Cedell Davis was born Ellis Davis on June 9, 1927, in Helena, then a town on the banks of the Mississippi river. Together with one of his childhood friends, Isaiah Ross, Cedell began playing blues, first harmonica, then some guitar. During his ninth and tenth years he was diagnosed with polio. He returned to Helena, to his mother, who was locally renowned as a healer, there he began the painful process of relearning the guitar, It took me about three years,” he recalls. I was right- handed, but I couldn’t use my right hand, so I had to turn the guitar around; I play left-handed now. But I still needed something to slide with, and my mother had these knives, a set of silverware, and I kinda swiped one of ’em. The knife-handle on the strings produces uneven pressure, which results in metal-stress harmonic transients and a singular tonal plasticity. Some people who hear CeDell’s playing for the first time think it’s out of tune, but it would be more accurate to say he plays in an alternative tuning. Because the way he hears and plays is consistent.

Cedell began playing around the Delta as a young man. Strangely, it has been noted there is something Buddha-like about his presence, a sense of having learned to deal with a physically violent world with his mind. Over the years Cedell has played in Southern juke joints with a number of other musicians. His most significant and longest-lasting association was with Robert Nighthawk, who was considered the Delta’s finest slide guitarist by no less an authority than Muddy Waters. They worked together for ten years straight, roughly 1953-’63. During the early part of his time with Robert, During the latter part of 1957, he was badly injured in a St. Louis tavern, when an apparent police raid caused a massive stampede. Before that, CeDell could at least walk on crutches. But his legs were broken in so many places during the stampede that he has been largely confined to a wheelchair ever since. On June 5, 1961, he “came back home to play.” At first he was based in Helena, but after he secured a regular gig with Robert Nighthawk at the Jack Rabbit n Pine Bluff, Arkansas, he settled there, and there he remained. We said our farewell’s to Cedell in September 2017.

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