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Davell Crawford: Born with the Funk |
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New Orleans
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Sunday, 22 January 2006 23:42 |
Davell Crawford
Born with the Funk
Mardi Gras Records
By John Sinclair
Let me say it right out: Davell Crawford is one of the most incredibly talented musicians New Orleans has ever produced.
At the age of 23 Davell Crawford has already enjoyed a wildly acclaimed career as a performer in the city's top clubs and festivals and with audiences around the world. He's issued three CDs under his own name and contributed cuts to the Piano Night at Tipitina's and WWOZ Radio's Sounds of New Orleans anthologies. He's conducted choirs in Catholic, Baptist and Spiritualist churches and led gospel ensembles of his own.
As a pianist, he shoots out from his deep gospel roots to incorporate the entire Crescent City piano tradition, from Tuts Washington through Champion Jack Dupree to Professor Longhair, Eddie Bo, Edward Frank, James Booker, Mac Rebennack, Allen Toussaint and Henry Butler. Yet there's nothing derivative about Davell's playing-he makes music just as fresh and new as one could hope for and all indelibly stamped with the mark of his own complex personality.
Davell plays the hell out of the Hammond B-3 organ, too, and explores keyboards of every description in his ceaseless effort to find effective forms of creativity and self-expression. He constantly seeks to expand his musical and emotional horizons by sitting in and playing with ensembles of every kind, from gospel choirs to traditional jazz and brass bands, behind James Andrews, John Boutte, or the Wild Magnolias, and alongside Eddie Bo, Henry Butler, or Sammy Berfect.
As a singer Davell has a sound all his own, ranging from an exurberant churchy shout to a impassioned plaintive cry, drawing inspiration from the deep well of the gospel and soul music tradition and his earliest secular influences: Ray Charles, Dionne Warwick, Patti LaBelle and other popular R&B singers of the 1970s and 80s.
As a composer, Davell Crawford is just beginning to reveal the depth and extent of his songwriting skills, introducing here such gems of New Orleans rhythm & blues as "The Mardi Gras Song," "Going Back Home to New Orleans," "Please Forgive Me," "Sad Song" and "Born with the Funk." His spirited gospel works are represented by "He'Il Make Your Day," presented here in duet with Jackie Tolbert, and his stirring arrangement of "Precious Lord."
Gospel is where Davell Crawford begins. "I would go to church and sit in the back, and the organist, she would play the organ, and I would watch this hand playin', and her left hand, and I would watch her feet, because the organ was so up high.
"I would see her feet movin', and I would know when she hit the low C with her foot, her foot would go toward the left. When it would be a higher note, her foot would go toward the right. And I used to sit in the pews, and my right foot--I would be, you know, doin' that. Wherever it would land, I pretended I had pedals down there."
Born in New Orleans in 1975 and raised by his grandmother, once the wife of R&B legend James "Sugarboy" Crawford, Davell almost miraculously escaped being touched by the city's spectacular musical history until well into his development as an artist.
"Sugarboy was Baptist, so I would go to church by him, at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. He sang in the choir. He did not play the piano, he did not speak of music, he didn't talk music or anything, he just sang in the choir. I didn't even see him in the choir, because his mother was head of the Usher Board, and they would keep the little babies in the back, so I couldn't see him. I don't even have any memories of him even bein' up there.
"And his ex-wiâ•e, which is my grandmother who I lived with, was the woman of the 70s--r whatever the decade was, baby, she was the woman of that. So when she raised me during the 70s, she was listening to Dionne Warwick, Smokey Robinson, and people like that, and I grew up listening to that music. I had no New Orleans culture inbred in me."
There are more surprises: Davell's grandmother's family is from Lafayette, "and on weekends we would go back to Lafayette. So, of course, I knew zydeco--I grew up listening to zydeco all the time. On Sunday mornings, when we would get ready to go to church, the zydeco would play first, and then they would play gospel. About the time church was over, we'd go to mass, and after mass we'd come back home and zydeco'd be back on the radio.
"So that was the only musical upbringing that I had, besides me listening to whatever she had on in the beauty shop at the time, which was pop music. It was never ever New Orleans music. My grandmother never listened to New Orleans music--at all. She was married to Sugarboy umpteen years before I was even thought about bein' born, you know, and they got a divorce. I had no clue of my grandmother's life before that. No clue."
Coming up, Davell attended school at Bienville elementary, Holy Rosary, and Our Lady Star of the Sea. "Then I left and went to school in Lafayette, at Immaculate Heart of Mary. Out there, I was playin' at the Baptist church, I was choir director at the high school, I was playin' for a non-denominational church, Tabernacle of Faith--they would dance a while up in there. Then I was playin' for, every now and then for Queen of Peace, and Immaculate Heart, so I was playin' for a lot of different denominations when I was in Lafayette.
"I moved back here and went to Kennedy when I came back, because I wanted to go to public high school. I was tired of going to Catholic school--I wanted to be free, and I knew if I was going to travel and tour I could not go to Catholic school. They wouldn't tolerate that. So I went to Kennedy, and then I went to NOCCA, out of Kennedy.
"At that time, I was under a lot of pressure--more than the average student, or more than the average person my age--because I was playin' at Snug [Harbor], doin' jazz and startin' to experiment with Marvin Gaye songs, Sarah Vaughan and Roberta Flack songs, and then I was doing the blues and rock & roll and stuff at Tip's, and then on Sundays I was doin' Baptist songs in the Baptist church, and I was goin' to Antioch Spiritualist Church in the 9th Ward and doin' the Holy Ghost music there, with tambourines and all that, and then I was goin' to Our Lady Star of the Sea and sittin' up there playin' a cathedral organ, or St. Luke's Episcopal Church and playin' a cathedral organ.
