LITTLE ROCK — CeDell Davis is a survivor - a survivor of polio, a stroke, being trampled by bar patrons during a fight, plus years of the hardscrabble life that blues men endure.
And he has gathered many an admirer who will jump at the chance to play with someone as authentic as Davis, who was born in Helena in 1926.
“We’re marking the 10th anniversary of CeDell’s album, When Lightnin’ Struckthe Pine,” says Joe Cripps, a Little Rock native who now lives in Denton, Texas. He was once a member of Brave Combo, Ten Hands and other bands in a college town that’s home to the known-for-music University of North Texas (where Cripps was pursuing a master’s degree in music therapy), formerly known as North Texas State University.
“We’re going to record the show at Stickyz live for a new album,” he continues. “It’ll be the core of the band that made the album with him 10 years ago in the studio: CeDell, Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey, Barrett Martin, Thomas Houston Jones and me, opening for him, then accompanying him. Plus, we’ll have some special guests, including David Kimbrough, son of noted Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough.So it will be a tribute to Ce-Dell. He’s had a stroke and can’t play guitar anymore, and he’s up in his 80s, but he says he’s been working on his dexterity.”
Davis, who had polio as a child, then lost the use of his legs in a car crash, learned to play a right-handed guitar lefty-style with a butter knife. He began a decade of work in the late 1950s with Helena slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk, and then in 1983, he performed on a compilation album, Keep It to Yourself: Arkansas Blues Volume I. In the early 1990s, he released Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong, produced by the late music writer Robert Palmer, a native of Little Rock, who wrote for The New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, and had written a book, Deep Blues, an authoritative look at blues music. Palmer called Davis“quite possibly the greatest [of the] Delta-style hard blues vocalists around.”
In 1998, Fat Possum Records released Davis’ CD The Horror of It All, which increased his growing list of admirers. Some of Davis’ musician fans include Buck, guitarist in R.E.M. (which announced its dissolution earlier this year); McCaughey, a collaborator with Buck and a member of The Young Fresh Fellows and The Minus 5 who has also played bass in Robyn Hitchcock’s touring band; Martin, a drummer who played in Seattle band Screaming Trees; and Jones, a native of White Hall and a longtime protege of Davis.
Besides his more than three decades in R.E.M., Buck has also been in the side projects Hindu Love Gods, The Minus 5, Tuatara, The Baseball Project, Tired Pony, and Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3. He has also worked with Billy Bragg and GlennTilbrook of Squeeze and has produced albums by Uncle Tupelo, The Feelies, Dreams So Real and The Fleshtones.
Cripps says McCaughey is bringing a lap steel to try to replicate the sound of Davis’ guitar playing, while Buck, who played guitar in R.E.M., prefers to play bass in this lineup, with McCaughey and Jones playing guitar.
During his years in Little Rock, Cripps would occasionally sit in with his pals in Jubilee Dive and The Gunbunnies, which were both led by Chris Maxwell. Cripps has been trying to re-assemble Davis and the others for the past decade, but has been unable to get everyone’s schedules to mesh.
“When we put out the album 10 years ago, we did a national tour for it,” Cripps says, “but we didn’t get a chance to play in Little Rock, so we’re looking forward to doing this show at Stickyz.”CeDell Davis
Opening acts: Joe Cripps,
Peter Buck, Scott Mc-
Caughey, Barrett Martin,
Thomas Houston Jones
9 p.m. Saturday, Stickyz
Rock ’n’ Roll Chicken
Shack, 107 River Market
Ave., Little Rock
Admission: $20
(501) 372-7707
stickyz.com
Weekend, Pages 39 on 10/18/2012