They don’t make them as real as David Vest anymore. The son of an Alabama sharecropper, the Victoria, BC resident is still going strong 50 plus years since he first stepped onstage with the likes of Big Joe Turner. Long revered as one of the great boogie-woogie piano players, he is also a prolific songwriter. He wrote the first songs ever recorded by Tammy Wynette, and his tunes have been covered by artists ranging from Paul deLay to the legendary Downchild Blues Band.
Vest is a five-time winner of the Maple Blues Award for Piano Player of the Year (*2013, 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019) and a Blues Artist of the Year nominee (2016 WMCA). He holds five Muddy Awards from the Cascade Blues Society, including Piano Player of the Year and Performance of the Year. Vest has also earned two record of the year nominations at the Maple Blues Awards, a Songwriter of the Year nomination, and a four-star review from Downbeat.
Since being asked to open for Roy Orbison in 1962, Vest has performed onstage with an astonishing range of artists, including Big Joe Turner, Bill Black’s Combo, Jerry Woodard, Floyd Dixon, Miss Lavelle White, Carey Bell, Red Foley, Johnny Dyer, James Harman, Tammy Wynette, Don Helms, Curtis Salgado, Lloyd Jones, Marcia Ball and the Paul deLay Band, to name a few. He has contributed as a sideman to two Juno-nominated albums by other artists.