Artist Spotlight: Tommy Davidson

Today’s BEATS Artist Spotlight shines on the very talented artist, Tommy Davidson.

Allen Kepler: Your latest single, “Come Take My Hand” is getting a lot of airplay. Tell me about your decision to record this one. 

Tommy Davidson: I made a decision to record Come Take My Hand in 1988 when I heard this [Stanley Clarke] song. I had just got to LA, hadn't been in Hollywood, but was climbing that ladder of a stand-up comic. And it was just one of those songs that helped me stay trying.

You know, and I looked at “Come Take My Hand” as ‘come take my hand and follow me to where we're going’. And I'm a big fan of Stanley Clark and George Dukes. And years and years later when I look at the people who put the whole thing together, they're people that I know now and are great friends with.

So it just led me here. George Duke being one of my best friends, Stanley Clark meeting him with a director friend of mine, Kevin Hooks, who took me to the studio while he was doing the soundtrack of Passenger 57 for Wesley Snipes' movie. Me and Stanley became friends, and that was that.

AK: And the tune features Byron Miller. 

TD: Byron Miller I met before I even moved to LA. Well, right when I moved to LA because Sinbad had given me one of his tours, which was the Anita Baker and Luther Vandross tour, and Byron was playing with him. But I knew all of Byron's stuff because I'm a big George Duke fan and Roy Ayers fan, and I read about him on albums.So when I saw him like George Duke, I knew all his stuff. He's been like a big brother for me throughout the years. And to pick someone to do a solo on something like that, I picked him.

And he actually was one of the producers of the original, which I didn't know. So it all fell in place. It's great when things work like that, and he sounds great on the tune.

AK: It's such a nice track. And you've had some good collaborations the last few singles. You collaborated with Najee, Earth, Wind & Fire. Tell us more. 

TD: It’s another situation that's really about proximity and my journey. Meeting Virginian White years ago when I did a pilot for Eddie Murphy's company before coming to America and I played his son on a pilot that flopped the button, met her and met him, and we became family.

So years and years later, the mention of doing a song together, they asked me, “Would you like to do something with us?” And Greg Manning, one of the best guys out there, put the song together with me. And there you go. So it's another example of just right place, right time, right heart, right taste in music. You know, level of professionalism and artistry meets the pavement. 

As far as Najee goes, I opened for Najee doing comedy years and years ago at Donald Trump's old place in West Palm, Florida. I was already a fan. I told him his album “Day by Day” helped me while I was in LA. So when we actually did the track, he was working with one of my engineers and one of my producers in the studio. And he happened to hear “You Show Me” playing during the time he was editing. And he said, “Man, who did that?” And he said, Tommy Davidson did it. He said, “I want to do that with him.”  And they called me. Sure enough, man, about a week later, he flew into town. They put me on FaceTime. He was cutting the damn thing and it was done.

And there, yet another natural collaboration. I always want to tell musicians, artists, writers, whatever you do, just keep on walking like Dorothy. Because people are going to come along and just stay on that road, man. Incredible things will happen. 

AK: I’ve seen you impersonate other singers. When you were starting up, did you start with impressions or were you already a singer? 

TD:  Yeah, singing in general came first because I just loved to sing as a young, young child, like four years old.

Then, you know, past the Jackson 5 and the singers I was influenced by, it just was something that went with me. It was something that was built into me to hear it and then be able to recreate it with my vocal cords. So, you know, the first time I heard Lou Rawls, it didn't take me long.

The next thing I know, I'm going, (sings) “You'll never find… another love like mine” . Or Michael McDonough, (sings) “You know, you don't know me, I'm your guru.” It became easy.

And I'm influenced by everything I heard from Kansas to Captain and to Neil, to Rush, to The Rolling Stones, to Zeppelin, to Cameo, to Boris Dreisand, to Frank Sinatra, I mean, Matt King Cole. I'm just a really blessed dude.

AK: The Stockbridge Jazz Festival coming up in a few weeks in Atlanta. Tell me a little bit about that.

