This just in:The Shreveport Sheiks will be performing with famed Boogie Woogie Piano Pioneer, OMAR SHARIFF, Saturday, May 7th at Noble Savage Tavern, 417 Texas Street, Shreveport Louisiana.
Omar Shariff, aka Dave Alexander, was born in Shreveport in 1938.
From his wiki:
grew up in Marshall, Texas. His father was a pianist and his mother encouraged him to play in the church. Alexander joined the United States Navy in 1955, moved to Oakland, California in 1957, and began a long history of working with various San Francisco Bay Area musicians. A self-taught pianist, he played with Big Mama Thornton, Jimmy Witherspoon, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and Albert Collins. Later in 1968, herecorded his first songs for the World Pacific label release called Oakland Blues, a compilation album of artists from that city. He also performed at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1970, and has played at the San Francisco Blues Festival, many times since 1973. He was also the warm up act at the Last Waltz at Winterland , Thanksgiving, 1974. He has also performed inEurope.
Alexander recorded a pair of albums The Rattler (1972) and The Dirt on the Ground (1973), for the Arhoolie label under his given name Dave Alexander.[2] Songs include "The Hoodoo Man (The Voodoo Woman & The Witch Doctor)", "St. James Infirmary", "Blue Tumbleweed", "Sundown", "Sufferin' With The Lowdown Blues", "Strange Woman", "Cold Feelin", "Jimmy, Is That You?", "So You Wanna Be A Man" and "The Dirt On The Ground".[3]
In 1976, he began to perform as Omar the Magnificent having changed his name to Omar Khayam.[4]
He was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award in 1993.[5]
In 1996 small blues label Have Mercy released Baddass, and followed it up with the hit Black Widow Spider in 2000.
In recent years Alexander has been living and performing mostly in the Sacramento area, where he has recorded on Have Mercy Records. Alexander is an articulate writer and advocate for the blues and African American music.[1] He has written several articles for the Living Blues magazine.[6]
On Martin Luther King Day 2011, NPR Radio All Things Considered broadcast a segment about Marshall Texas being the birthplace of the Boogie Woogie. The broadcast described how John Tennison, a San-Antonio-based Boogie Woogie musicologist, had shared his knowledge of the history of Boogie Woogie with the citizens of Marshall and how Tennison had located Dave Alexander in Sacramento, California. Dave Alexander performed to sold out venues in Marshall, December 2010, to great acclaim.[7] As of February, 2011, Dave Alexander relocated to Marshall, Texas, where he lives at this time.
