oklahoma house rockers

this week jesse ed davis will be inducted posthumously into the oklahoma music hall of fame class of 2011. during his oklahoma musical days he was associated with two other musicians whose place in oklahoma musical days has been at best belatedly recognized - conway twitty and wes reynolds. i've written a bit about conway twitty* here. so today i'd like to write a few words about jesse ed davis and wes reynolds

jesse ed davis is and was beloved to his kiowa people and the world of rock and roll. his cousin mary helen deer smith reports he was know as 'eddie' and was the son of vivian saunkeah, a full blood kiowa, and his father jesse edwin davis who was creek and comanche but apparently identified himself primarily with the creeks. jesse ed's death at an early age is clearly comparable as a loss to the death of another kiowa of his age, t.c. cannon because of the world class artistic talent they both demonstrated. after his death one of his national friends, jackson browne, told an oklahoma city audience how fondly he remembered jesse and his mother vivian who treated him as a son and whose home he still returns to. [courtesy: bernice benefield]

he graduated from northeast high school in 1962 and played locally with johny ware and others, attended ou and taught guitar, before leaving school and town to tour with conway twitty in the first days of his rock and roll times.

his life is chronicled by rock historian jas obrecht in part because of the list of rock superstars with whom he was associated from taj mahal to individual beatles: Jesse Ed Davis: “I Just Play the Notes That Sound Good”. near the end of his life at 43 he played with john trudell in the graffitti band. one night in 1987 while playing in the palomino club with taj mahal they were joined spontaneously on stage by bob dylan, george harrison and john fogerty producing what turned out to be a particularly special tribute to his career and ability.

wes reynolds, known as wesley during high school years, grew up around oklahoma city and spent time at northeast high school in the 1950's and according to my memory at least performed at my high school, northwest classen. i can remember him still for having the famous 'greaser/rocker' look and playing his hit 'trip to the moon' in the northwest classen high school cafeteria. his memory stuck with me all these years and i went internet searching for him and found that he was live, well and still playing in tulsa after some heady musical times of his own.

turns out he had abandoned high school [a move i wouldn't have understood at the time] to began a musical career described by his friend john wooley in a tulsa world article: Wes Reynolds has been all over America -- on and off the rock 'n' roll radar. i found that he had honed his musical skills in part at a studio run by one of child musical heroes about 100 feet from where i now live. he used to venture to the legendary studio of gene sullivan in capitol hill. sullivan as gene of 'wiley and gene' had been a local musical hero for me for as part of their bluegrass/country singing and comedy routine. his studio up the block from me now was obviously a local music epicenter featuring appearances by the likes of leon russell before he was leon and others. and wes got to play with them all. but i didn't know all that firmly north of the south canadian river.

'trip to the moon' was the result of a somewhat byzantine story of music in the first space exploration days of the 50's. nonetheless it's publication in 1957 officially began wes' rock and roll career with 'the house rockers' and other bands and took him to venues from tulsa's hard rock scene to a good part of the united states. a south dakota rock and roll association notes his playing there and being part of the bands listened to and brought there by oklahoma city's KOMA as a clear channel station. wes lived in los angeles, las vegas and miami and played with rock and roll blues legends as diverse as ricky nelson and bo diddley. he even appeared in television shows during his l.a. days.

in 1970 he returned to tulsa to raise a family and continue music as a documents his touring and tulsa years. his current web site showcases his entire career. he is an accomplished rock and roll pianist, ala jerry lee, and blues guitarist. in 2009 he was inducted into both the oklahoma historical society rock and roll hall of fame and the oklahoma blues hall of fame.** a tulsa fan, 'nurseeroc' has given included a number of wes' videos on his youtube channel. earlier this summer he wrote, produced and performed a new video 'for good'.

a recent video shows him at his simple blues man best:

i finally got to see wes perform one song in tulsa earlier this year 50+ years after that school cafeteria and am eagerly awaiting a next time. he wrote to me this morning and reported he and jesse ed traded guitar licks and rock and roll star dreams in oklahoma city in their teens and saw each other shortly before jessie ed's death. so today i happily celebrate two of my oklahoma city contemporaries who followed their rock and roll dreams.

