues-part-2-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"EB Davis: Ambassador of the Blues (Part 2 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

Those Memphis days provided all manner of inspiration for Davis as a young man. And sometimes he learned by watching and decided what he didn\u2019t<\/i> want to do. \u201cOne of my most vivid memories is seeing B.B. King,\u201d he says. \u201cHe used to like to wear short pants.\u201d Davis recalls seeing King dressed that way and making a decision. \u201cI thought, \u2018Hmm. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to wear short pants. And he should either get some longer pants or some shorter legs!\u2019\u201d Davis makes the point that he always respected King. \u201cHe was always, always<\/i> the gentleman,\u201d he says. \u201cEverybody liked him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because he didn\u2019t initially have a group of his own, Davis started sitting in with a number of Memphis bands. \u201cI knew most of the musicians,\u201d he says. One time in 1965 when Eugene Goldston came through town, he dropped by Club Handy on Beale Street. It happened to be on a night when Davis was sitting in. Davis recalls being approached by Goldston, then the owner of popular Brooklyn night spot the 521 Club.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018I kind of like the way you carry yourself, and the way you sing,\u2019\u201d Davis recalls. Goldston invited Davis to take a residency at the 521 Club. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t refuse that,\u201d he replied. That conversation led to Davis relocating to New York City. \u201cI was a resident at his club for some years,\u201d Davis says.<\/p>\n

What Davis found in New York of the mid \u201860s was a blues scene that was highly concentrated. \u201cNew York had a big music scene,\u201d he says. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t heavy on blues. There weren\u2019t many clubs featuring it. So most of the blues lovers became regulars at our club.\u201d Davis\u2019 residency plus a part-time job managing Goldston\u2019s clubs meant that he was able to make a living.<\/p>\n

With his band the Soul Groovers, Davis came into contact with some of the big names in music. He opened for many, and got to know them. \u201cOne favorite who we used to like to open for was Wilson Pickett,\u201d he recalls. \u201cQuite a character. He was a feisty little guy.\u201d Davis says that whenever Pickett encountered something that he thought \u201cwasn\u2019t correct,\u201d he would let the relevant parties know about it in no uncertain terms. \u201cAnd if he wanted to take it further than that,\u201d Davis adds, \u201che would do that, too. He was not afraid of what you\u2019d call fisticuffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaac Hayes had a different character. Davis describes Hayes as \u201ca business-type guy. He wasn\u2019t into partying, hanging out and all of that.\u201d Hayes was right on the verge of achieving major fame when he and Davis met. \u201cAnd once he hit it pretty big, he took three of my musicians,\u201d Davis says. \u201cWhich I will never forgive him for. He took my bass player, my drummer and my guitar player.\u201d But Davis didn\u2019t hold a grudge against his former band mates. \u201cI was all right with it,\u201d he says. \u201cI told\u2019 em, \u2018Look: he can take you places that you\u2019re never going to go with me, so go with my blessings.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s naturally musical, Davis has always focused on singing rather than becoming an instrumentalist. Asked why he didn\u2019t pick up the harmonica until he was in his mid 30s, he laughs and provides a ready answer. \u201cI was a full-time front man, and the front man was getting all the attention. So I just let the others play the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

EB Davis eventually rejoined the army to fulfill his commitment. And within a short time he found himself stationed in West Berlin, then still a democratic oasis surrounded on all sides by communist (and Soviet satellite) East Germany. When he first arrived, he found a city that seemed to him very much like New York City. \u201cChecking out the music scene, I got the impression that there was no difference,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was a club on almost every corner.\u201d He says that in those days \u2013 \u201cbefore the disco boom took over,\u201d he notes \u2013 \u201cWest Berlin had a good 65 to 80 venues where they featured live music every week, if you can imagine that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But these weren\u2019t blues clubs; in fact, Davis recalls, more than ninety percent of the Berlin clubs featured no blues at all. \u201cFrom time to time, one club would bring in Willie Dixon and his people,\u201d Davis says, \u201cbut they didn\u2019t have much experience with blues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis joined a popular group, The Bayou Band, and found that he soon had as many gigs as he could handle. \u201cThere were so many places that featured live music, we were gainfully employed without even leaving the city,\u201d he recalls. \u201cYou would just make the circuit of the clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because younger people made up a large segment of the audience, the all-German band \u2013 nominally a New Orleans-style group \u2013 played a variety of styles. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t hold \u2018em the whole evening with just blues,\u201d Davis says. We\u2019d do some of the popular stuff they might be familiar with, and then we\u2019d introduce them to the blues.\u201d He says that approach won them some blues converts. \u201cAnd once you get their attention and build up enough of a following,\u201d he notes, \u201cyou can introduce them to your own material.\u201d That was Davis\u2019 approach.<\/p>\n

One of Berlin\u2019s most successful clubs of the time was The A-Trane, a jazz outlet. \u201cThe guy who was supposed to be my manager at the time convinced them that they should try blues and see how it went over,\u201d Davis says. The A-Trane\u2019s owners were initially against the idea but agreed to give it a try. \u201cOnce they tried it and saw that people were open to it,\u201d Davis says, \u201cthen another club would say, \u2018Well, they had a pretty good turnout over the weekend; so let us try blues, too.\u2019\u201d And EB Davis says that he was among the first Black artists onstage in Berlin; he was a kind of ambassador of the blues.<\/p>\n

After a few years with The Bayou Band, Davis left to join The Radio Kings. That group\u2019s lineup featured a mix of Germans and Americans; Davis stayed with them for more than seven years. In the late 1990s he put together a band of his own, The Superband, initially an all-American lineup.<\/p>\n

These days, Davis\u2019 Superband includes another mixed lineup: a German bassist (Tom Blacksmith) plus Davis\u2019 wife, Nina T. Davis, on piano, organ and vocals. He first met Tina when she was playing in another band with Blacksmith. \u201cI found it quite unusual: a young German woman playing blues,\u201d Davis says. \u201cI went to a few of their concerts, and then they both became a part of my band.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Those Memphis days provided all manner of inspiration for Davis as a young man. And sometimes he learned by watching and decided what he didn\u2019t want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41],"tags":[4952],"class_list":["post-23805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","tag-eb-davis","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23805"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23877,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23805\/revisions\/23877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}