Listening to Prestige 619 - Reverend Gary Davis

LISTEN TO ONE: Maple Leaf Rag

This is the fourth and final album (not counting repackagings) by the Reverend Gary Davis, Harlem street singer and preacher. and mentor to nearly every young guitar player in New York. The first three were released on Bluesville, but Bluesville was no more, shelved along with Prestige's other jazz subsidiaries, New Jazz, Swingville and Moodsville. 

There were still some smaller subsidiary labels: Prestige International, Prestige Lively Arts and Prestige Folklore, more in competition with smaller independents like Folkways and Caedmon than with the other jazz independents. I haven't included them in my history/reminiscence of Prestige Records.

But since I have been following Gary Davis on Prestige, I'm including this Folklore release, which is an interesting addition to the Davis catalog, in that it's all instrumental. Davis was one of the great blues guitar stylists as well as one of the great teachers, and here plays some ragtime and some folk styles as well as blues, and also plays banjo and harmonica on this unaccompanied field recording by Sam Charters.

His harmonica (on "Coon Hunt") is reminiscent of Sonny Terry's, on "Fox Chase." He's really adept on banjo, which he plays on "Devil's Dream" and "Please Baby." His finger picking banjo style is reminiscent of nothing so much as his guitar style. And his guitar mastery is sufficient to make one glad that he put out an all-instrumental album. He has tempos from "Slow Drag" to "Fast Fox Trot," and from ragtime ("Maple Leaf Rag") to march ("United States March"), and a tribute to multitasking with "The Boy Was Kissing the Girl (And Playing the Guitar at the Same Time)."

This would be Davis's last recording for Prestige, but he continued performing, and recording, right up to his death in 1972. A performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 brought him to the attention of new audiences, and his last years were some of his most successful ones.

Listening to Prestige 518: Reverend Gary Davis

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.

Listening to Prestige 489: Reverend Gary Davis

LISTEN TO ONE

This is the second Prestige Bluesville session for the Reverend Gary Davis. He was billed for the previous one as Blind Gary Davis, which was also accurate, but his blindness is probably less significant in an understanding of his importance, when compared with (a) his spiritual message, and (b) his tremendous influence on younger blues guitarists, as discussed in my earlier essay.

Probably the best known of the gospel songs that Davis recorded on this day in Rudy Van Gelder's studio is "You Got to Move," a traditional spiritual that had first been recorded in 1944 by the Baltimore gospel quartet, the

Willing Four (not to be confused with a later gospel group, the Willing Four of Chicago). "You Got to Move" is probably best known to modern audiences from the 1971 version by the Rolling Stones, a virtually note for note cover of Mississippi Fred McDowell's 1969 recording. McDowell, in turn, followed a recording of the song by Davis, but not this recording. Davis had done it previously, in 1953, with Sonny Terry. His 1961 version of the song is more uptempo, which actually makes sense. If you've got to move when the Lord calls you, maybe you'd want to move to a rhythm like this. I've included a bonus Listen to One here--the 1953 version with Terry.

Listening to the 1961 Bluesville version, it's easy to tell why so many aspiring young guitarists made that pilgrimage to Harlem in the 1950s-1960s to study with, or at least get a few pointers from, the Reverend. His guitar sings, it rings, it talks, it moves. And that's true of every song on this album. Given its best possible showcase with the recording genius of Rudy Van Gelder, we can hear every nuance of one of the blues guitar masters.

The songs are mostly traditional gospel songs or original compositions by Davis, and if you had to guess which are which, you'd be hard pressed. His own songs have the depth and the spiritual fervor of songs that have moved the faithful for a hundred years. 

The one other modern composed gospel song is "I'll Fly Away," written in 1929 by Albert E, Brumley, and often noted as the most widely recorded gospel song of all time. Most commonly a bluegrass number, it adapts winningly to Davis's blues-gospel style.

"Motherless Children" is listed as "traditional" on the album's credits, but it was recorded in 1927 by Blind Willie Johnson, and may well have been written by him, at least in its current form. Other sources list Johnson as composer. It has also been widely recorded, though not nearly as widely as "I'll Fly Away." Bob Dylan, Steve Miller and Eric Clapton are among modern rockers who have taken it on. Rosanne Cash, Ralph Stanley, Lucinda Williams and others have done it from the country/bluegrass/Americana side.  It's another one that was first done on the 1953 Stinson album with Sonny Terry.

And I like the cautious hope expressed in "There's a Bright Side Somewhere" and "I'll Be All Right Someday."

The Bluesville album, produced by Kenneth S. Goldstein, was called A Little More Faith. "You Got to Move" and "I'm Glad I'm in That Number" were released as a 45 RPM single.