As the daughter of noted jazz musician Walter Davis Jr., Alana Davis knows there is a strong sense of jazz on her debut release “Blame It On Me” — but don’t tell her record company.

“It’s kind of a given that when you hear the word jazz, you might as well knock a zero off your income,” Davis said. “Elektra is working it as a pop album, but I know where my influences are.”

And her father is certainly one of them.

“We never had a musician-to-musician talk,” she explained. “But I learned from him through example. He did what he wanted to do. He played with who he wanted to play with and played where he wanted to play. He was a happy dude.”

Following in her father’s footsteps, Davis is now doing what she wants to do, although it took her awhile to figure out exactly what that was.

“I feel like I’m doing the right thing,” the 23-year-old Davis said. “If I wouldn’t have become a musician, I think a part of me would still be wondering ‘what if?'”

Although Davis grew up singing, it wasn’t until the last three years that she began putting her diary to music.

Davis wrote her first song from a goodbye letter to her boyfriend. The result was “Blame It On Me,” the title track to her debut release.

“It was the first song I wrote that I shared with people,” Davis said. “I thought by giving the album that name, I would never forget that I can do it.”

Davis needs all the confidence she can round up. In a matter of months she has gone from a beginner singer/songwriter struggling to record her first album to a national act on tour with one of the biggest female-led folk-pop bands of all time, 10,000 Maniacs.

And with the large number of female singers cropping up in the last few years, becoming more than a blade of grass in a field has become a challenge in itself.

“I don’t relate to any of them,” Davis said. “They are all doing their own thing. Each one kicks the door open a little wider, making it easier for me.

“I wish there would have been more women singers when I was younger,” she added.

“I was lonely growing up. I wept the first time I heard Joni Mitchell,” Davis said.

To this day, Mitchell serves as one of Davis’ primary influences, along with Bill Withers, Siouxsie Sioux and Stevie Wonder.

“I can remember when I was three, dancing around my room to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely,'” Davis said.

“Even though it was about his daughter, I used to pretend it was about me. It made me feel like a princess.”

Although Davis admits to going through the “hate your parents music” stage (“You have to,” she added), she said she never got into ’80s music.

“My ears are pretty knowledgeable,” she said. “People my age don’t understand jazz. They think ‘I don’t get it, so it must be deep.’ I think jazz is the most important music we’ve had.”

Davis’ first single off of “Blame It On Me” is a cover of Ani Di Franco’s “32 Flavors,” a song she had never heard until a friend suggested she cover it. “I missed out on her,” Davis said.

Davis will be performing her jazz-influenced pop at People’s Bar and Grill tonight when she opens for 10,000 Maniacs. The show will begin at 9 p.m.

Tickets are $15 and are available at all TickerMaster outlets and at the door.