James “Thunderbird” Davis - Come By Here

Topic: Dance Music
In the 1960s, rock replaced rock ’n’ roll. Young musicians came of age who had listened to records by urban bluesmen in much the same way B.B. King had heard recordings by Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson as a child. [1] Niche artists like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were searching out bluesmen in Chicago while the better known Rolling Stones were proclaiming their debt to King. [2]

Still, King was despondent. His marriage was disintegrating [3] and his new record company was treating him with less respect than the Bihari brothers [4] had done. In one session, the producer hired another guitarist to replay his solos. [5] King had become friendly with his manager’s accountant, and in 1968 asked Sidney Seidenberg to take over as manager. [6]

Seidenberg believed King should take his music to the audience cultivated by blues-influenced white musicians. On 26 February 1967, he booked King into the mecca of San Francisco rock, Bill Graham’s Fillmore West. King remembered:

"By the time I strapped on Lucille, every single person in the place was standing up and cheering like crazy. For the first time in my career, I got a standing ovation before I played. Couldn’t help but cry." [7]

The interest in blues spread from men like King to lesser known artists who were rediscovered by independent record companies. In1989, Blacktop Records recorded James "Thunderbird" Davis’ version of "Come by Here" with a group of musicians who previously had worked with performers like Little Richard, Sam Cook, and Bobby "Blue" Bland. [8]

Clarence Hollimon’s electric guitar solos were ones King could have done. Gandy Gaines could have played saxophone on King’s 1958 recording of "Come by Here." The piano player, Ron Levy, actually had worked for King in the 1970s. [9] Davis sometimes had been his opening act. [10]

The lyrics were different. The verses asked a woman to come visit the singer while his kids were in school and his wife was at her mother’s house. The chorus pled his case:

"Yeah baby, won’t you come by here
Well I’m all alone
And I swear the coast is clear."

Both Davis and Levy were credited with authorship of the song. It seems unlikely Levy, who was a Jew born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, learned the original "Come by Here" as a child. [11] Davis was raised by a religious family in a town near Mobile, Alabama, in 1938, and began as a gospel singer. After he retired in the 1970s, he worked as a laborer around Thibodaux, Louisiana, and sang in church. [12]

Both men could have known King’s version of "Come by Here," Davis from working with him in the 1960s, and Levy from the record. [13] The question was which man was more likely or more comfortable with changing the context from King’s promise of marriage to an admission of infidelity. That transformation may have been basis for their collaboration. [14]

Performers
Vocal Soloist: James Davis, baritone [15]
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Soloist: Clarence Hollimon, electric guitar [16]

Instrumental Accompaniment: Grady Gaines, saxophone; [17] Ron Levy, piano; Lloyd Lambert, bass; Tony Klatka, trumpet [18]

Rhythm Accompaniment: David Lee, drum set [19]

Credits
Composers: James "Thunderbird" Davis and Ron Levy [20]

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: strongly XxXx
Verses: own

Vocabulary
Pronoun: I
Term for Deity: none
Special Terms: none

Basic Form: three-verse song with choruses

Verse Length: two long lines, broken into phrases of irregular length

Rhyme pattern: end rhyme
Verse Repetition Pattern: none

Line Meter: generally iambic, but some feet had more and less than two syllables

Ending: repetitions of "baby
Unique Features: chorus alludes to AAB pattern of traditional blues

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: own
Tempo: moderate

Basic Structure: mixed vocal sections with instrumental ones

Singing Style: Davis used melisma in places, and was able to bridge the rhythmic irregularities in the text. His timbre varied, but Davis usually used a rasping voice and shouted in places. One fan wrote on Amazon:

"Davis was not an instrumentalist, so he put everything he had into his singing. There’s a lot of wisdom and soul in his gravelly voice [. . .] James still has that empathy in his vocals, laced with smoldering fire at times and with blazing fire at other times, that tells you that he will get through these circumstances." [21]

Instrumental Style: urban blues

Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: Davis introduced the solos, much like Bob Wills [22] and Ernest Tubb [23] had done in country music performances. They both were from Texas, and may have shared the same tradition Davis inherited when he worked in Houston. [24]

Notes on Performance
Occasion: It might be too much to subtitle this album "six musicians in search of a singer," but that may have been what happened when studio musicians who had worked for Peacock Records in the 1950s were reassembled by Blacktop. The bass player, Lloyd Lambert, went looking for the retired Davis. The album was part reunion and part rediscovery of a blues singer.