TD: It is a good coming out for me to represent my talent in both of those fields [music and comedy] at once because I can say I'm an honorable member of the smooth jazz artists, but then again I'm an entertainer too. I'm a comedian, I do impressions. I'm a great MC because that's the way I paid my dag on rent in L.A. I'm like the best MC you've ever worked with (laughs). 

It's a good feeling to belong there.I've gone there, hosted festivals before, and I was the comedian. Now I'm looked at more as the artist. The artist who also does songwriting and also does singing and also does collabs. He's a part of this world. He's not a visitor.

 It's legit because I'm surrounded with all of the people that I've been surrounded by since, I'm going to have to say, probably 1986 when I started really digging into smooth jazz. It wasn't called that then. With Pat Prescott in New York and just listening to all the new things that were happening and what they were calling contemporary jazz I think. Radio picked up on this frequency that contained a broad amount of artists anywhere from Pat Metheny to George Howard.

AK:  How many stand-up dates are you doing a year right now? 

TD: Probably about 200. But it sure keeps me young, boy. It really does keep me young. I'm laughing every weekend for the whole weekend with people I never met.

I credit myself as a peddler of happy. There's so many cracks and crevices and end of the highways in this country where people live of all types. I get to see them. Not just hear from them. I get to see them.And their feedback is important. 

AK: It sounds like you don't look at it necessarily as a performance, but more of an interaction with the audience. 

TD: Yeah, it's just knowing that I'm actually tactilely influencing a person's thinking.

And if I can get them thinking in a positive way, that's something that they need in this world, man. There's realities out there that no one's happy with. When you know people are starving and you know there's people that have the money to feed them and they don't.You wish you could do something, but what you can do is you can spread yourself some love as wide as you can so that that won't happen to people with people who have that in their heart. 

AK: Let's talk about TV a little bit. You’ve got the Varnell Hill Show coming up, a spinoff of the wildly popular Martin Show. I remember when I first heard about it, I didn't even realize your character, Varnell Hill, he was only in two episodes, right? 

TD: Yeah. Two of the most popular episodes of his whole series. I was good friends with him [Martin Lawrence] for years. We were in LA when we couldn't get discovered for nothing and formed that friendship.

When he got his television show he called over to “In Living Color.” John Bowman, one of our best writers, a really good friend, said, “If you want somebody for this character, it's got to be Tommy Davidson.” God bless him. He's writing in the heavens now. But that was the hook-up.

And now this is a late-night talk show. It's a television show about a late-night talk show host that's really a late-night talk show host. So it delves into entertainment, sports, everything that we are from a Tommy Davidson, Martin Lawrence viewpoint. Real unique thing. And it ain't easy (laughs).

AK: You’re a prolific writer, not only with stand-up, but also TV and projects and film scripts. Anything on the burner that you can talk about that we'd be able to see? 

TD: Yeah, I can talk about the Sammy Davis Jr. film that me and a partner of mine wrote the screenplay. In 2026, we're going to pick up that as a starring feature for me with a company that's out there that's been very aggressive in getting us out there and looking forward to doing that. It's been a project that probably has been my lifetime project.

25 years ago, Gregory Hines invited me to lunch. And I didn't even know him. You know how hot he was 25 years ago? And he just said to me, look at me right in the face, man. “You're the only one that can play Sammy Davis Jr. because you've got all the skills, but you have to start now.” And it took that long. But it's right around the corner. I have something to do with the writing. We're going to have a lot of good people associated with it that people all know. And it's preceding the Barnett Hill Show.

So I get to go back and do all those fun performances with Dean Martin, Lola Falana, the young Clint Eastwood, the young Elvis. That whole world coming back up on the screen. I mean, who's the lucky guy here? That's going to be something else.

AK: That sounds great! You’ve got a lot going on right now!

TD: I'm continuing to work on music. I've got a nice catalog of unreleased singles that I've been working on, like all the artists in that business. And I just want to thank everyone for giving me a chance to at least be heard. My heart goes out to the artists who work their whole career could be 30 or 40 years and never be heard. And my contention is eventually they will be. They will be heard.

Keep up with Tommy Davidson online, here.