Guy Davis - Be Ready When I Call You

Cat. no: MCCD88
Format: CD
Barcode: 607735008822
Release Date: 18th June 2021
Genre: Blues

M.C. Records is proud to announce the release of Be Ready When I Call You by The Ambassador of the Blues, Guy Davis. The 13 track release marks a creative high watermark for Guy.

For the first time in over a dozen-album career, he wrote nearly everything on the disc, Howlin’ Wolf ‘s classic “Spoonful” being the sole exception. The first single/video from the record will be “God’s Gonna’ Make Things Over” which revisits a shameful corner in American history, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 from May 31-June 1, 1921. It will be released on May 14.

Guy describes the music on Be Ready When I Call You, “I call it Americana, but I slip a little world music in there too,” he says. “When you’re trying to create beautiful music, you don’t think too much about categories.” Guy Davis’ previous release for the label was the 2017 Grammy-nominated record with Fabrizio Poggi, Sonny & Brownie’s Last Train. Be Ready When I Call Youmarks the fourth record that Guy and M.C. Records have released together.

The stories on this album range from tender to topical, with a little blues philosophy thrown in. The swampy title track revisits the Robert Johnson legend, about that mythical meeting with the Devil at the Crossroads. But Guy says the phrase also has a deeper meaning, about stepping up and delivering. “When you start going for something, you better be sure what you’re doing,” he explains.

“If you went to the Crossroads, you signed that deal and you’ve got to be ready when you’re called.”Guy’s parallel careers as a musician, an author, a music teacher, and a film, television, and Broadway actor mark Davis as a Renaissance man, yet the blues remain his first and greatest love. Growing up in a family of artists (his parents were Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis), he fell under the spell of Blind Willie McTell and Fats Waller at an early age.

Guy’s one-man play, The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed With the Blues, premiered Off-Broadway in the ‘90s and has since been released as a double CD. He went on to star Off-Broadway as the legendary Robert Johnson in Robert Johnson: Trick The Devil, winning the Blues Foundation’s “Keeping the Blues Alive” award. He followed the footsteps of another blues legend when he joined the Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow, playing the part originally done in 1947 by Sonny Terry.

Though he’s stayed busy writing and recording during the pandemic, he looks forward to playing live as soon as circumstances allow. “I love doing what I do and I’m aching to get back out there. Don’t get me wrong, the computer screen is OK. But I want to get back in front of people.” 

Tracks: Badonkadonk Train / Got Your Letter In My Pocket / God’s Gonna Make Things Over / Be Ready When I Call You / Flint River Blues / Palestine, Oh Palestine / I Got A Job In The City / I’ve Looked Around / Spoonful (It’s Alright, It’s Alright) / 200 Days / I Thought I Heard The Devil Call My Name / Every Now And Then / Welcome To My World / It Was You