Hearing blues singer, songwriter, and recording artist Katherine Davis credit the ‘blues gods’ with whispering her forward through the twists and triumphs of her long career, one can feel the magic in her story.
Before Davis was born, her family moved from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to Chicago in 1913 for reasons of safety. Her father was just two years old.
“They never looked back,” she says without going into detail about the circumstances.
Raised in a family of classical pianists and opera singers on her mother’s side, Davis chose a different direction, becoming the first in her family to sing the blues.
“My mother was also a singer,” says Davis. “She would always sing to her children so we all learned how to sing with her teaching us. My mother was into Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington. … you know the classic singers.”
The blues, Davis says, was something that was embedded in her.
“I knew I was destined to sing the blues,” Davis added in a conversational tone reminiscent of an old friend. “When I was a little girl, I always had a bluesy sound. I didn’t know what that was but when I was singing in church choirs they would always say ‘you have to lower your voice because you sound too bluesy and it goes against God and it’s disrespecting us and the church.’”
What appeared to some as disrespectful was just the innate talent of a young girl who wanted to sing.
“I didn’t know until later that it was a gift from the blues gods,” she says, pausing momentarily as she reflected. “The blues gods have always been with me. I’ve always asked them to make sure to take care of me.’”
Now 73, Davis’ career spans five decades. Rather than the Mississippi Delta blues, she identifies her music as Piedmont blues, a choice shaped by the years she spent in South Carolina after relocating in the 1990s to the region where the Piedmont style originated.
The differences between the two styles is that Piedmont blues features a lively, ragtime influenced fingerpicking technique, while Mississippi Delta blues is raw and emotional, often using slide guitar and a heavier, more percussive sound.
Her path shifted as she grew increasingly worried about embarrassing or disrespecting the church congregation, leading her to step away from singing in church and turn her attention to classical music instead. Still, several years passed before she finally decided to enroll in music school at age 20.
“I was going to be an opera singer,” she says. “I went from my mother, to gospel and then to music school to learn opera. From there I explored different styles of music.”
By the time Davis’ vocal coach started preparing her for a classical career, she was already past the prime age to learn.
“They like to get you when you’re young,” Davis says. “I already had children by then.”
Her close friend Eleanor Dixon, daughter of blues legend Willie Dixon, convinced Davis to follow the path the blues gods seemed to be guiding her toward.
“She knew I was studying music and would always say, ‘you need to sing blues.’” Davis recalls. “I would always say na’ll I want to sing opera and be on stage with an orchestra and travel and sing at the Metropolitan Opera.”
Though she currently resides in Austin, Davis grew up in the Cabrini Green housing projects. The National Public Housing Museum was scheduled for an interview with her the same day as West Side magazine.
“They are writing a story about me growing up in Cabrini Green in the 1950s and 60s,” Davis says. “I’m one of the elders that grew up there. I’m the only one representing the 50s and 60s in the projects.”
Her first stage experience as a blues singer came as part of a Kuumba Theatre musical in Chicago.
“It was called in the “Heart of the Blues” in 1983,” Davis says. “That’s where I got my first experience learning about Bessie Smith; Ma Rainey, (born Gertrude Pridgett, known as the “Mother of the Blues,”) and Alberta Hunter.
What was it like for a female blues singer in those days?
“I loved it,” Davis says. “In 1992, I moved to South Carolina and I had lots of exposure singing in the South. Every now and then when I was driving from South Carolina to Georgia, I would (come across) spots like Blind Willie Blues Club. They didn’t call them lounges or bars, they called them private clubs.”
It was in those clubs where Davis met lots of the Piedmont blues artists.
Her Chicago West Side exposure during the 1980s and 90s was minimal due to her theatre opportunities and the negative stigmas associated with the West Side.
“I went from the North Side to the South Side to the Gold Coast,” she says. I didn’t get much exposure on the West Side.”
The North Side is where all the blues musicians gathered because it was where the promoters and agents would show up.
“People were coming here from all over the world to blues clubs like Kingston Mines Blues on Halsted and Blues Etcetera,” Davis says. “As far as my career, I got to do so much on the North Side.”
Davis has been mindful to collect pretty much everything she’s done throughout her career on cassette tapes, writings and interviews, performances.
A divide emerged at some point in which Black male blues artists received greater recognition both because they were men and because, as she notes, “white women love them.”
“But as a woman blues singer, you’re on your own,” she says. “In the 80s, women blues singers were the stars of the shows. When bands were performing it was under the names of the women like myself.”
At one point female blues singers who led their bands would often travel overseas but that stopped back in the 1980s and 90s when the music industry started hiring more guitarists who could sing and play guitar, Davis says.
Research shows the industry increasingly favored performers who could both sing and play guitar, especially as blues rock and electric blues surged in popularity, reducing the demand for classic blues bandleaders, many of whom were women who traditionally fronted ensembles without playing lead guitar.
The shift opened it up to white male or ‘wannabe’ musicians who were coming over here from Germany, Spain, France, England who were able to live over here and survive and hang out in the blues clubs, Davis says.
Those kinds of music industry maneuvers speak to culture appropriation.
Nelson George is a noted African American author, music and culture critic, journalist, and filmmaker best known for chronicling and analyzing Black music, especially Motown, R&B, and hip hop in his nonfiction work.
His “The Death of Rhythm and Blues” examines the evolution and commercialization of African American music genres from the post–World War II era through the 1980s, critiquing how industry pressures diluted their cultural authenticity.
In it, Nelson writes, “The beauty of American capitalism is that it can assimilate anything into its production machine, package it, and sell it as if it were a new item.”
The proliferation of record stores in the Black community also diminished.
“When they closed, we were trying to figure out what happened to all the records and all the music the (Black) artists had on consignment,” Davis says. “Well, when those stores closed down, those Europeans came over here and bought up all of our record stores and took all of our music overseas.”
But how does Davis describe the blues?
“It’s in our heart and it’s from our experiences in life,” she says. “To me, you have to be born with it. You feel it and you can hear it in all genres of music. It has a hold on you. It’s more than money. It’s more than fame. It’s deep inside of you.”
Davis is not one to sing about bad relationships but every now and then will ‘throw one in there.’’
The last album she produced is titled, “If I Could Go Back,” and is streaming on CD Baby, a music distribution service for independent artists.
“All the songs on that album are songs that I wrote through the years.”
Davis taught blues in the (Chicago Public Schools) for more than 20 years.
She is scheduled to perform June 7 at the Chicago Blues Fest in a tribute to female blues artists like Mama Yancey and Big Momma Thornton best known for “Hound Dog” (recorded before Elvis Presley) and “Ball Chain.”
Davis has four children and two great grandchildren that are scattered, she says from here to Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Most of the singers Davis came up with have passed on.
“Larry (Taylor) and I are among the last of the Mohicans,” she says.