The New Blues Wave -Young Rell Davenport
By Matteo Bossi
At not even twenty years of age Harrell Davenport has just put out his debut album, aptly titled”Young Rell”, on Little Village Foundation. He’s been making a name for himself in the last few years as a brilliant, promising singer, guitar and harmonica player, mentored by elders like Billy Branch and Matthew Skoller, also his manager. His down to earth, respectful attitude and keen interest in any aspect of the blues, its history and culture, mirrors that of a bright student, and when somebody so young has already gained the praise and respect of people like Branch or Charlie Musselwhite it means we can count on Davenport’s talent for many years to come.
It seems to me that some of these songs have been with you for a while and they are very meaningful to your life. So what about this album, how did you work on it?
The making of this album was a very fun time. I started writing songs when I was probably twelve, I think the first song I ever wrote was “Giving Me The Blues”, which is number four on the record. I was talking to somebody on the phone and they say something like I’m always trying to mind my Ps and Qs but there’s always somebody giving me the blues… and I thought I can make something out of it and that’s what I did. But yes, most of these songs have been with me for a while. Kid actually reached out maybe three or four years ago and I had another manager at the time…we were trying to work on an album but the thing with Kid and Greaseland fell through.
And so last year Kid reached out again and I was like…I would love to! Because we were working an album but I didn’t really have the money. I’m not rich, I had set up a Gofundme so we were recording using that money, but it was all solo stuff. We were like, maybe we should do a band album to start out, it would be a much stronger lead. That’s what we decided to do but we didn’t have the money to hire a bunch of musicians to do that. By coincidence Kid just happened to reach out saying “we’d love to get some recordings with you at Greaseland” and he got us connected with Jim Pugh. So we talked and two months later we were in California to do the recording. It was a great time. We did everything in three days. It was fun working with those guys.
How did you pick the songs that ended up on the album? Did Matthew and Kid help you making the choice?
Well, I picked the songs that I kind of wanted to let go of. Songs like “Fatherless Child” and “Hurt People Hurt People”…because after a while, I mean, how long can you be a fatherless child? It doesn’t fit, by the time you’re 26 the scenario changes. So yes, I wanted to get these songs off my chest, I think there’s a time limit.I wrote that song when i was 14, so I have been holding on to that song, I have played it live and I felt that those stories needed to be told. I also want to mention that me and Matthew we started the pre-production maybe two years before everybody reached out to us. We worked really hard. Some people say things like “oh I thought Matthew is your manager, how is he producing?” and I really like his production style from the Lurrie Bell album, to his work with his brother Larry. It’s very laid back and natural. When he asked me “who do you want to produce the record?” I just said, “why don’t you do it?”.
Last year you put out a couple of songs, “Beefsteak Blues” by James “Son Thomas and “Hate The Bite”.
Yes, there was “Hate The Bite”, “Beefsteak Blues” and an acoustic version of “Fatherless Child”, they were released on my own label and were part of the work we were doing at Joyride in Chicago. That was just a part of the process of figuring out what we wanted to do until we actually got the opportunity to record an album we were like keep putting out singles.
These songs and the ones on the record really show your taste in music and how at ease you are with different stuff, fom James “Son” Thomas to Fenton Robinson.
Well, I think, as a musician, you have to be as versatile as possible…because somebody might call you to sit in and you might not get the chance to pick the song. So if they start playing “I Shot The Sheriff” you got to catch up or you gonna look bad. I try to study everything and to make it so that I can do just about everything on harmonica or guitar. A lot of my influences are not even blues influences, it’s weird but at the same time it’s something that it’s just something I can do.
Harrell Davenport Denmark 2024 photo Gianfranco Skala
Did your love for the blues put you in a difficult position, maybe when you were in school, because you didn’t fit with the others taste.
