#1419 - Daryl Davis

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Two, one, good. Hello, Daryl.

Daryl Davis (0:07)

Hey, Joe, how are you doing?

Joe Rogan (0:08)

My pleasure, thank you for being here, really, really appreciate it.

Daryl Davis (0:11)

Thank you.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

I read your story, I saw a thing about you on NPR, and it's crazy.

You've converted how many people? 200 KKK members? You've got them to drop their robes?

Daryl Davis (0:24)

Right, some directly, some indirectly, yes.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

How did that all happen?

Daryl Davis (0:30)

Wow, you know, I keep running into these guys. I'm a musician by trade.

Joe Rogan (0:35)

Right, blues musician, right?

Daryl Davis (0:36)

Rock and roll, blues, swing, jazz, my degree's in jazz, but hey, I'll play whatever you want me to play. You're paying, I'm playing.

So everybody likes music, even the KKK. So use that to my advantage.

I was playing at a bar one night in Frederick, Maryland, an all-white bar. And when I say all-white, I don't mean that blacks couldn't go in. What I mean is that blacks chose not to go in. They weren't welcome. And here I was in this bar with this country band, a friend of mine's band. I was only a black guy in the band, only a black guy in the bar. And upon finishing the first set, this, I'm walking to the band table, and somebody came up and put their arm around my shoulder. I turned around to see who it was. It was a white gentleman, maybe 15, 18 years older than me. And he says, yeah, yeah, I really enjoy your old music. I said, thank you, it's just, and, and he pointed at the stage and said, you know, I've seen this here band before, but I never seen you before. Where'd you come from? And I explained, yeah, you know, they told me they played here before, but this is my first time in this place. I just joined the band. And he said, well, man, I really like your piano playing. This is the first time I ever heard a black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.

And I wasn't offended, but I was rather surprised, because as I said, you know, this guy's like maybe 15 years older than me, and he did not know the black origin of Jerry Lee Lewis' style of piano playing.

I explained it to him. I got it from the same place Jerry Lee did, from black blues and boogie woogie piano players, where the guy was incredulous. Oh, no, no, no, Jerry Lee invented that. I had never heard no black man play like that except for you. So I'm thinking, okay, well, this guy never heard of Little Richard or Fats Domino. And I said, look, man, I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a friend of mine. He's told me himself we learned how to play. The guy did not buy that I need Jerry Lee. He didn't buy that Jerry Lee learned anything from black people. But he was so fascinated that he wanted to buy me a drink. I was like a novelty to him. So I went back to his table, I had a cranberry juice. And then he announces, this is the first time I sat down, had a drink with a black man. And now I'm the one who's incredulous, like, how can that be? You know, I've sat down with thousands of white people, anybody else had a meal, a beverage, a conversation. How was it this guy had never done that? And then suddenly I asked him, I said, why? He didn't answer me at first. He stared down at the tabletop. And I asked him again, and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him in the side and said, tell him, tell him, tell him.

I said, tell me, I'm trying to figure out what is this mystery. He looks at me just as plain as day and he says, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Well, I burst out laughing.

You know, because it was getting weirder by the second. And I knew a lot about the Klan.

I'd been studying racism since I was a 10 year old kid because of an incident that happened to me back then. And I bought books on black supremacy, white supremacy, the KKK, the Nazis, the neo-Nazis, to try to understand this mentality. And I knew a Klansman would not come up and just throw his arm around some black guy's shoulder and praise his talent and wanna hang out with him and buy him a drink. So this guy's jerking me around. So I'm laughing and he goes inside his pocket and pulls out his wallet and produces his Klan membership card.