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A
professional bluesician from the age of 15, David Vest has toured with
blues legends Lavelle White, Floyd Dixon and Jimmy T99 Nelson. He is
probably best-known to northwest blues audiences for his four years
as a featured artist with the Paul deLay Band.
For nearly half
a century he's been bringing audiences to their feet with a unique blend
of blues, boogie, gospel, jazz and old-time country. His music, life
his life, defies labels.
In the Fifties he went back and forth between juke joints and gospel
music, appearing on programs with the Blackwood Brothers and Statesmen
when he wasn't honky-tonking.
In the Sixties he wrote the first songs ever recorded by the late Tammy Wynette and worked with author/comedienne
Fannie Flagg.
His performance credits include gigs with Johnny Reno, Curtis Salgado,
Lloyd Jones, Big Joe Turner, Sam the Sham, Grady Gaines, Jerry Lightfoot,
Tommy Dardar and the Sheetrockers, The Generators, Little Junior One
Hand, Trudy Lynn and legendary soul singer Jerry Woodard's Esquires.
In 1980 his tour of Romania (while abroad as a Fulbright Scholar) yielded
an album, Heart Full of Rock and Roll, produced by Johnny Raducanu.
He has appeared at many festivals, including Portland's Waterfront Blues
Festival, Seattle's Bumbershoot, the Baltimore Blues Festival, Houston's
Juneteenth Festival and the New Orleans Jazz Heritage Festival.
A graduate of Birmingham-Southern College, David holds a Ph.D. from
Vanderbilt. He has also served time in the corporate world as speech
writer for a major energy executive and has worked as a member of a
top web development team.
The first artist signed to Oregon's Trillium
Records label, David is currently writing his memoirs in installments
for CounterPunch. |
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I was born on
the rebel river
in the dixie of my dreams
where it falls from cold dark mountains
in visionary streams
and there upon the water
underneath that evening sky
comes a ferryboat of fireflies
from the last good world gone by.
O I know the
ground we stand on
is filled with Indian graves
and stolen from the labor
of millions of African slaves
You can read it in your book, boys
You can write it on the wall,
that if peace depends on justice
great Babylon must fall.
Roll on, you
rebel river
all you rambling boys roll on
and roll ye lonesome hobo
till your rambling days are gone
Who knows where you came from?
But I know where you're bound.
When that rebel angel rises
never let them hold you down.
copyright 2005 by David Vest
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