Memphis guitarist Dave Cousar dies at 73. He's remembered as 'a servant of the music.'

Although he often referred to himself as a “journeyman guitarist,” Dave Cousar’s playing was anything but ordinary or workaday. One of Memphis’ most exquisitely tasteful and innately soulful musicians, with a long and varied resume — that included work with Al Green, Sam the Sham and Rufus Thomas — Cousar died on Thursday at the age of 73.

Cousar, who had been in poor health for several years, succumbed to advanced metastatic prostate cancer. He first discovered he had the condition as he climbed on stage for a concert in Florida in 2020, and his hip and femur spontaneously broke from the bone metastases.

“That he lived another three years after that is amazing,” said his wife, Janet Holloway, whom he married in a bedside ceremony last week; the couple had dated for many years in the 1980s and reunited in 2022. 

An elfin figure with a wry sense of humor and enigmatic manner, Cousar was never a careerist but rather an artist — one whose playing transcended styles and times, in a musical journey that stretched across decades in the bars, clubs and studios of Memphis.

“He had such an incredible through line as a musician,” said Steve Selvidge, guitarist for Big Ass Truck and the Hold Steady. “[Cousar] went from like literally '60s garage band stuff all the way to pedal-driven indie rock. And he picked up so much in between and along the way. He studied classical, he was conversant in jazz. But he was so unique to himself.”

“He was an artist’s artist,” said his longtime collaborator, singer Susan Marshall. “In today’s music world, where people are shoveling as much content as they can out there, he never worried about that. He only ever cared about serving the song he was playing, the people he was playing with, and his own muse.”

Born on St. Patrick’s Day 1950 in New Albany, Mississippi, Cousar always claimed that his mother told him she’d found him in a sack of puppies (she stuck to that story until the end). Although Cousar would gain local renown as a member of the 1980s roots combo The Bluebeats, his resume as a sideman and session player was both extensive and eclectic. His musical C.V. stretched from power popper Tommy Hoehn in the 1970s, to soul man Al Green in the 1980s,  to a whole new generation of indie rock and roots musicians in the 2000s, including Star & Micey and Amy LaVere.

“Forget 10,000 hours — for Dave, it was a lifetime of honing his craft and playing in different situations,” Selvidge said. “He found his place in all these different scenes, without ever having to mold himself into any of that. He was never trying to cram in notes and show you what he could do on the guitar. He was a true servant of the music.”

In recent years Cousar had found particular success working with a variety of female artists. This included Marshall and LaVere, Louisiana pop songstress Marcella Simien and the roots outfit the Memphis Dawls, as he brought a knowing empathetic feel to their music.

“He taught you about working between the spaces of the music, and letting the song breathe,” said Marshall, “and not filling every nook and cranny of the song just because you could. The way that he thought and played was unlike anyone else.”

Over the years, Cousar’s own solo sets — at local venues like the Blue Monkey and the Buccaneer — became legendary among fellow musicians and Bluff City hipsters.

“As a player, as an interpreter of songs, he could just enthrall people with his solo performances, but it wasn’t your typical coffeehouse folk thing either,” Selvidge said. “People will use worlds like ‘ethereal’ and ‘textural’ and ‘tasteful’ to describe his playing and those are all true — but it’s hard to pin down what he did with simple descriptions.”

In 2009, Cousar recorded a solo album for the Archer Records label, even performing his songs — which were in the moody boho tradition of Lee Hazelwood and Tom Waits — at the annual SXSW music conference in Austin that year (the album itself remains unreleased).

A mentor to many young Memphis musicians, Cousar was a sage-like figure who delivered breathtaking solos and Zen wisdom in equal measure. As news of his impending passing began spreading through the local music community on Wednesday, it prompted an outpouring of tributes and messages across social media.

Toby Vest of the local High/Low Recording studio described Cousar as, “Easily one of the most intuitive and creative guitar players I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with,” wrote Vest. “Two notes from Dave could carry more weight than a hundred notes by others and mean more than you ever knew possible.”

Soul Coughing founder and Memphis transplant Mike Doughty — who came to know Cousar and perform with him in the improv project Spooky Party — hailed him as “a mystical wizard” and “a joy to play with. He’s all about being the music, not just playing the music. Truly a Memphis legend — no overstatement.”

Bassist Landon Moore, who worked with Cousar in various combos, noted that he “never knew how he could be so creative, so spacious, so funky, and so timeless every single time,” wrote Moore. “Once at a wedding, we were playing ‘These Arms of Mine’ and his solo was so beautiful I simply stopped playing because I couldn’t focus on being a musician while it was going on.”

Even after his cancer diagnosis, Cousar continued to appear on numerous studio projects with Grammy-winning Memphis producer Matt Ross-Spang. This included recordings by Al Green, William Bell, Emily Barker and Sean Rowe. Cousar’s last studio work came in January, on sessions for an album by the Nashville veteran Billy Swan.

Ross-Spang marveled at Cousar’s skills in the studio. “He could play something that you’d never heard before, but it was also exactly what the song needed — that’s hard to do,” Ross-Spang said. “Dave was a fabulous guitar player, but it didn’t come from musical acrobatics. He could play one note, put it right where it needed to be, and everyone in the room would recognize the simple, beautiful magic of that. He was just one of a kind.”

Memorial services for Cousar are still pending. Cousar’s wife, Janet, noted that his family and friends hope to honor him with a public event at the Memphis Listening Lab at Crosstown Concourse in the coming weeks.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Dave Cousar dies at 73: Music community pays tribute