Lester "Mad Dog" Davenport (January 16, 1932 – March 17, 2009), was an American

Chicago blues Chicago blues is a form of blues music developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth cent ...

harmonica player and singer. Born in

Tchula, Mississippi Tchula is a town in Holmes County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,650 at the 2020 census, down from 2,332 in 2000. A 2015 article in ''The Guardian'' described it as the poorest community in the United States. History The firs ...

, Davenport moved to

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

, United States, when he was 14. There he played with Arthur Spires,

Snooky Pryor James Edward "Snooky" Pryor (September 15, 1919 or 1921 – October 18, 2006) was an American Chicago blues harmonica player. He claimed to have pioneered the now-common method of playing amplified harmonica by cupping a small microphone in his ...

Dusty Brown Dustin William "Dusty" Brown (born June 19, 1982) is an American former professional baseball catcher. He has played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Boston Red Sox and Pittsburgh Pirates. Professional career Boston Red Sox Brown was draft ...

, and

Homesick James Homesick James (April 30, 1910December 13, 2006 was an American blues musician known for his mastery of the slide guitar. He worked with his cousin, Elmore James, and with Sonny Boy Williamson II. Early years Homesick James was born in Somervil ...

and then worked with

Bo Diddley Ellas McDaniel (born Ellas Otha Bates; December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), known professionally as Bo Diddley, was an American guitarist who played a key role in the transition from the blues to rock and roll. He influenced many artists, inc ...

, with whom he played harmonica on a 1955 Chess Records session. He led his own group in the 1960s while working during the day as a paint sprayer. In the 1980s he was the harmonica player for the Indiana group the

Kinsey Report The Kinsey Reports are two scholarly books on human sexual behavior, ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Male'' (1948) and ''Sexual Behavior in the Human Female'' (1953), written by Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin, and (for ''Sexual Behavi ...

. In July 1994, Wolf Records released the album ''Chicago Blues Session, Vol. 11'', by Maxwell Street Jimmy Davis, recorded in 1988 and 1989. The collection included Davenport on harmonica and Kansas City Red playing the drums. Davenport released his first album under his own name in 1992 and recorded a follow-up, ''I Smell a Rat'', in 2002. Davenport died in March 2009 in Chicago, from prostate cancer, at the age of 77.

Discography

*''When the Blues Hit You'' ( Earwig Music, 1992) *''I Smell a Rat'' (

Delmark Records Delmark Records is an American jazz and blues independent record label. It was founded in 1958 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. The label originated in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1953 when then owner, and founder, Bob Koester released a record ...

, 2002)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davenport, Lester 1932 births 2009 deaths People from Tchula, Mississippi American blues harmonica players American blues singers Blues musicians from Mississippi Chicago blues musicians Deaths from prostate cancer Deaths from cancer in Illinois 20th-century American singers Earwig Music artists 20th-century American male singers