Advice on Guitar Playing from Rev. Gary Davis

Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) was a blues and gospel singer and guitarist who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica. His finger-picking guitar style influenced many other artists and his students in New York included Stefan Grossman, David Bromberg, Roy Book Binder, Larry Johnson, Woody Mann, Nick Katzman, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Winslow, and Ernie Hawkins. He has influenced the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Townes van Zandt, Wizz Jones, Jorma Kaukonen, Keb' Mo', Ollabelle, Jack White and Resurrection Band.
Gary Davis was born in Laurens, South Carolina, and was the only one of eight children his mother bore who survived to adulthood. He became blind as an infant. Davis reported that his father was killed in Birmingham, Alabama, when Davis was ten, and Davis later said that he had been told that his father had been shot by the Birmingham High Sheriff. He recalled being poorly treated by his mother and that before his death his father had given him into the care of his paternal grandmother.

He took to the guitar and assumed a unique multi-voice style produced solely with his thumb and index finger, playing not only ragtime and blues tunes, but also traditional and original tunes in four-part harmony.
In the mid-1920s, Davis migrated to Durham, North Carolina, a major center for black culture at the time. There he collaborated with a number of other artists in the Piedmont blues scene including Blind Boy Fuller and Bull City Red. In 1935, J. B. Long, a store manager with a reputation for supporting local artists, introduced Davis, Fuller and Red to the American Record Company. The subsequent recording sessions marked the real beginning of Davis' career. During his time in Durham, Davis converted to Christianity; he would later become ordained as a Baptist minister.[1] Following his conversion and especially his ordination, Davis began to express a preference for inspirational gospel music.

In the 1940s, the blues scene in Durham began to decline and Davis migrated to New York. In 1951, well before his 'rediscovery', Davis's oral history was recorded by Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold (the wife of Alan Lomax) who transcribed their conversations into a 300+-page typescript.

The folk revival of the 1960s re-invigorated Davis' career, culminating in a performance at the Newport Folk Festival and the recording by Peter, Paul and Mary of "Samson and Delilah", also known as "If I Had My Way", originally a Blind Willie Johnson recording that Davis had popularized.

Davis died in May 1972, from a heart attack in Hammonton, New Jersey.
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Candyman - Rev. Gary Davis

Reverend Gary Davis was a towering figure in at least two realms. As a finger-style guitarist he developed a complex yet swinging approach to picking that has influenced generations of players, including Jerry Garcia, Ry Cooder, Dave Van Ronk, Jorma Kaukonen and Stefan Grossman. And as a composer of religious and secular music he created a substantial body of work that has been recorded by, among others, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Peter Paul & Mary and the Grateful Dead, not to mention Davis's own releases.

From the perspective of his one hundredth birthday (April 30, 1896 in Laurens, South Carolina -- he died on May 5, 1972 in Hammonton, New Jersey), the Davis legacy looms especially large. Early musical experiences at Center Raven Baptist Church in Gray Court, South Carolina, were at the core of strong religious

convictions that helped him cope with blindness, and in 1933 he was ordained as minister of the Free Baptist Connection Church in Washington, North Carolina. For years he toured as a singing gospel preacher and also sang on the streets, mostly in Durham. During this period he crossed paths and eventually recorded with Blind Boy Fuller and other "Piedmont style" musicians, including Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry.

By 1940 Reverend Davis had found his way to New York City, where he was ordained minister of Missionary Baptist Connection Church. Here his recording career began in earnest, first for Asch and Folkways Records (now available on Smithsonian/Folkways), and later for Prestige (now available on Fantasy).

Starting in the late 1950's, as folk music became popular on campuses and in coffee houses, Davis was "discovered" by a largely educated, middle-class audience that, at least at first, was more interested in his hot guitar licks and blues-holler style of singing than in his specific religious message. While the Reverend was not above responding to this more secular audience (for whom temporal songs like "Cocaine" and "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" were as exciting as gospel compositions like "Samson and Delilah" and "Death Don't Have No Mercy"), he always considered his work to be essentially religious in nature. When students like Dave Van Ronk journeyed uptown to learn the intricacies of "Soldiers Drill" (an instrumental reworking of a couple of Sousa marches, probably remembered from childhood), Reverend Davis would extend the lesson with preaching, food and companionship. In this way he became an important mentor to the folk music revival, and eventually performed at many festivals, including the Newport Folk Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival and others. Eventually he toured in Britain, as well, where critic Robert Tilling, writing in Jazz Journal, called him "One of the finest gospel, blues, ragtime guitarists and singers.

By the 1960's Davis was represented by Folkore Productions, which also published his songs under the imprint of Chandos Music (ASCAP). Chandos and Folklore continue to administer on behalf the Reverend Gary Davis Estate, whose main beneficiary, the widow Annie Davis, dwelled for many years in the Reverend's proudest legacy, a brick house in Queens, New York.
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Slow Drag - Rev Gary Davis

Re. Gary Davis... one of the best finger pick blues players to walk the planet.
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Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning

One of the great fingerstyle players of the old blues. It's great to have some of these old videos as crude as they may be.


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