Cow Cow Davenport - 'The Essential'

 

One day in the Spring of 1963, I went for my piano lesson with Mark "The Beatnik".  As I entered Mark's apartment, he was playing a fun sounding boogie-woogie type of thing.  When he finished, I asked him what he was playing, he told me it was Cow Cow Davenport's "The Cow Cow Boogie" and then said "Give it a try."  So I sat at the piano, looked at the sheet music, and tried to sight-read the deceptively simple song.  After a few minutes of flubbing, the furiously fast song, Mark showed me a dumbed-down version, that I could play, and little by little my left hand started to cooperated with my right.  After 45 minutes or so, I pretty much had "The Cow Cow Boogie" nailed (more or less).  When my lesson was over, Mark gave me the sheet music to borrow.

On my way home, I stopped by Denise "The Grease's" house.  Mrs. "Grease" (Denise's mother) gave us a cannoli and made some moka pot espresso.  Mrs. "Grease" saw my sheet music, and asked me to play some piano.  In the Denise's house, one of the sitting rooms had a beautiful alcove, with a top of the line Steinway baby grand piano in it.  The funny thing was that no one in Denise's family played the piano. 

In the sitting room, I put the sheet music on the piano, and told Denise's mother, "This is a boogie woogie song".  "Like the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B?", asked Mrs. "Grease".  "No, like moulinyan music", said Denise, rolling her eyes (moulinyan or sometimes mulignan is a derogatory slang term for a black person in Sicilian dialect.  It's a corruption of melanzane, the Italian word for eggplant).  Mrs. "Grease" gave Denise a dirty look, and tilted her head towards the next room, where their housekeeper, Lanette (a lovely African American woman, who always called me, "Missy Babs"), was dusting.  [Many times in my life, I've wanted to strangle "The Grease". This was one of them - Ed].  So I played the song, and Mrs. "Grease" loved it, as did Lanette who, as we left the sitting room, gave me a smile and a nod of approval.

After that, almost every time I visited, Mrs. "Grease" asked me to play it, she'd always say, "That song tickles me to death."  Paradoxically, the last time I played it for her was at her funeral…such is life.

As an aside, the backstory to the Steinway baby grand is that "Mrs. Grease" told "Mr. Grease" that she was thinking about learning to play the piano, and a few days later the Steinway was delivered.

"Mrs. Grease" took a few lessons, and decided the piano wasn't for her.  The piano was black with a beautiful high gloss finish.  It had amazing keyboard action, and tone to die for.  At the time, I was playing an old spinet piano, that lived in our basement, so it was always a pleasure to play. 

When I told my parents about the baby grand Steinway, my father said, "You have to wonder what truck or showroom that piano fell off of?" 

I imagined Mr. "Grease", telling one of his crew, "Da wife needs a nice piano, make it happen".

Born in Anniston, Alabama in 1884, Chrales Edward Davenport , better known as Cow Cow Davenport was the son of a preacher who wanted him to follow in that profession.  Instead, after learning piano from his mother, a church organist, he chose the path of a musician.

At an early age, he joined Barhoot's Traveling Carnival as a medicine show musician, where his rag-time piano style was influenced by Bob Davis.  He moved into vaudeville with blues singer Dora Carr as "Davenport And Co.", and made his first recordings for the Gennett and Paramount labels in 1927.

He later worked with Vocalion Records as both performer and talent scout. In addition to recording under his own name (and as George Hamilton, the Georgia Grinder and Bat The Hummingbird) Cow Cow supported many other artists, forming a particularly successful collaboration with singer Ivy Smith.

In 1938 a cerebral hemorrhage left him deficient in his right hand.  He continued to perform as a singer, but a move to New York found him eventually washing dishes in the Onyx Club.  He was rescued by pianist Art Hodes, and recovered sufficiently to record again as a pianist for the Comet and Circle labels.

Cow Cow Davenport was one of the most distinctive and influential blues pianists of his era.  His walking bass lines combined with his ragtime influences helped to create the style known as Boogie Woogie, a phrase that Davenport claimed to have invented in 1924.  I suppose, Cow Cow had as good a claim as anyone, and better than most.

Cow Cow's business card

Cow Cow also claimed to have written the song "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You" made famous by Louis Armstrong, saying he sold the tune to Sam Theard outright and received no royalties or composer credits. Who knows?

One thing we do know for certain is that Cow Cow Davenport was a phenomenal pianist.  His song, "Cow Cow Blues" was one of the earliest boogie woogie records ever released (if not the first), and proved popular enough to give Charles Davenport his nickname.  It quickly became commonplace for every blues and honky-tonk piano player to "rework" a version.  The Mississippi Delta player Louise Johnson did a nice one titled "On the Wall".  Later, Ray Charles reworked it as "Mess Around", which was also memorably recorded by Professor Longhair.

The term "Boogie Woogie" is often misused and misunderstood.  It is a bluesy style of piano playing that features a driving, "eight-to-the-bar" (eight beats per measure) bass line, and it would prove very popular and influential across the entire spectrum of American music in the coming decades.

The 'The Essential Cow Cow Davenport' is a really enjoyable overview of his work on 2CDs.

Charles "Cow Cow" Davenport is one of those seldom remembered names in the annals of early blues history, which really is a shame.

For the freeload, who are some of your favorite unsung heroes of music?