On 22 October 1963 bluesman Walter Davis would have diedwho has long since disappeared from the music scene. The conditional is a must because many have doubts about both the date and the character.
A sober style with many social motives
Perhaps it is best to start at the beginning. On 1 March 1912, bluesman Walter Davis was born in Grenada, Mississippi. A pianist and singer typical of the urban blues tradition of St. Louis, from the very beginning he developed a sober style rich in social motives in his interpretations. Following the example of Leroy Carr, he succeeded in transposing the themes of African-American culture into the lyrics of his blues thanks to his remarkable powers of observation, fertile imagination and simple, easily assimilated musical phrasing. Abandoning his family at the age of thirteen, he moved to St. Louis where he learned to play the piano.
Debut, success and disappearance
In the late 1920s, he debuted at house parties on the east side of town and began performing at various local clubs, later moving on to Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi and South Carolina. In June 1930 he recorded his first record for Victor in Cincinnati. The greatest success of this period is M & O Blues. In the early 1950s, Walter Davis gave up performing in clubs to devote himself to being a preacher, but he did not give up music. Around 1954, suffering from paresis, he lost the use of his left hand and was forced to find work as a night porter first at the Calumet Hotel and then at the Albany Hotel. He then disappears. Many researchers in the following years set out on his trail to fill in the gaps in his biography but are unsuccessful. One is not even sure of his date of death because, although there is a certificate to that effect in the name of Walter Davis for whom he would have died in St. Louis on 22 October 1963, there are those who maintain that it could be another person and not the bluesman.
source: https://www.dailygreen.it/la-misteriosa-morte-del-bluesman-walter-davis/
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