{"product_id":"fred-davis-cleveland-blues-cd","title":"Fred Davis - Cleveland Blues (CD)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eDetails: \u003c\/strong\u003e\"Fred Davis was a legend, but only in my living room. There was always music around my\r\nhouse, but as a teenager, I started digging deeper and deeper in to the blues records in my\r\nDad's collection. That was when I started to get the Fred Davis story in fits and starts. Fred\r\ncould play like T-Bone Walker and sang in a high, keen voice like J.B. Lenoir, he said. He used\r\nto front a jump band in Kansas City, before something went down that sent him to prison at\r\nLeavenworth. In the summer of 1967, he ended up working alongside my Dad at Harco, the\r\nCleveland factory where my grandfather was an executive. They became friends, bonding over\r\nthe B.B. King and Bobby Bland records blaring from the AM radio on the factory floor.\r\n\r\nFred taught my Dad the rudiments of blues guitar, but his style. Instead of barring with his first\r\nfinger, he wrapped his thumb around the back of the neck. That left his other fingers free to\r\ncreate big, ringing voicings that imitated the Kansas City horn sections he heard in his youth.\r\nFred could play up and down the neck and, even when he played and sang just by himself, he\r\nsounded like a full band. Or, at least, so the legend went. These were only foggy memories from\r\nthirty years previous, passed down from a father to a son.\r\n\r\nBut then we found the tape. A quarter inch reel in a plain white cardboard box, hiding on a shelf\r\nin the attic. My Dad explained how it came to exist: He found some friends (acquaintances\r\nreally) who had a band and some equipment. They setup in my grandparents living room where\r\nthe upright piano was, and he invited Fred over to record some of his songs with the band\r\nbacking him up. Invited him over, to play loud music, in his boss's living room. Sounds like\r\nsomething I would have done. The idea was that maybe if there were some recordings of Fred\r\nthat he could use them to get booked on the nascent college blues-revival circuit, but it wasn't to\r\nbe.\r\n\r\nWe found a place nearby that could dub the tape and put it on a CD for us. When we finally got\r\nthe transfer back, the legend became real. Fred really COULD sing like J.B. Lenoir and play like\r\nT-Bone Walker. He really DID have his own style. And that style had now been passed on to\r\nme. Without even realizing it, I had learned to play like Fred Davis. Even now, when I sit down to\r\nplay the guitar or write a song and I wrap my thumb around the neck, I'm playing like he did.\r\nWith this music now professionally transferred and remastered, I can only hope that Fred Davis\r\ncan finally receive the acclaim that he deserves; that he never received in his lifetime. The\r\nlegend can finally go behind the confines of my living room and, with any luck, to the whole\r\nworld.\"\r\n\r\n- Eli Paperboy Reed, fall 2022\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklist: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWine Hop\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Drifting Blues\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Express Train\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Midnight Is Falling (Acoustic)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Piano Boogie\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Time When You Say You Love Me\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Midnight Is Falling\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Euclid Avenue\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Five Long Years\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Wine Hop (Acoustic)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Tell Me Pretty Baby\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ol\u003e","brand":"Alliance Entertainment","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50553944899858,"sku":"674862661138","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/fred-davis-cleveland-blues-cd","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}