Location: Southlake Recording Studios, Metairie, Los Angeles in February and March 1988. [25]

Notes on Performers
Blacktop Records was founded by Nauman Scott and his brother, Hammond Scott. The white boys had been raised in Alexandria, Louisiana, where they listened to bluesmen like John Lee Hooker and James Brown on radio. They established their blues revival company in New Orleans in 1981. [26]

Davis worked with Guitar Slim, [27] who, like King, was an early innovator on the electric guitar. Slim had begun performing in New Orleans with Frank Painia at the Dew Drop Inn. When Painia began having problems, he sent Eddie Jones to Hosea Hill in Thibodaux, an oil and sugar town southwest of New Orleans. There Slim worked with Hill’s band at the Sugar Bowl. [28]

Lambert was from Thibodaux, where he had played trumpet for Hill’s house band, the Serenaders. Lambert’s father was jazz guitarist in New Orleans. In the early 1950s, Lloyd switched to bass as local African-American tastes changed from big bands to rhythm and blues. When the New Orleans musicians’ union told Hill a musician needed to lead his Serenaders, he turned the band over to Lambert. [29]

After Slim moved to Thibodaux and began recording for Specialty Records, the Lloyd Lambert Orchestra began touring with him. The group also began backing other musicians on Specialty sessions, including Little Richard. [30] Penniman’s touring band, the Upsetters, included Grady Gaines on saxophone. [31] The two had met when Penniman was recording for Peacock Records in Houston. [32]

Davis came to Lambert’s attention when he asked Slim to listen to him sing before a performance in Mobile. Slim and Lambert hired him to appear before Slim as an opening act, and Davis followed Slim to Thibodaux. [33] When Slim died in 1959, Davis moved to Houston to work for Peacock Records where he made records demonstrating songs for Bland. It was there that Davis worked with Holliman. Peacock’s owner, Don Robey, was a difficult man, [34] and Davis left in 1966. [35]

Holliman was from Houston and had gone to work for Robey as a session musician in 1957. He accompanied Bland and gospel groups like the Dixie Hummingbirds. [36]

Availability
Album: Check Out Time. Blacktop Records BT-1043. 1989.

YouTube: uploaded by Ron Levy on 31 July 2012.

End Notes
1. For more on B.B. King, see the post for 13 April 2018.

2. B.B. King [Riley B. King]. Blues All Around Be. With David Ritz. New York: Avon Books, 1996. 229-230. King specifically mentioned Mike Bloomfield with Butterfield and Keith Richards with the Stones.

3. King. 229.
4. For more on the Bihari brothers, see the post for 13 April 2018.
5. King. 232.
6. King. 235.
7. King. 240. Lucille was his guitar.

8. Bobby Bland was a Memphis-based blues singer. King credited Charles Keil for bringing him and Bland to the attention of white academics. (King. 230). Keil structured Urban Blues around the contrasting styles of the two men. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966).

9. Steve Huey. "Ron Levy." All Music website.

10. "Thunderbird Davis, A Blues Singer, 53." Obituary published by The New York Times. 27 January 1992.

11. Huey.

12. "James Thunderbird Davis." Mobile Bay Wiki website. Davis was from Prichard, Alabama, which began as freedman’s town, but grew when whites working for the Mobile shipyards moved there. (Wikipedia. "Prichard, Alabama.")

13. It seemed unlikely King kept "Come by Here" in his repertoire after Fillmore, but copies were available to afficionados.

14. Levy was a songwriter, not simply a company employee seeking to enhance his income. He remembered, Davis "had a wonderful personality, enthusiastically sang some of my compositions, and we even wrote a few together." (Levy. Tales of a Road Dog: The Lowdown Along the Blues Highway. Pennsauken, New Jersey: BookBaby, 2013. No page numbers in on-line edition.)

15. Mobile Bay Wiki.

16. Identified by Levy in YouTube notes. Davis introduced the solo by saying what sounded like "come on Grant." Holloway was known as Gristle by his friends. (Roger Wood. "Hollimon, Milton Howard Clarence." Handbook of Texas Online. Uploaded 15 June 2010; last updated 9 March 2017.)

17. Identified by Levy in YouTube notes. Davis introduced the solo by calling him Honey Gaines.

18. Discogs entry for the album include more saxophone players and another guitarist.
19. Discogs.
20. Levy, YouTube.
21. Blue Ox. Comment posted 4 December 2011. Amazon website for Checking Out.

22. Bob Wills was a western swing musician from Groesbeck, Texas. He made comments during his Texas Playboys instrumentals, and often introduced the soloists. He first became popular in the 1930s.

23. Ernest Tubb was a country singer from Crisp, Texas. He would always say "take it away Leon" before Leon Rhodes played a solo with the Texas Troubadours. His first hits were in the 1940s.

24. Wills said his comments didn’t come from medicine shows, but "came directly from playing and living close to Negroes, and that he never did it necessarily as show, but more as a way to express his feelings." (Quoted by Charles R. Townsend. San Antonio Rose. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1976. 46. Cited by Wikipedia. "Bob Wills.")

25. All Music website posting for album.

26. Anthony Clark and Keith Spera. "Hammond and Nauman Scott: The Blues Brothers." Off Beat website. 1 January 1992.

27. Guitar Slim was born Eddie Jones in Greenwood, Mississippi. He was a flamboyant performer before artists like Little Richard and Chuck Berry became popular. He anticipated later rock artists by exploiting distorted overtones in his guitar playing. (Wikipedia. "Guitar Slim.")

28. Jeff Hannusch. "Thibodaux’s Sugar Bowl." Off Beat website. 1 May 1999.
29. German Wikipedia. "Lloyd Lambert."
30. Wikipedia, Lambert.
31. Wikipedia. "Little Richard."
32. Wikipedia. "Grady Gaines."
33. Mobile Bay Wiki.
34. Wikipedia. "Don Robey."
35. Mobile Bay Wiki.
36. Wood.