For me I’ve never fit in anyway! (laughs) I’ve never wanted to follow stuff that was happening…I’ve always been a follow your heart and stomach kind of guy. If everybody’s wearing a certain brand of tennis shoes, I’m gonna go out and wear a different kind. I don’t want to be like everybody else. That’s where a lot of the problems came when I was in school. I started writing just about when I was in fourth grade and a lot of those songs….you know I was bullied in school by not only students by teachers. Some really traumatic stuff happened when I was in fourth grade and from that incident I live with PTSD and anxiety. The way I was able to cope was music, that’s my thing. I know some musicians who might listen to somebody and say “oh that guy is horrible”, but for me if somebody is making music I find joy in it somehow, that’s always been me, whether it was blues, reggae, funk…anything, I always find comfort in music and of course in my family.
What was some of the first blues stuff you heard that made you fall in love with it?
Well, I got to tell you the whole story of that. I was with my dad one day and he used to have a CD holder in his truck and he would carry it with him everywhere and I was like “dad can I play one of your CDs in the CD player?” And he said, “Oh Iisten to the radio, I don’t listen to those”, “Then why do you have all these CDs?” But he said, “When I get out of the truck you can pop one in and do whatever you want”. And so I was looking and for some reason all the CDs had artwork on them and eventually I scrolled and I kept looking and found a CD that had no writing on it. “Interesting”, I thought. I put in in the record player and started listening. Next thing I heard was Eddie Taylor, “Ride ‘Em On Down” and the next one was Koko Taylor, not “Wang Dang Doodle”, but an other song, maybe the B side of that record. Johnny Young was on that CD, Z.Z. Hill…all kinds of different blues musicians. I didn’t know he listened to this stuff. I didn’t even know what this stuff was. So when he came back I said, “dad, I didn’t know you listened to this”. “I don’t”, he said. “I kinda do, but I don’t”. I was like seven years old. And by the time I was maybe nine I had forgotten about it. By the time I was ten we moved first to Greenville and then to Leland, Mississippi. There is a grocery store called Stop N Shop and on the side of one of the buildings it had a Jimmy Reed mural on it…I said Jimmy Reed, that name rings a bell. I had a tablet at the time, I went on my tablet and taped in Jimmy Reed, but at first Jerry Reed popped up!
A very different Reed.
Right, and I said to myself, this ain’t the one. So I keep scrolling and and Jimmy Reed’s “You Don’t Have To Go” pops up. I start listening and I’m like, this doesn’t sound too good. But it wasn’t Jimmy, it was the way the upholder had digitized the 45s! So I went and found another version and I was “wow, this is the guy I heard in dad’s truck!”. And so the next day I was like, “Mom will you buy a harmonica?” And she said, “OK, I’m gonna get you a harmonica”. She went to the Dollar Store and bought me a toy harmonica. I kind of mess around with that but then we found out it was a toy. So I was like “I want a real harmonica , mom!”. So she went to the Guitar Center and she bought me some plastic harp, I think it was a Fender harmonica. Then one day I went to this pawn shop and I saw this guitar hanging up on the wall. I said “I want that guitar.” I took it down from the wall and started playing it to whatever song was playing in the pawn shop. I had never played guitar before. The pawn shop owner was a very old gentlemen and he goes “Hey, that kid plays guitar at home?” And my mom said “No, I didn’t know he knew how to play guitar”. “Mom I want this guitar, can we have it?” “We can’t afford it”, she said.
We went back home and the next time we went to Greenville we went into that pawn shop again. She talked to the man and he said “I’ll give it to him for ten times cheaper than I got it”. So he basically gave me the guitar. I also saw some Marine Band harmonicas and I wanted some of those…they were used of course,, which I know better now. I wanted to get two but I could only get one, but he put both of them on the counter, so I thought, “oh he’s giving me two for the price of one”. So I took both and my mom said “where does the second harmonica come from, I thought we only bought one”. So we went back and I gave him the other. I had to go home and get the money out of my piggy bank to give him the rest of the money. But he was, “don’t worry about it, it’s OK, you’re gonna do something special one day”. He gave those harps. That’s how I first got into it.
What was the first song you learn on guitar?
Oh it was “High And Lonesome” by Jimmy Reed. I had the 78 and I took it to school one day for show and tell…and a bully broke it. That record is worth like five hundred bucks now. My grandfather gave me that 78, he didn’t listen to them but he had some blues records. It was my dad’s dad, he passed away right before we moved to Leland. He gave me a couple of those old records and that was one of the only memories I had left of him and that kid broke it.
