LISTEN TO ONE: Say No to the Devil
Prestige commissioned or licensed a number of Bluesville releases over the course of the year for which limited session information is available.
Many of the Reverend Gary Davis's fans, and this certainly would have been true of the typical Prestige and Prestige Bluesville collector, were not drawn to him by his gospel message, but by his blues-based singing style and, particularly, his instrumental prowess. The number of guitarists who came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s after studying with Gary Davis is remarkable, and when you add to that those who bought and studied his records, it's not stretching a point much to say that he influenced a generation.
Those acolytes, and the music lovers who bought the records or heard him perform at blues festivals or in the streets and storefront churches of Harlem, were most drawn by his prowess on "Miss Gibson," his acoustic six-string guitar, but on this album he expands his repertoire, playing the twelve-string guitar on some tracks and harmonica on others. To a blues musician, especially a New York-based blues musician, Lead Belly was the standard for the twelve-string and Sonny Terry for the harmonica. Davis goes his own way on both of these instruments, and shows that there's more than one way to achieve virtuosity.
The gospel hymns are his own, with one traditional. called here "Itty Bitty Baby," elsewhere "Children, Go Where I Send Thee."
The Bluesville release was called Say No to the Devil. Kenneth S. Goldstein produced. The recording was made at Rudy Van Gelder's studio, so it's a little unusual that we don't have a date for it. It was Davis's third album for Bluesville.
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