Taj Mahal - Ain't That A Lot Of Love

Jesse Ed Davis died twenty years ago today at the age of forty-three. Like so many of the musicians of his time he had a long-running battle with substance abuse, which eventually took its toll. In his prime he was a much-sought-after session guitarist. Rather than list a lot of names, maybe it's easiest just to say that Eric Clapton invited him to play on his records, and Clapton had pretty high standards for guitar playing.
Jesse Ed Davis appears in Levon Helm's memoirs as a sixteen-year-old standing right in front of the stage when the Hawks would play the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. He became one of the masters of the Telecaster, but his musical abilities extended to playing keyboards and arranging horns. He displays that latter skill, along with his guitar, on Taj Mahal's take on a Stax standard.