“Gary Davis took you out of playing baby guitar and made you play it like a grown man…”
Taj Mahal
With his crisp white shirt, black suit and hat and his dark glasses, the Reverend Gary Davis was the very iconic image of traveling blues man. Balancing his jumbo Gibson acoustic on his knee (that he affectionately called Ms. Gibson), Davis would begin to pick at the strings weaving an intricate mixture of melodies and challenging chord progressions, all the while maintaining a steadfast rhythm. And then he sang, pouring out his message in a chilling tone that could drive home a point to the very soul of his audience.
And so played the singing preacher.
Born on April 30th, 1896 in Laurens County, South Carolina, Gary Davis was one of eight children. Some say he was born blind, others claim that he lost most of his sight at the tender age of three weeks when chemicals were accidentally spilled into his eyes, Gary was raised by his grandmother when his father determined that the boys mother would be incapable of caring for him. A natural musical talent surfaced early. Davis told the story of his first encounter with the guitar, as a travelling minstrel show was moving through his hometown. “The first time I heard a guitar, I thought it was a brass band coming through. I was a small kid and I asked my mother what it was and she said it was a guitar.” At the age of six, Davis built his first guitar out of a pie pan and a stick.
Largely self-taught, Davis took to the instrument easily and whole-heartedly. By the age of ten he knew that he was going to make music his career. Like so many of the country blues performers from that time, Davis’s first performances were at church. A gifted performer, Davis was often brought to play at corn shucking’s, barn raisings and buck and wing dances before he even became a teenager. While in his early teens, walking back from church one evening, he slipped on ice and broke his left wrist. The bone was set at an awkward angle but the angle, rather than being a hindrance to his playing, the odd angle allowed him to finger difficult chords in a more unorthodox fashion.
In 1931 Davis relocated to Durham, North Carolina where he met Blind Boy Fuller. During this time of his career, Davis and Fuller were often seen playing on the streets at the same time. While living in Durham, Davis met and married his first wife whom he ended up leaving shortly due to her infidelity. Following the split with his first wife, Davis relocated to Washington, North Carolina where he answered the call becoming an ordained minister of the Free Baptist Connection Church in 1933.
By 1935, David, Fuller and another ‘Piedmont’ style player, Bull City Red, journeyed to New York City to lay tracks for the American Record Company. Although of the three, Davis was least famous, he still managed to record 15 tracks for the session. In 1937 Davis met and married his second wife, Annie Wright, and the pair moved to Mamaroneck, New York. Annie took work as a housekeeper and Davis was close enough to the city that he began to record again. He put down tracks for producer Moses Asch as well as recordings for Folkways and Prestige Records. In 1940 Davis and his wife relocated to Harlem where they stayed for the next 18 years. During this time Davis became an ordained minister at the Missionary Baptist Connection Church. Between singing and preaching on street corners, Davis also taught guitar to anyone who asked.
By the time the fifties and early sixties rolled around, America saw a revival of folk music in the Greenwich Village coffee houses and among college campuses around the country. Although the Reverend was reluctant to play the secular songs of his youth, he found an increasing fan base with his more spiritually minded songs. Not to say that he wouldn’t favor the crowds on occasion with some down home blues.
Through the 60’s, Davis was playing at various festivals including the Newport Folk Festival and the Philadelphia Folk Fest. In 1962 he was asked to tour Europe where he found a very welcoming fan base in England. In 1968, he and his wife relocated from Harlem to a house in Jamaica, Queens (in New York) where he continued to teach a variety of students and fellow blues players who would show up at his house. According to stories from these students, the lessons included food, drink and plenty of ‘sermons’ from the good Reverend.
When Gary Davis suffered a massive heart attack on May 5th, 1972, he was actually en-route to a show in Newtonville, New Jersey. A performer to the end, the Reverend Gary Davis was on his way to bring a spiritual message wrapped up in some of the most intricate finger-style blues to a waiting crowd when he was finally called home.
In an interview with Stefan Grossman for Guitar Player Magazine, when asked about his playing style, he replied: “Well, you see, you’ve got three hands to a play a guitar and only two for a piano. Your forefinger and your thumb – that’s the striking hand, and your left hand is your leading hand. Your left hand tells your right hand what strings to touch, what changes to make. That’s the greatest help! You see, one hand can’t do without the other.” There’s not a guitar player out there that doesn’t wish it were that simple.
One of his students, The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir said of Davis, “Reverend Davis taught me, by example, to completely throw out my preconceptions of what can and can’t be done on the guitar.”
To some, the blues are almost religious. To the Reverend Gary Davis, God could be heard and felt in the blues. I suspect that to most blues fans, there is a sense of truth in both statements.
[FONT=Tahoma]"All I can do is be me ... whoever that is". Bob Dylan [/FONT]
