Reverend (Blind) Gary Davis was a powerful gospel and folk blues singer and masterful acoustic guitarist. Gary Davis was born on April 30, 1896, to John and Evelina Davis in Laurens County, in the Piedmont section of upstate South Carolina. One of eight siblings, of whom only two of whom survived childhood, he was raised by his grandmother — because his mother couldn't care for him and his father was constantly in trouble. He became blind as an infant. He recalled his grandmother telling him he got "sore eyes" when he was three-weeks old, and the doctors put something in his shortly after birth that resulted in almost complete loss of sight by the age of three weeks. Davis reported that when he was 10 years old, his father was killed in Birmingham, Alabama. He later said he had been told his father was shot by the Birmingham sheriff, there was no reason as to why, and there was no justice done.
He sang for the first time as a boy in the choir at Gray Court's Baptist church in South Carolina. His aptitude for music was discovered at an early age, he taught himself to play guitar, banjo, and harmonica and began playing local dances for the White folk while still a child. Some of his first musical experiences came from the Center Raven Baptist Church he attended as a child. It was then that he developed his strong religious convictions which not only helped him deal with his blindness, but also cemented deep gospel roots he would draw upon for the rest of his career. He first encountered what came to be called "the blues" in about 1910, on hearing someone picking on a guitar. The music the young Davis picked up on was a lively combination of spirituals sung in African American churches, square dance music, and in marches. The first bluesman he heard was Porter Irving, a fellow South Carolinian, and his song, "Delia".
In 1914 at the age of 18, Davis applied to and was speedily granted a scholarship to attend the South Carolina Institution for the Education for the Deaf and Blind at Cedar Springs, Spartanburg, where he learned to read Braille. He left after six months, however, because he didn't like the food, returning to the farm on which his family worked. He later said: "I stayed on the farm till I got grown ... When I left off the farm I was twenty-one years old. When I started travelin' through the country. Playing guitar. Goin' from one city to another". Around this time he broke his left wrist after slipping on the snow. The wrist was set out of position (left of axis) which may have accounted for his being able to play some unusual chord patterns. In the mid 1920s Davis married and traveled around South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee, performing in the streets and teaching guitar to make a living.
Around this time at age 21, he had established himself in Greenville, "performing in barrelhouses, chasing women, and singing on corners for nickels and dimes", while at the same time keeping up at least a partial attendance in Black churches, later to be a cradle for gospel music. However within a couple of years he had met a woman some five years his senior, Mary Hendrix, and a few months later on June 17th, 1919 the couple were married. Davis continued his trade as an unaccompanied minstrel while his new wife took in washing and ironing. In 1923 the couple moved north to Asheville, North Carolina, and later to Winston-Salem. Their marriage ended there when he found out that "she wasn't my wife but everybody else's". He settled in Bull City (nickname for Durham, NC) around 1931. There he met Blind Boy Fuller, another of many blind street musicians of the time. Music was often the only occupation available to these men and their ranks boasted such legendary figures as Blind Lemon Jefferson from Texas, Georgia’s Blind Willie McTell and Louisiana’s Blind Willie Johnson.
At that time blind musicians frequently played religious music, which was more publicly acceptable, on the street and secular music indoors and at parties. He became a well known street performer in the early 30’s and made a great reputation playing blues and gospel songs for parties and dances around South Carolina. Gary Davis, however, had a deep predilection for spiritual music. By 1933–34, Davis' interest in performing Christian (Gospel) material appears to have slowly taken over, apparently accelerated by the illness and eventual death of his mother which occurred in June 1934. Although a number of sources give the date of Davis' ordination as a minister as 1933, this did not occur until 1937 in Washington, North Carolina. Meanwhile his growing interest as an "evangelist in training" evidently set his life on a new course, although financially it came at the worst time just following the Great Depression. This limited his earnings so that from 1934 for several years, he was in poor financial straits and had to apply to the Durham welfare office for assistance.
