• Singer and Pianist Walter Davis, 1912
• Singer and Pianist James "Stump" Johnson, 1902

Davis had a rich singing voice that was as expressive as the best of the Delta blues vocalists. His best known recording, a version of the train blues standard "Sunnyland Blues", which he released in 1931, is more notable for the warmth and poignancy of his singing than for his piano playing. Two more of his best known songs were "Ashes In My Whiskey" and "Blue Blues".

He was also billed as 'Hooker Joe'.

Davis was born on a farm in Grenada, Mississippi, United States, and ran away from home at about 13 years of age, landing in St. Louis, Missouri. During the period from the late 1920s through the early 1950s he played club dates in the South and the lower Midwest, often with guitarist Henry Townsend and fellow pianist Peetie Wheatstraw, and recorded prolifically. Roosevelt Sykes accompanied him on his first records (1930 - 33); thereafter he had the ability or confidence to play for himself.

He was among the most productive and popular recording artists in blues, cutting about 180 sides between 1930 and 1952, several of which ("M&O Blues", "Angel Child" and "Come Back Baby") have been taken up by other singers.

Davis appears to have stopped performing professionally around 1953. Suffering from health problems, primarily a stroke, he settled in St. Louis, Missouri, supporting himself as a night clerk at a hotel and as a preacher. He died in St. Louis in 1963, aged 51.

He was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2005.

In October 2012 the Killer Blues Headstone Project, a nonprofit organization, placed a headstone on Davis's unmarked grave at Greenwood Cemetery in Hillsdale, Missouri. The stone was unveiled at the 2012 Big Muddy Blues Festival in St. Louis, Missouri.

Davis is no relation to the jazz pianist, Walter Davis, Jr.

James "Stump" Johnson was the brother of Jesse Johnson, "a prominent black business man," who around 1909 had moved the family from Clarksville, Tennessee, to St. Louis, where he ran a music store and was a promoter. James, a self taught piano player, he made a career playing the city's brothels. He had an instant hit with the "whorehouse tune" "The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas," "a popular St. Louis party song." The song's title is explained by quoting the lyrics more fully: "Shake your shoulders, shake 'em fast, if you can't shake your shoulders, shake your yas-yas-yas."

He made a number of other recordings (some mildly pornographic) under various pseudonyms. One of the more obscene tunes was a version of "Steady Grinding'," true to the original of the song, which he recorded with Dorothea Trowbridge on August 2, 1933.