KATHERINE
DAVIS
EMBEDDED WITH THE BLUES
C
hicago blues carries a certain
gritty, big city vibe that helps it
stand out from other variations.
But if you want to experience the longburied sound of the classic blues women
who laid the foundation for the style,
you need to hear Katherine Davis. Bigvoiced and dramatic, she tells stories
with songs; sliding in double-entrendres
with a gleeful eye roll and rolling hips.
Like her blues queen fore mothers, she
performs as much
with her personality as she does
with her voice,
drawing in audiences with a turn
of her head or a
wave of her hand.
"I love everything
about it and I've
mastered it," said
Katherine of the
music career that
she's created with
over 35 years performing and touring all over the
globe. A mainstay
in blues and jazz
clubs in the '80s,
she continues to
perform with her
long time collaborator Erwin Helfer at the Logan Square
venue, Township, on Monday nights.
But as an actor and teacher as well as a
singer and songwriter, Katherine
encompasses the blues in all aspects of
her varied career.
"I teach from a blues woman's perspective when I go into the
classroom,"she says of her years teaching in the "Blues in the Schools"program
with Billy Branch. Every year, she performs with the kids at the Blues Fest and
she also teaches the children at Clara's
House shelter, where she volunteers.
"Clara supports the blues, she let me
teach the kids anything I want. I have
fun with it and make up all kinds of
games. I don't push myself out there
[into the spotlight]. I'm a diva in my own
right but my main purpose is to teach
the children,"she explained. "The things
that have been taught from generation to
generation is crazy. I teach the kids
whistling because I teach them harmonica." But Clara's grandmother taught her
that you shouldn't whistle because when
enslaved people were escaping from
plantations, they used certain whistle
sounds. So whistling wasn't allowed.
"Katherine uses African American history as well as blues traditions to teach the
children self awareness and confidence.
"I was raised in the projects with the vil-
20 illinoisentertainer.com october 2015
lage concept and I think it's important to
continue that,"she said.
Growing up in Cabrini Green during
the '60s, Katherine learned about blues
music as well as the village concept. "I
loved the music so much that I was making these blues bass lines that I didn't
even know how I knew,"she said of her
childhood activities. "My dad was a tavern owner, he owned a bar called
Wonderbar on Division and Orleans and
he did everything,
from
bartender to DJ
and
janitor
too," she said.
H a n g i n g
around the bar,
she remembers
observing the
customer's
response
to
blues
very
closely.
"The
jukebox would
play and I
would watch
the old people
react to the
blues.
They
seemed to just
lose themselves
in
it.
My
friends music
was R&B and soul. But I heard that 12bar bass line everywhere, in all of the
music."
Although she was surrounded by
music, Katherine was also embraced by
a caring community." All the women in
the building would take the kids to
church, they would gather us all up" she
said. "My mother was a babysitter for
the building. She breastfed all of the
neighbor's babies, there was no formula
then."
Her mother was also a singer who
was a major influence on Katherine's
decision to be a singer. "My mother
woke us up with songs and we'd have
singalongs when we went to sleep," she
remembered. "When I sing, I'm listening
for my mother's sound. She had perfect
pitch. She loved Dinah Washington, Ella
Fitzgerald and Ethel Waters. "It's no
coincidence that Katherine would go on
to portray classic blues women Ma
Rainey and Bessie Smith, at Kuumba
Theater, it was all the influence she had
absorbed growing up. "I like to sing classic blues because their voices were so
rich and pure and they had great phrasing and storytelling," she said.
You can hear that evocative phrasing
Continued on page 52
By Rosalind Cummings-Yeates