Walter Davis, blues singer and pianist, died on 22nd October 1963

Walter Davis was born in Mississippi in 1912, but ran away from home when he was 13, landing up in St. Louis, Missouri. he was initially primarily a blues singer, with a fairly primitive piano technique, and he played gigs around the southern and mid-western states with guitarist Henry Townsend and pianist Peetie Wheatstraw. When he started recording in the early '30s, he was often accompanied by the great pianist Roosevelt Sykes, but as time went on his confidence and skill grew and he recorded solo, using a distinctive single finger chord hammering style with his left hand, while his right hand played intricate and unpredictable phrases. His voice was one of the best of the Delta blues vocalists, with a rich timbre that gave a warmth and soulful feel, and he wrote some important songs, most notably "M&O Blues". His recordings were continuously popular on the jukeboxes of the '40s, but in the early '50s he suffered a stroke, and he stopped performing, retiring to St Louis, where he became a preacher and occasional night porter at a hotel. He died in 1963, aged 51. Acrobat has on catalogue a collection of his recordings from the '30s and early '40s - for full details click here