BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS
Description: Guitarist, USA
Known For: “The Very Best of Rev. Gary Davis” compact disc is released – 2003
Instruments: Guitar
Music Styles: Gospel blues, Country blues, Country blues
Location: United States of America
Date Born: 30th April 1896
Location Born: Laurens, United States of America
Date Died: 5th May 1972
Location Died: Harmonton, New Jersey, United States of America
Cause Of Death: Heart Attack
Memorial: The Legacy of Reverend Gary Davis” released. Twenty diifferent performers interpret Davis’s music; half the numbers were taken from existing CDs, including two 78s.
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Gary Davis
An African American blues and gospel singer and guitarist.
Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), was an African-American blues and gospel singer and guitarist, who was also proficient on the banjo guitar and harmonica. His fingerpicking guitar style influenced many other artists. His students include Stefan Grossman, David Bromberg, Roy Book Binder, Larry Johnson, Nick Katzman, Dave Van Ronk, Rory Block, Ernie Hawkins, Larry Campbell, Bob Weir, Woody Mann, and Tom Winslow. He influenced Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Wizz Jones, Jorma Kaukonen, Keb’ Mo’, Ollabelle, Resurrection Band, and John Sebastian (of the Lovin’ Spoonful).
Davis was born in Laurens, South Carolina, in the Piedmont region. Of the eight children his mother bore, he was the only one who survived to adulthood. He became blind as an infant. He recalled being poorly treated by his mother and that his father placed him in the care of his paternal grandmother. Davis reported that when he was 10 years old his father was killed in Birmingham, Alabama; he later said that he had been told that his father was shot by the Birmingham sheriff.
He took to the guitar and assumed a unique multivoice style produced solely with his thumb and index finger, playing gospel, ragtime, and blues tunes along with traditional and original tunes in four-part harmony.
His unique finger-picking style influenced many other artists and his students in New York City.
His musical influence extends from the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan.
The partly blind Davis had worked with bluesmen such as Soony Terry and many others.
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.
In the 1940s, the blues scene in Durham began to decline and Davis migrated to New York City.
By the 1960s, he had become known as the “Harlem Street Singer” and also acquired a reputation as the person to see if you wanted to learn to play guitar.
He later became a Baptist minister in Washington.
He died in 1972.
Recordings release posthumously include.
Little More Faith 1961
Blind Reverend Gary Davis 1962
Pure Religion, 1964
Blind Reverend Gary Davis, 1964
Singing Reverend, Stimson – with Sonny Terry
Guitar & Banjo, Prestige
Ragtime Guitar, Kicking Mule
Lo I Be with You Always, Kicking Mule
Children of Zion, Kicking Mule
Let Us Get Together, Kicking Mule
Lord I Wish I Could See
Reverend Gary Davis
Compilation CD in 1991:
“The Sun of Our Life”, World Arbiter 2002