Helena, Arkansas, native CeDell Davis will appear in a concert sponsored jointly by the Lecture-Concert Series at Arkansas State University and Delta Blues Symposium VII: Music and Arts in the Delta.

Davis’s performance, which is free and open to the public, will take place on Thursday, March 29, at 8 in the Grand Hall of the Fowler Center. It will be preceded by a reception opening the exhibit "Delta Watercolorists" on display in the Center’s Bradbury Gallery.

A veteran of the down home blues, Davis began performing with childhood friends during the 1930s. When he was nine years old, he contracted a severe case of polio. The resulting paralysis forced Davis to develop a distinctive guitar style, in which he uses a knife handle to fret the strings.

Davis has performed throughout the Delta and in St. Louis. Among the well known blues musicians with whom he has performed are Robert Nighthawk, Big Joe Williams, and Isaiah Ross.

He now lives in Pine Bluff and records with Fat Possum Records of Oxford, Miss. Recent albums by Davis include "The Horror of It All" and "Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong."

Delta Blues Symposium VII, an annual event sponsored by the ASU Department of English and Philosophy, begins Thursday, March 29, and continues through Saturday, March 31.

Additional support for the Symposium comes from the Convocation of Scholars Program, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Communications, College of Education, Center for Learning Technologies, Department of Art, Delta Studies Center, and Lecture-Concert Series.

For more details, call (870) 972-3043 or check the web site at www.clt.astate.edu/blues.

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