Four-time winner of the Maple Blues Award for Piano/Keyboard Player of the Year, David Vest celebrates the release of his 2018 CD at Pat’s House of Jazz at Crofton’s Osborne Bay Pub on Sunday, May 13.
The authentic, Southern-bred boogie-woogie piano player, blues shouter and world-class entertainer is the real deal. His bio reads like the history of rock ’n’ roll and blues. He’s among a select group that includes Ronnie Hawkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.
The Cascade Blues Association says Vest “rolls out the boogie like the players of old who’d tear up juke joints and turpentine camps.”
Vest, who grew up near Tuxedo Junction in Birmingham, Alabama, had his first paying gig in 1957. At age 17, he toured with Jerry Woodard and the Esquires and jammed with Ace Cannon, Bill Black’s Combo and the Jimmy Dorsey Band.
By 1962, he had opened for the great Roy Orbison on New Year’s Day. By then he was a seasoned veteran of Gulf Coast roadhouse and honky-tonks.
About the time he turned 21 he found himself on stage with legendary bluesman Big Joe Turner, who said that Vest’s playing made him feel like he was back in Kansas City.
Vest wrote the first songs ever recorded by Tammy Wynette, dated a sister of the Louvin Brothers and toured with Faron Young, who Vest says once threatened to kill him.
He received the “direct laying on of hands” from Texas piano legends like Big Walter The Thunderbird, Katie Webster and Floyd Dixon.
A veteran of festivals throughout North American, including Bumbershoot and New Orleans JazzFest, he continues to bring audiences to their feet and to demonstrate why he has been called “one of the greatest living boogie-woogie piano players.”
Vest will be joined on the Pat’s House of Jazz stage by drummer Damian Graham, bassist Ryan Tandy and guitarist Tom Bowler.
The show is one of a Sunday afternoon jazz series presented by Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society.
It runs every Sunday from 2 p.m. in the Osborne Bay Pub, 1534 Joan Ave. in Crofton. Admission is $15.
Reservations are recommended. Tables will be held until 1:30 p.m.
Phone 250-324-2245 or visit http://osbornebaypub.com.