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Cleveland, Ohio – Life was cut short for Fred “Dave” Davis. Born in Kansas City and raised in Cleveland, Bruce Davis, his singer, songwriter and guitarist, was killed in 1988 at the age of 49 after being involved in an armed robbery in a Cleveland parking lot. However, Davis made an impact on the Cleveland music scene and the blues, and in the 70’s and his 80’s he toured the city as Dave and his Blues Express.
His life and music will be celebrated in concert at the Beachland Ballroom on Saturday, April 15th. In this concert, singer, his songwriter, guitarist and soulman Eli “Paperboy” Reed will perform his Davis music with the help of his former bandmate, Crazy Marvin. He still performs weekly at Treelawn Social Club.
Tickets for the show are $15 and are available on Ticketweb.
The show doubles as an album release party. On Saturday, April 21st, Loveland, Ohio-based Remine Records, a reissue subsidiary of the soul-obsessed Colemine Records, will present the only known recording of Fred Davis’ music to the elegant descriptor ” Released on Cleveland Blues.
Davis’ recording was made by his friend and former colleague Howard Hussock, a South Euclid native who was a lifelong fan of soul and the blues. Hoping to help his talented friend get a gig, Husock used a local high school band called “The Blues Renaissance” to play 1/2 inch in his parents’ living room. was recorded on tape.
Fusok was also the father of Paperboy Reed, and taught his son many of the same guitar techniques and tricks that Davis taught him when he was a colleague loading pallets at a factory in Cleveland in the summer of 1969.
For Reed and his father, it has been a long-standing, albeit quiet, mission to officially release the music of Fred “Dave” Davis to the world. Growing up in the Boston area, Eli “Paperboy” Reed remembers playing the same piano at his grandparents’ house where he could hear Davis play on “Cleveland Blues,” Shaw, his father, Fred Davis. , music and an influential man are still part of both lives.
The Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com: How does the release of the album and the performance of this show bring to life the role that Fred Davis and his music played in your and your dad’s lives?
Eli “Paperboy” Reed: right. That’s true. absolutely. I mean, it’s something he’s been thinking about for years, if not decades.
Q: Remember when your dad first started telling you about Fred?
Lead: I think I was around 15 or 16. He started getting into the blues through his records while in high school. And then I kind of dug into his record collection and brought up this guy named Fred Davis, taught him how to play the guitar, and taught him how to play these chords a certain way. And it kind of went in one ear and out the other… I was a teenager and I was hearing what was in front of me and I wasn’t sure. Years later, I was able to get a tape transfer that was pretty jerky. And even in that low-fidelity setting, just listening to it, I was blown away that all these stories he told were so true.
Q: yes. (Davis’ former bandmate), Marvin says he looks a bit like (electric blues legend) Freddie King. By the time you actually heard him talk, you were pretty familiar with the blues guitar world, right? who can hear you?
Lead: I think Freddie King is a good place to start. His phrasing, chord moves, etc. reminds me a bit of T-Bone Walker. But honestly, he has his own thing. He really does. So you can see there are people out there who really try to take everything away with Albert King and players like that. I hear something pretty peculiar.
Q: When your dad started teaching you how to play the guitar, he showed you many of the unique techniques Fred taught him, right?
Lead: That’s what I want to say about his uniqueness as a player. You start to understand only the things he did, the little chords he did, that you didn’t hear the other person doing. are some of the same. But everyone has their own little idiosyncrasies, and being able to find ways to internalize them and bring them in to play this music was a fun discovery for me.
Q: Do you have a favorite song on the album?
Lead: My favorite song is probably the acoustic “Tell Me, Pretty Baby”. And I feel it’s such beautiful, fully realized music. It was the most unexpected, the most intimate, and, if you will say it, ghostly to me. i love it all. The fact that it actually exists and that it’s original music, mostly songs written by him. Crazy Marvin told me that he performed these and other songs as Blues Express. I mean, especially in his 70’s and his 80’s.
Q: When you’re trying to survive as a working blues band during a “blues revival” where blues bands haven’t quite filled the clubs?
Lead: yes. that’s right. right. They’re trying to survive, they’re playing in the tavern. I think he was playing other people’s songs as well, but he put in his own originals and was able to get people to react enough and be interested. Well, it’s time to use your own material instead of using someone else’s. It’s an artistic choice.
Q: What are your plans for the Saturday night show?
Lead: I do most of the singing and Marvin plays a lot of the harmonica. I think he’s going to sing a song or two, and that’s the plan. He at Beachland has Mark Leddy coming and playing R&B records and his 45. The whole point of this music is that it should be fun, party, dance music. And while I don’t want to get too bogged down in all that trappings, I do want to pay tribute to the guy…he’ll be proud.
Q.: The record is released and playing at the show seems to bring Fred’s influence to both you and your father who attends the show.
Lead: i’m really excited. It’s a different kind of show for me to be able to play this kind of music that I grew up loving. It’s a gift to him for what he’s done for me and for not being so angry when I didn’t do my homework.
And I’m happy to be able to bring this to life in the city of Cleveland and make it a story about this place and this man who otherwise might not have gotten what he deserved. To be able to do it, pack your bags, preferably on Saturday night, and play this music that, to my knowledge, has never been played on stage before.
Related: Meet the father-son duo to release late blues musician Fred Davis’ lost album
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