Born into showbiz, but not the blues

By Jerry Fink

Friday, July 24, 2009 | 2 a.m.

The desk clerk answered in French, leading me to wonder where bluesman Guy Davis was staying.

Maybe he was at Paris Las Vegas. After all, he’s playing a free gig Saturday at Lake Las Vegas.

“I’m in Quebec City,” the 57-year-old Davis said. “Thought you were calling some little cathouse down in New Orleans, did you?”

His deep resonant voice reminds one of his father. He’s the son of actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. Although Davis grew up in a creative household, his parents didn’t push him into show business.

“Show business is what I love in terms of the creativity and in terms of getting on stage in front of people — in terms of music, performing and creating,” he says. But my parents only just insisted that I get a good solid education. My mother gave me the speech: ‘If you’re going to be a ditch digger, you be the head of the ditch diggers.’ ”

He developed an affinity for blues even though he wasn’t exposed to it at home, where his parents played such musicians as Harry Belafonte and Babatunde Olatunji.

“It wasn’t that my folks were trying to hide the blues from me, it just wasn’t played in our house,” he says. “The first blues music I heard was being played by white college boys. I felt like the music was special right then and there, even though at the time I was so young I didn’t know it had anything to do specifically with black people, in terms of heritage or culture. I found that out later.

“When I first heard it I felt attracted to it. Something inside me resonated.”

The first music he played on guitar was rock ’n’ roll.

“Back then I was experimenting, mostly with the volume of the electric guitar and not the skill. Then I heard Taj Mahal and he opened that door to the acoustic side of the world. I haven’t looked back since.”

Davis has released eight albums from “Stomp Down Rider” to this year’s “Sweetheart Like You.” He also has tried his hand at acting — in films (“Beat Street”) and on TV (“One Life to Live”) and Broadway (“Mulebone” and an upcoming revival of “Finian’s Rainbow”). He also created a one-man show, “In Bed With the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters.”

But most of his acting takes place in his concerts.

“I have lots of stories to tell,” he says. “It works great if you have to tune up your guitar a lot like I do. You have a story ready. Doc Watson, you never notice him tune because his stories are so good. You never even see him tune.”

Davis thinks blues is an endangered species.

“You have some blues acts like B.B. King and Buddy Guy who attract audiences and sell out the theaters, and then you have the rest of us who have to scuffle, which is all right by me. There’s room for all of us.”