So from then on you started to dig deeper into the blues.
Yes, especially living in Leland and being so close to Greenville, because you have so many great musicians from that area. People like James “Son” Thomas, Eddie Cusic who taught Little Milton, you have Asie Payton, Booba Barnes, T-Model Ford…I started to study the people from the community, who lived in the surrounding areas. But one thing I didn’t mention yet is that actually the first time I heard blues music I was five years old, we went to see Bobby Rush! My mom and I went to this town in Mississippi where she is from, they have a festival every year and so for like three years I heard Bobby Rush. I learned his whole set! All the songs literally. I went to a festival last year and Billy Branch played and then me and him and Mrs Rosa were up in the balcony watching Bobby play. I was singing all the songs so Mrs Rosa said, “how do you know all these songs?” “Oh, it’s the same set from 2012 or 2013”, I said.And I’ve always felt this about Bobby, how you can have something that is the same but at the same time when people really love and want that, you don’t have to change it. The thing about Bobby is he always changes something but also giving the people what they want. It’s something I admire and respect. I’m gonna ask him about it the next time I see him actually!
Harrell Davenport Lucerne Blues Festival 2024 photo Philippe Prétet
How did you go from being a student of this music and culture to being an established performer and play outside the USA in just a few years?
Well, it’s kinda hard to say…I guess the power of the internet is one of the things, because I used to post videos of my playing every day and I had quiet a few of those videos go viral. So people would see them and that’s how I built a fan base and interacting with them. Then I played the King Biscuit Festival and there were people from everywhere, like Guy from the Banana Peel in Belgium…that’s how I played there, they saw me at the festival. But honestly I can’t say, it just started happening….well, actually I take that back! I had to think about it, but I played this gig in 2024 at the Logan Center and this was before Matthew was my manager.
Matthew was one of the curators for the Logan Center For The Arts, they bring blues and all different types of music to that center. He wanted somebody to open for Billy Branch, Carlos Johnson, Stephen Hull and Andrew Alli, he wanted to book me and so he called my old manager. I went up to Chicago to play that gig and Mrs Rosa, Billy Branch’s wife, she recorded it, she did a live on Facebook and that video blew up. People started calling me, messaging me, asking me if I could play here or there…it became too much for me and by that time we had already fired the other guy. So I called Billy and said, “hey Billy I need some help”, and he said, “well, call Matthew! I’ll help you when I can”. Billy was really busy at the time. So I did and Matthew started helping me. After a while I said, “hey man, since you’re already helping me you might as well just be my manager”. So that’s how that came about too.
Billy is obviously a friend and a mentor, he has written the liner notes of the record. He told me you watched together the Chicago Blues Festival last year.
Yes, we were watching D.K. Harrell, Kingfish, Jonathan Ellison…it was the B.B. King tribute. He said “I’m proud of all of you guys, because you have finally gotten together…and I’ve been looking for this for so long!”. It made me feel really good. Some of these guys, like Billy, are tough cookies! If they like something they’ll tell you and if they don’t like it they will tell you! For them to embrace me and be proud of me and all of us young guys…it really means a lot. Everytime I see John Primer or Jimmy Burns they always give me a bunch of advice and knowledge, they always pass that down. Or Bob Stroger who came to my first gig at Rosa’s, Jimmy Burns was there too…it was a heartfelt moment for me, because Bob said, “I wish Pinetop was here to see you”. He had this smile on his face and I kind of cried.
You befriended some of the other guys from your generation like D.K. Harrell, Kingfish or Sean McDonald?
Yes, we mainly connected on line before we actually had a chance to meet. I think the first guy I connected with was probably D.K. then later on I met Mack and Jontavious Willis. Now I had the opportunity to play on the last Kingfish record on song called “Memphis…and there are so many great things that all of us have done and that we are gonna do together. Everybody is different in how they embrace this thing but at the end of the day we all want the same thing for the blues.
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