"At NOCCA, one teacher one--out of all the teachers, Dr. Bert Braud, who was head of the music department, he took me under his wing and said, 'You need to be as versatile as possible. Check this out. Check that out. Check this out.' See, once you find yourself, you can take in anything you want.
"And it's better for you. It's better for you to approach every lesson, every music, every note, every word, every person in life, as a lesson. Approach the blues as a lesson. And if you wanna last, or at least if you wanna call yourself a musician, you might want to be placed into every sort of musical circumstance and situation that you possibly can be placed in. If you don't wanna stay there, that's fine, but at least get the experience once or twice."
For the past three or four years Davell has been on a mission to absorb as much of the Crescent City musical landscape as he can. "The first learning stage, or appreciating stage, that I had--the New Orleans stuff, Professor Longhair and the blues, you know--that came about because it was forced on me by my band. We were touring, you know, and [bassist] Charles Moore said--I'll never forget--'Do you know "Tutti Frutti"?' Then he said, 'This is how it go,' and he got on the bass."
Despite a demanding touring schedule that took him to Brazil and all over Europe while he was still in his teens, Davell determined that his personal development should take precedence over his professional career. "I moved to Europe for a whole year--stayed in Paris, that was '96. I cancelled my tour, and I [decided] that I was not gonna work in 1996. And that year passed, and I said I'm not gonna work in 1997 either. I just didn't feel like it.
"I came back here, and I prayed, and asked God to give me some sort of longing to wanna be here in New Orleans, because I was fed up with the place. I really didn't even wanna be here. I used to hear people say all these wonderful things about New Orleans, you know, and I used to ask questions like I don't see what you're talking about. They're going crazy over Professor Longhair, and James Booker I didn't get it. I just did not get it. I could sit there and play it, but it just didn't-it wasn't like that for me.
"It took these three years for me to work on myself as an individual, change personality-wise, change musically, grow musically, and grow with the love and fascination for this city and the culture and the music. I would be forcin' myself: 'Davell, see what they see. Enjoy red beans. See what they see. Enjoy beignets, and the Cafe DuMonde.'
"And boom--it happened, to where It started to all make sense The New Orleans sound--not only rhythm & blues, but the blues from New Orleans. A lot of people say New Orleans is the home of rhythm & blues, and New Orleans gospel, and New Orleans jazz, but it's actually just pure D blues, which is a whole nother thing.
"I became aware of people like Pud Brown, I became aware of Dr. Michael White, I became aware of these people who are keeping this kind of music alive around here. And I didn't even have to research it or study it, but I just said, 'Okay, God, open my eyes, let me see it, understand it,' and it happened all of a sudden."
Born with the Funk proudly presents the results of Davell's intensive investigation into the roots of his music and serves as immediate evidence of his growing musical maturity. He rocks like crazy on the up numbers and sings his heart out on the gospel and ballad features, imbuing the entire program with the force of his personality and the singular quality of his vision.
The music here issues from sessions with Wilbert "Junk Yard Dog" Arnold on drums, Vitas Paukstaitis on bass, Steve Blailock on guitar, and background singers Timothea Beckerman and Mary Bonette ("The Mardi Gras Song," "Going Back Home To New Orleans," "Precious Lord," and "Good Night My Love") and with Davell's working rhythm section of Mark Brooks on bass and Tony Dillon on drums, plus guitarist June Yamagishi and a choir featuring Jackie Tolbert, Terrance Boyd, and Valencia, Andrea, Shannon and David Rhodes (the Crawford originals "Please Forgive Me," "Sad Song," "He'Il Make Your Day," and "Born With The Funk" and Davell's distinctive treatments of the standards "Georgia On My Mind," "Help Me Make It Through The Night," and Henry Glover's "Drown In My Own Tears"). Davell produced the sessions and provided all the keyboards, lead vocals, and arrangements throughout.
This is what New Orleans sounds like today, embodied in the soul and viscera of Davell Crawford. This is the record his many fans have been waiting for, and, dear friends, I'm happy to announce that the wait is over. This is Davell Crawford at his very best, and it just doesn't get much better than that.
--New Orleans
January 21, 1999
(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Davell Crawford
Born With The Funk
Mardi Gras Records
1) "The Mardi Gras Song" (4:59) Davell Crawford / Crawpita Music, BMI
2) "Going Back Home To New Orleans" (4:58) Davell Crawford / Crawpita Music, BMI
3) "Please Forgive Me" (4:19) Davell Crawford / Crawpita Music, BMI
4) "Sad Song" (4:07)Davell Crawford / Crawpita Music, BMI
5) "He'Il Make Your Day" (4:35) (Duet with Jackie Tolbert) Davell Crawford / Crawpita Music, BMI
6) "Georgia On My Mind" (4:15) H. Carmichael, S. Gorrell / Peermusic, Ltd., BMI
7) "Drown In My Own Tears" (4:49) Henry Glover / Trio Music-Fort Knox Music, BMI
8) "Born With The Funk" (5:35)Davell Crawford / Crawpita Music, BMI
9) "Help Me Make It Through The Night" (7:35) K. Kristofferson / Combine Music Corp., BMI
1O) "Precious Lord" (6:36) Traditional, arr. D. Crawford / Warren Hildebrand Music, BMI
11) "Good Night My Love" (5:05) Davell Crawford / Crawpita Music, BMI
Produced By Davell Crawford
3.1.6116 |
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