Back in the late ’60s, when his voice had just begun to crack and he was starting to feel that maybe life wasn’t going to work out for him after all, Guy Davis recorded a demo tape. It would be years before anyone heard it again-years of hard living filled with parties and bars and endless nights spent singing old blues songs at open mics around New Orleans. But while Davis’s career never took off like many people thought it might, eventually enough other musicians discovered what he’d been doing during those lost years (and how much they liked it) that today there are tribute bands covering everything from The Beatles’ “I Want You” to Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World.”
Guy Davis is an American musician and songwriter. He was born on December 14, 1978 in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents are both of African-American and Irish descent. He grew up in the suburbs of Boston and attended high school at Milton Academy. In 2001 he moved to New York City to attend college at Columbia University where he graduated with a degree in English literature.
Guy Davis was one of the most famous ambassadors of African-American art and culture of his age, earning recognition for his work in the theater as well as updating the rural blues tradition for the contemporary day. Davis was born in New York City on May 12, 1952, to the noted actors, directors, and activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee; despite being raised in the city, he was frequently regaled with stories of Southern country life as a child, and over time became so enamored of the music of Blind Willie McTell, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, and others that he taught himself guitar. Davis’ destiny as a bluesman was cemented as a 13-year-old seeing his first Buddy Guy performance, particularly after learning his unique fingerpicking technique from a nine-fingered guitarist he encountered on a train going from Boston to New York some years later.
Davis released his first album, Dreams About Life, for the Folkways label in 1978, with the renowned Moses Asch as producer; around the same time, he started acting, earning a regular part on the daytime drama One Life to Live and also starring in the 1984 hip-hop film Beat Street. Davis had long sought a project that would unite his shared passions for music and acting, and in 1991 he found it in Mulebone, a Broadway production of a Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes collaboration with a Taj Mahal soundtrack. Davis received great reviews two years later for his performance as Robert Johnson in the off-Broadway musical Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil, earning the Blues Foundation’s W.C. Handy “Keeping the Blues Alive” Award for his depiction.
Davis wrote and performed in another blues-based off-Broadway drama, In Bed with the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters, in 1994, which received positive reviews. Two Hah Hahs and a Homeboy, which he co-wrote with his parents a year later, blended original material with African-American mythology and history. He also wrote the music for the PBS series The American Promise around the same period, and his soundtrack for an earlier telefilm, To Be a Man, received an Emmy. Davis returned to composing and performing in the acoustic country-blues style with fresh vigor in the autumn of 1995, releasing the live LP Stomp Down Rider on the Red House label, followed by Call Down the Thunder a year later. In 1998, You Don’t Know My Mind was released, and it received two W.C. Handy Award nominations: Best Traditional Blues Album and Best Acoustic Blues Album. Davis was nominated for the award for Best Acoustic Blues Artist. Davis released Butt Naked Free, his fourth Red House Records album, in early 2000. Over the next decade, he would continue to be a prolific studio force, releasing critically acclaimed albums such as Give in Kind, Legacy, and Skunkmello while also contributing songs to various tribute albums, including his version of “Soulful Wind” for Labour of Love: The Music of Nick Lowe, “Some of These Days” for Down the Dirt Road: The Songs of Charley Patton, and “Sweetheart L” for Down the Dirt Road: The Songs of Charley Patton His busy traveling schedule has taken him all over the world, from Greenland to the Ukraine to the Equator, and he has performed at the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Center Institute, among other prestigious locations. He also continued to work as a teacher. After a few of releases on different labels, Davis returned to Red House and released Sweetheart Like You in 2009. Davis’ 2012 album for Smokeydoke Records, The Adventures of Fishey Waters: In Bed with the Blues, was an audio drama, continuing Davis’ long-standing passion in theatrical efforts. Juba Dance, a stripped-down acoustic album released in 2013, was followed by the varied Kokomo Kid in 2015, which was the first time he worked as his own producer.
Guy Davis is an American country music singer-songwriter. He has released a total of five studio albums and six compilation albums. His most recent album, “Loneliest Road That I Know,” was released in 2011. Reference: guy davis loneliest road that i know.
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