Who was the greatest of all American guitarists? You probably didn’t name Gary Davis, but many of his musical contemporaries considered him without peer. Bob Dylan called Davis “one of the wizards of modern music.” Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead—who took lessons with Davis—claimed his musical ability “transcended any common notion of a bluesman.” And the folklorist Alan Lomax called him “one of the really great geniuses of American instrumental music.” But you won’t find Davis alongside blues legends Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Despite almost universal renown among his contemporaries, Davis lives today not so much in his own work but through covers of his songs by Dylan, Jackson Browne, and many others, as well as in the untold number of students whose lives he influenced. The first biography of Davis, Say No to the Devil restores “the Rev’s” remarkable story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with many of Davis’s former students, Ian Zack takes readers through Davis’s difficult beginning as the blind son of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South to his decision to become an ordained Baptist minister and his move to New York in the early 1940s, where he scraped out a living singing and preaching on street corners and in storefront churches in Harlem. There, he gained entry into a circle of musicians that included, among many others, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Dave Van Ronk. But in spite of his tremendous musical achievements, Davis never gained broad recognition from an American public that wasn’t sure what to make of his trademark blend of gospel, ragtime, street preaching, and the blues. His personal life was also fraught, troubled by struggles with alcohol, women, and deteriorating health. Zack chronicles this remarkable figure in American music, helping us to understand how he taught and influenced a generation of musicians.
Ian Zack is a New York-based journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Forbes, and Acoustic Guitar. He worked as a concert booker for one of the oldest folk venues in New York, the Good Coffeehouse, where he got to know some of Davis’s students.
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Anti–Robert Johnson Prologue: You Got to Move
1 There Was a Time That I Was Blind (1896–1916) 2 Street-Corner Bard (1917–28) 3 “I Was a Blues Cat” (1928–34) 4 Great Change in Me (1934–43) 5 Meet You at the Station (1943–49) 6 Who Shall Deliver Poor Me? (1950–55) 7 I’ll Be Alright Someday (1955–58) 8 I Can’t Make This Journey by Myself (1958–59) 9 He Knows How Much We Can Bear (1960–61) 10 Let the Savior Bless Your Soul: The Reverend in the Pulpit 11 Children, Go Where I Send Thee (1961–62) 12 Lord, Stand by Me (1962–63) 13 On the Road and Over the Ocean (1964) 14 The Guitar Lessons: “Bring Your Money, Honey!” 15 Buck Dance (1965–66) 16 Where You Goin’, Old Drunkard? 17 There’s a Bright Side Somewhere (1967–70) 18 Tired, My Soul Needs Resting (1971–72)
Epilogue: When I Die, I’ll Live Again Selected Discography Notes Index