* suffice it to say that conway twitty has not been in made a member of any oklahoma hall of fame musical or otherwise and that is just plain wrong.

** his nomination for the oklahoma music hall of fame without election in 2005 is clearly a blot on that group's reputation. but it's probably not a good week to push that cart.

happy pi day+
saturday morning with 3 - count em 3 - generations of benefield women in the immediate area - 4 if you count the continuing impact of my mother margaret jean benefield on my surroundings. later on i'll happily find nick spitzer and american routes on the internet in a continuation of the love of music old and new which she began in me. more about that later.
but first a new discovery: pi day.
it took me a little time to figure out why 3.14 is pi day. there's a group that doesn't have to go pack to its mathematical memory to figure it out. they actually want to know how many of the infinite numbers of pi you've memorized. they have a few other clues on how to celebrate pi day. my daily bleed provides a better description of pi and its day and a quote from some other intellectuals on the subject:

1998 -- US: Pi in the Sky?: At the Exploratorium in Frisco, California, mathematicians assemble, as usual, to celebrate pi (3.14159 etc.). One of probably dozens or maybe hundreds of such assemblies worldwide at which people sing songs & recite poetry about pi, have pi trivia quizzes, & eat pie. (Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, is a
mathematically irrational number, & is thus considered to be a symbol for the mystery of the universe.)

Moe: "When the roll is called up yonder I’ll eat pie."
Curly: "Pi r²?"
Moe: "No, pie are round; cake are square."
Curly: "Oh."Moe: "No, O are round, also ."

i probably won't spend too much time pi'ing but i guarantee i'll spend quality time later in the day with american routes after finding when it's on on the public radio link over on the right. as i probably mentioned before, nick spitzer who is american routes attended the same college as i did. for this reason my latest alumni magazine includes an article on him and the show: digging routes. i recommend the whole article if you have the time and interest and include the introductory portion that speaks to me as a true believer and a show description by spitzer himself:

A Saturday afternoon, maybe a Sunday. You might be driving;
you might be in the kitchen chopping onions. The radio is on, and when you notice the hour, you flip it to a certain NPR station, just in time to hear the rolling opening bars of “Tipitina,” Allen Toussaint’s interpretation of the Professor Longhair classic.“You’re traveling on American Routes, from Basin Street Station in New Orleans,” comes the voice-over: "songs and stories from the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, from coast to coast.” The voice, which belongs to Nick Spitzer C’72, is at once laid back and revved up, friendly but
erudite, somewhere on the wry edge of folksy. As Jelly Roll Morton breaks into “Doctor Jazz,” or Nat King Cole slides into “Route 66,” or Louis Jordan digs into “Five Guys Named Moe,” Spitzer offers a teaser of the week’s installment. It might be the Medicine Show, with rollicking songs of lovesickness and snake-oil healing; it might be Classical Routes, with the likes of Gershwin, Gottschalk, and “Concerto for Cootie”; it might be The Spirit World of New Orleans, with odes to voodoo queens and interviews with Fats Domino and a Louisiana Creole healer. Or it might be a live performance of Arlo Guthrie’s “The City of New Orleans,” as he and Spitzer ride the train of that name, riffing down to the sea.Whatever—for the next two hours, if it’s at all possible, you’re not budging. You’re cruising.

Spitzer himself describes the show as a “Creole document,” explaining that “it contains Creole music, like Zydeco and the roots of jazz; it
contains creolized forms, like the way that Klezmer or country music and rock ’n’ roll represent minglings of culture to create new music out of old traditions; and it’s an assemblage of many different styles that makes the totality of what is a kind of aesthetically creolized, purposely creolized, mixed and mingled document.”

here's a couple of other all purpose blues sites with history and music connections: blues history and the blue highway
i'll close with a seque i think is worthy of the name. roy rogers and dale evans are part of my way back musical history including their signature 'happy trails to you'. during my psychedelic period quicksilver messenger service brought it back to me in a way which, as they noted, blew my mind. after a rambling and wonderful trip around 'who do you love' they provided a 'coda' of a soft happy trails. i can't find a video version of the latter, so here's the original by roy and dale: