Listening to Prestige 389: Blind Gary Davis

I've talked about the blues revival starting in earnest after the 1962 release of Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers in 1962, and of course by "blues revival" I mean the new expanded audience, mostly white, that started putting on blues festivals, that sought out old Delta musicians like Son House, that followed the British rockers to sweet home Chicago and the musicians who had been creating a new electric blues. But there were some young white folks who had fallen in love with the blues earlier, people like Happy Traum who sought out and studied with Brownie McGhee, and other young New Yorkers who came up to Harlem to learn from the blind preacher and street singer, Blind Gary Davis, also known as the Reverend Gary Davis (which he was), or the Harlem Street Singer (which he also was.)

Just a few of those:  Bob Dylan, Stefan Grossman, David Bromberg, Dave Van Ronk, Rory Block, Larry Campbell, and the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir (the Dead would record "Samson and Delilah" and "Death Don't Have No Mercy." So Davis's influence and his sound were far-reaching, far beyond those who actually heard him in performance or on record.

His influence went deeper than that. Originally from the Piedmont region, he taught Blind Boy Fuller, who in turn mentored Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. He was a remarkably gifted musician. Some credit part of his virtuosity to a broken wrist that was set at an odd angle, making it possible for him to reach in and make difficult chords.

He had made a few records in the 1930s for ARC, the "race" records subsidiary of Columbia, not very successfully. He could never get used to the recording studio, and saw no need to finish a song just because the red "recording" light went out. He was a more accomplished musician than Blind Boy Fuller and the other blues musicians who had been signed, but he was paid less, because of his lack of studio experience and skills, and that rankled him. He was also, by that time, singing religious music (he became an ordained minister in 1937) and clashed with ARC's producers over that--they wanted blues.

He would not record again until 1954, when he made an album for Stinson, a New York-based label. Stinson may have been the perfect archetype of the adoption of blues and rural folk music by urban leftists: it was founded by Communists for the purpose of issuing recordings from the Soviet Union. It even pressed its records on red vinyl.

He next recorded one album for Riverside in 1956, then nothing until his series of Folkways albums in 1960-61. He recorded through the mid-1960s, and went on preaching and performing until shortly before his death in 1972.

The session--all spirituals, although as Davis became more and more embraced by the new blues audience, he did start to expand his repertoire to include some secular music--was produced by folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein, and released by Bluesville as Harlem Street Singer. The Jazzdisco website lists the session as having taken place in New York City. Wikipedia puts in the Van Gelder studio, but it seems more likely that it was not. About half the songs recorded that day were never released. Later rereleases on Prestige and the short-lived Prestige Folkore were titled Pure Religion.