Blues Hall of Fame inductee Walter Davis is finally receiving his due reverence in the form of a proper marker on his grave.
The pianist, composer and singer, one of the most influential and prolific players of the pre-World War II blues scene, is the first beneficiary of a partnership between non-profit groups Killer Blues Headstone Project and Friends of Greenwood Cemetery Association.
A ceremony and unveiling will take place 1 p.m. Sunday, October 21 at Greenwood Cemetery in Hillsdale.
Born in Grenada, Mississippi in 1912, Davis recorded more sides between 1927 and 1953 than all but a few of his contemporaries. He began performing professionally in the late 1920s, recorded his seminal “Sunnyland Blues” in 1931, and continued as an itinerant musician until suffering a stroke in the early 1950s.
Removed from the music scene, he became a preacher and found employment at the Calumet and Albany hotels in St. Louis. Following his death in 1963 Davis was interred in Greenwood Cemetery in an unmarked location. He was welcomed posthumously into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2005.
Davis’s marker is the eleventh headstone financed, provided and laid by Killer Blues, an organization with members in Michigan and Missouri. In 2012 the group has also delivered headstones to the unmarked resting spots of Richard “Hacksaw” Harney, Johnny “Daddy Stovepipe” Watson and Leroy “Baby Face” Foster. Eddie King will be the next bluesman to receive this much deserved recognition.
Aaron Pritchard, 32, vice president of the Killer Blues Headstone Project, said the project is a passion that responds to a need.
“We are huge blues enthusiasts who like to pay respect to gravesites, and unfortunately we found that a lot of our favorite musicians are buried in unmarked graves,” Pritchard said.
Pritchard, a St. Louis native, said that he visited some of the same graves as Killer Blues founder Steven A. Salter of White Hall, Mich., before the two met.
“I finally met him last year, and within a month I was VP of his organization,” Pritchard said.
“We thought, ‘What could we do to right an historical wrong for the people who paved the way for American music?’”
Pritchard said their small non-profit organization raises money though donations and blues festival. Salter runs the Whitehall Blues Festival in Whitehall, Mich. and they recently operated a booth at the Big Muddy Blues Festival in St. Louis.
They buy flat head stones online, because they are less expensive than upright headstones and want to mark as many graves as possible.
“Actually, it costs just as much to have the stones laid in by the cemetery as it does to buy the stones,” Pritchard said.
He said neither the headstone vendor nor the cemeteries have offered bargains to Killer Blues out of respect for its mission, though their non-profit tax status saves them on taxes.
Killer Blues recently began working with Etta Daniels and the Friends of Greenwood Cemetery to facilitate the removal of overgrowth covering much of the historic and neglected African-American cemetery. For more information or to donate time or resources to this cause, contact Daniels at (314)772-7466 or ettadaniels@charter.net.
For information on Killer Blues Headstone Project, visit www.killerblues.net or contact Aaron Pritchard at (314)775-6953 or aaronpritchard.killerblues@yahoo.com.
