A Requiem for Multitudes: Revisiting Chuck Berry’s America

Posted by Lance Davis - October 28, 2016 - Bob Dylan, Carl Hogan, Chuck Berry, Johnnie Johnson, Louis Jordan, Taylor Hackford, Walt Whitman

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With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums I play not marches for accepted victors only I play marches for conquer’d and slain persons -Walt Whitman, “Song Of Myself” Who could’ve predicted that it was Chuck Berry’s 90th birthday on October 18th that brought me out of retirebernation? Fact is, I’ve been […]

The Roots of Levon Helm

Posted by Lance Davis - May 27, 2012 - Bill Monroe, Conway Twitty, DJ Fontana, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Levon Helm, Little Richard, Louis Jordan, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, The Band

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Today would’ve been Levon Helm‘s 72nd birthday. Such a weird, humbling sentence to write. Following his death on April 19, my original plan was to survey his entire career, which in retrospect was absurdly ambitious. I still may do some smaller version of that, but the survey vacuum was quickly filled by the internet, with […]

The Bo Diddley Legacy - Part 1 of 2

Posted by Lance Davis - June 7, 2008 - Bo Diddley, Cab Calloway, Chess Records, Jelly Roll Morton, John Lee Hooker, Kool Moe Dee, Louis Jordan, Muddy Waters, Robert Palmer (writer), Sam Cooke, Soul Stirrers

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“My music has a little bit of a spiritual taste, but it’s also primitive. I play the guitar as if I was playing drums.” -Bo Diddley A musician doesn’t beat a drum, he plays a drum. He coaxes multiple rhythms from that drum, in an effort to tell his story and to support others contributing […]