In 1935 he was discovered by J. B. Long, a North Carolina store keeper, and made his first trip to New York City to record for the American Recording Company (ARC), the "race" music subsidiary of Columbia Records. Davis recorded 15 sides, ten Christian songs, and two sets of blues Unlike the other players, however, Davis was unfamiliar with the recording business. He couldn't see the red light that signaled when the disc was finished and wanted to keep on playing. He also had a healthy consciousness of his own abilities and was upset at being paid less than the other performers, who received more from ARC because they had recorded before. All his life he believed had been cheated and he refused when Long tried to get him to record again in 1939. Although Davis' performances on guitar were spectacular, his vocals sounded a little strained, possibly on account of poor health. Up to 1943 he was still an itinerant preacher existing on welfare, with visiting workers recording that "His main interest in life it seems is religion... he stated that he was more interested in saving souls than in money".
In 1942 things finally started to look up for the now Reverend Gary Davis. On his preaching trips he often passed through Raleigh, North Carolina and there caught the eye of Annie Bell Wright, a twice divorced religious woman who ran a boarding house there, was attracted to Davis and his music, and offered him companionship and a place to stay. Things went well and in November 1943 the couple exchanged vows before a justice of the peace in Durham. Davis' second marriage would not have been recognized legally because Davis had never officially divorced Mary Hendrix, so while his first wife was still living he could not legally be married again. Davis and Annie went on to be together as actual or de facto husband and wife for the remainder of his life. Eventually he and his wife made it up to New York in taking up residence in the East Bronx, where he continued to work as a street performer. The city’s location on the Long Island Sound was close enough to New York City to put Davis in touch with the thriving music business there.
Annie worked intermittently as a domestic help, while Davis remained an itinerant circuit minister, preaching and singing the gospel primarily at storefront Baptist churches around the city. Although it was by then illegal, he also brought in a little more funds performing Christian songs on the city streets. Davis became a minister of the Missionary Baptist Connection Church in Harlem. He continued busking and preaching in New York, acquiring the appellation "Harlem Street Singer". For a time he stopped playing the blues altogether in favor of gospel and old time songs, making an exception for "gospel blues" such as "Death Don't Have No Mercy", and "Children of Zion". He began to record again in 1945 and continued to record and perform for the rest of his life, making records for producer Moses Asch, and then for the record labels Folkways and Prestige and Stinson Records. He also continued to teach guitar.
Meanwhile, a few small glimmers of recognition were coming. In 1946 one of Davis' compositions, "Message from Heaven" was published in sheet music form, credited to "Rev. G.D. Davis". It seems that this route for making a little money by selling print versions of his material never led to any repeats of the activity. While in 1949 Davis was recorded again, this time for Continental Records who recorded six sides of which two were issued (as one 78) on its sister Lenox label. In 1950, Davis made his debut as a New York performer on a proper stage, appearing among others (although unannounced) and performing two numbers at the January 28 Lead Belly Memorial Concert at New York's Town Hall. In 1954, a recording session was arranged for Davis for the New York-based Stinson Records by Kenneth S. Goldstein, featuring Davis on guitar and vocals backed by Sonny Terry on harmonica, the result being released as a ten-inch LP entitled "The Singing Reverend". It was quite an adequate representation of the two blue players, however it failed to attract much attention.
Meanwhile, between 1954 and 1957, Davis began to be featured, along with other blues artists, at a series of concerts under the name "Midnight Special". Across an ocean from Davis' activities, his reputation was beginning to be spread via New York City native Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who included the Davis secular tune "Cocaine" on a UK LP in 1958. Elliott's rendition inspired a number of budding British guitarists to take up the song and set them off in search of more of the Reverend's material. Davis was now seen as a potential concert performer for the emerging White, mainly college educated folk music aficionados. Folk music experienced a popular revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s with a growing audience on college campuses and among hipsters in places like lower Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. Davis found many of the new folk and blues guitarists beating a path to his door and learning his songs.
David Bromberg, Taj Mahal, and Dave Van Ronk are among the many guitar players to absorb the Reverend Gary’s phrases and intonations first-hand. Davis played at numerous folk festivals including the Newport Folk Festival (1959,1965,1968) and the Cambridge Folk Festival. Davis' appearance at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, in the Sunday night concert was only a partial success, owing to poor weather and the audience's preoccupation with newer, youthful acts such as The Kingston Trio. Also by 1959, Davis started travelling with 21-year old guitar and banjo picker Bary Kornfeld, then a student at Queens College. Around 1960, the Davis's were still poor and dependent on welfare to supplement their meagre earnings, however word was beginning to spread about Davis' talent.
