Link Davis born 8 July 1914

Lewis Lincoln "Link" Davis (July 8, 1914 - February 5, 1972) was an American rockabilly , country and cajun musician also known as Papa Link Davis. His biggest hit was the Cajun classic Big Mamou from 1953. 

Link Davis was born in Sunset Ward, one of eight children, but his family soon moved to Wills Point, Van Zandt County, near Dallas, Texas. At the age of ten, Davis received a fiddle from his father, which he had already mastered professionally by the age of twelve. In the late 1920s, he formed a trio with two of his brothers and played on small barn dances. Later he also learned the saxophone, clarinet, bass and piano. 

In 1929 Davis was regularly heard on WRR from Dallas and had his first professional engagements with the Chrystal Springs Ramblers from Fort Worth. With this group he made his first recordings in 1937. With the emergence of western swing in Texas in the early 1930s, musicians such as Bob Wills, Moon Mullican and Bob Dunn had more and more influence on Davis, who left the Chrystal Springs Ramblers after 1937 and played in various local western swing groups and even for some time led his own band, in which a black pianist also played. 

In 1943 Davis was drafted into the military but only served three months. A year later he was discharged from the army and in 1944 found work with Cliff Bruners Texas Wanderers, one of the most important western swing orchestras of the 1930s. In the same year Davis played the tenor saxophone on one of Bruner's Decca sessions in New York City. In 1945 he joined Leo Soileau's Cajun band and played for him in "Showboat". He also had his own band and married in Port Arthur in 1945, his place of residence at the time. During this time he was strongly influenced by Cajun music, not least through Soileau and his wife, who came from the French community. In 1947 he received his first recording contract with the newly founded label Imperial Records and played his first solo records; he was accompanied by Lee Bells Bluebonnet Playboys. 

In 1947 Davis' son Lewis Lincoln Davis, Jr. was born, better known today as Link Davis, Jr. With a family to support, Davis was always on the lookout for work in bars, clubs and dance halls. From 1949 he played in Harry Choates 'band, went on tour with him and recorded various songs with Choates for Gold Star Records , including a version of the R&B hit Good Rockin' Tonight , which was released as Have You Heard the News. 

                              

After a brief stint in Corpus Christi, Texas, Davis joined Benny Leaders Bayou Billies in 1950, who accompanied him on his first session for Columbia Records ' new Okeh label. This session, which took place in Houston, produced Davis's biggest hit, Big Mamou, of 1953. The song had a long tradition in cajun culture even then, but it was only through Davis and the subsequent cover versions that it became a classic of the genre. Between 1953 and 1955 Davis held more sessions for Columbia, but the success of 1953 could not be repeated. 

In 1955 he made rockabilly recordings for Nucraft, but switched to Starday Records in 1956. At this time, Davis also found regular engagements at the Houston Hometown Jamboree and the popular Louisiana Hayride. For Starday, Davis continued to record rockabilly songs that were popular at the time. The first of these Starday singles was Sixteen Chicks, a song that Davis wrote with Wayne Walker and was later covered by Joe Clay. In the course of 1956, other rockabilly titles such as Grasshopper Rock, Don't Big Shot Me or Trucker from Tennessee followed. 

With Sixteen Chicks, Davis entered the local Houston C&W Billboard Charts and was hired by the Gold Star Studio together with Hal Harris (guitar) and Doc Lewis (piano) as a studio musician from 1956 and can thus be heard on numerous Starday records and recordings by other labels. For example, he played the saxophone on JP Richardson's hit Chantilly Lace and also accompanied Johnny Preston on Running Bear and Joey Clay, Glenn Barber, Eddie Noack and George Jones in sessions. 

After numerous Starday singles, Davis moved to Allstar Records from Houston in 1958 , where he continued to demonstrate his versatility as he recorded a wide range of music genres (rockabilly, rock 'n' roll, Cajun, country). In the late 1950s, Davis released numerous records on small, local labels in the Houston area. 

Davis also started his own record company, Tanker Records. In 1967 he suffered a stroke that subsequently confined him to a wheelchair. But Davis didn't give up on music; he continued to play records and did not shy away from travelling to distant Nashville. But his health deteriorated noticeably, and finally Link Davis died in 1972 after a second stroke at the age of 57. Davis was one of the most important and important people in the Houston music scene and made important contributions to the development of Cajun music, but also country and rockabilly.  (Edited from Wikipedia)