Davis obtained bookings at some folk festivals and, at age 64, started his first residency at a folk club Gerde's Folk City in New York, performing two shows a night during the week and three at weekends. Also in 1960, Davis was approached once again by the now well established Kenneth Goldstein with a view to making some higher profile recordings. Through the early 1960s Davis started to travel a little for bookings including in Boston, and while at home in New York would attend folk music gatherings at Washington Square on Sundays. Aspiring folk guitarists and blues players swarmed to take lessons from him. Bob Dylan, who covered "Candyman" and several other Davis songs, would have had an opportunity to meet Davis at the Indian Neck Folk Festival on May 6, 1961.
In early 1964, Davis was one of a number of Black artists booked to travel to the UK for a two-week tour, the others being Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Sister Rosetta Tharpe who played rocking electric guitar with her brand of high energy gospel music. Dubbed "The American Blues and Gospel Caravan" the group of musicians played concerts across Britain plus a final session in Paris. The English reviewers spoke highly of Davis' performances. As the folk revival of the 1960s invigorated Davis's career, he performed once more at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, this time to much greater acclaim. In March 1966, Davis appeared (sharing the episode with Donovan and sitar playing singer Shawn Phillips) playing two numbers on Pete Seeger's long running Rainbow Quest television program. Four months later, Davis left for his third visit to the UK, this time as a solo artist, performing in folk clubs, now aged 70.
In 1971 Davis made his final studio recordings. Using his 12-string "Miss Bozo", Davis recorded 25 songs over a five-hour period, including a version of "Candy Man" with a young Canadian guitarist Larry Brezer. He also retuned to an open guitar tuning to play one tune with a spoken commentary, "Whistlin' Blues", with a slide. The sessions would be released the same year as two separate albums, Volume 1 - New Blues And Gospel and Volume 2 - Lord I Wish I Could See. Also in 1971, Davis received an invitation for what would turn out to be his final UK visit, a sixteen date tour of UK venues culminating in appearance as headliner at the 1971 Cambridge Folk Festival, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) in Europe at that time. Annie tried to get him to decline on account of his advancing age, but Davis felt that he needed to keep working so as to be able to carry on paying the mortgage, so that Annie will have a home, after he dies.
Audiences and critics in Britain voiced concerns that Davis might be too old and frail to give good performances, but in the event they were tremendous successes. After the success of this tour, Davis returned to the U.S. but once more took a flight to Belgium to play at a major rock festival alongside Al Stewart, Rory Gallagher and others. Three months later he was hospitalized, possibly suffering a stroke. Over the next several months Davis was in and out of hospital for various ailments, including suffering a heart attack in February 1972. He did play one last show in April, and reportedly played well after initially appearing rather feeble. On April 30 that year he celebrated his 76th birthday, preaching at a local Baptist church and singing one song. On May 5, 1972, he suffered a heart attack while on the way to a performance in Newtonville, New Jersey. He died at William Kessler Memorial Hospital in Hammonton, New Jersey.
By then he had become a towering figure in American roots music — a bridge between early 20th‑century Black vernacular traditions and the global folk‑rock movement. His recordings, sermons, and students ensured that his gospel‑blues synthesis would echo far beyond his lifetime. While he was alive, Davis' music was recognized by musicians of the era as exceptional. Bob Dylan called him "one of the wizards of modern music," while Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead said Davis had "a Bacchian sense of music which transcended any common notion of a bluesman." The Grateful Dead performance of "Samson and Delilah" reveals Davis's influence on the vocal inflections and cadences of Bob Weir, who studied with him. The list continues with Stefan Grossman, Taj Mahal, Jerry Garcia, Dave Bromberg, Ry Cooder, and Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane, who suggested Davis is "one of the greatest figures of 20th-century music". Gary Davis repertoire featured blues, rags, show instrumentals and gospel songs. More than two decades after his death, the influence of Reverend Gary Davis can still be felt, as each new generation is introduced to blues, folk, and other forms of traditional American music.