This performance is part of our online series: Reverend Gary Davis: In Search of the Harlem Street Singer. The New York Guitar Festival invited some of our favorite artists to explore the music of the blind blues musician Reverend Gary Davis.
Rev. Gary Davis performed on the streets of Harlem from the late 1940s until his death in 1972. He is one of those curious figures in music history who should be famous, but who’s also a lot better known than you might think. Overcoming poverty, racial discrimination and blindness, Davis made influential recordings and festival appearances, and his songs have been covered by The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Peter Paul & Mary, and Bob Dylan.
Davis himself recorded as Blind Gary Davis and Rev. Gary Davis - he was ordained as a minister in the 1930s - and the two names seem to reflect the two halves of his personality. Religious imagery fills his songs, and his version of the blues is heavily colored by the sounds of early gospel music. But his guitar picking had a strong ragtime feel, and Mr. Davis was known to be, shall we say, a very secular guy when Mrs. Davis wasn’t around. We know this because for most of the 60s and until his death in 1972, his Harlem apartment became a pilgrimage site for dozens of young guitarists eager to learn from someone who had lived the blues and played them from birth. David Bromberg, Stefan Grossman, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Weir are just some of the many students who left his apartment with new skills and often colorful, and occasionally off-color, stories.
Multiple Grammy Award-winner and MacArthur Fellow, Chris Thile is a mandolin virtuoso, composer and vocalist, a member of Punch Brothers and Nickel Creek, a solo artist, and former host of the radio program, “Live from Here”. As a soloist, Thile has released several albums including his most recent, Thanks for Listening, In February 2013, Thile won a Grammy for his work on The Goat Rodeo Sessions, collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan. In September 2014, Thile and Meyer released their latest album collaboration, Bass + Mandolin, which won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album. Punch Brothers released their latest album, the Grammy-winning All Ashore, in July 2018 with PopMatters describing the album as ‘a call to savor, to pay attention, to step back from the hustle and bustle and remember the importance of being calm.”
The NYGF and the performing artists are asking viewers to donate to MusiCares. Learn more about the charitable foundation of The Recording Academy’s MusicCares COVID-19 Relief Fund, and donate to help the music community affected by the pandemic, here: www.grammy.com/musicares/get-help/musicares-coronavirus-relief-fund
Tune in each day at 4pm EDT on our KZitem channel beginning July 13th.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE:
Discourse by DJ Spooky (Paul D. Miller) - Monday, July 13
Jontavius Willis - Tuesday, July 14
Chris Thile - Wednesday, July 15
Jim James - Thursday, July 16
Dave Bromberg - Friday, July 17
Peidmont Blūz - Saturday, July 18
TBA - Sunday, July 19
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Негізгі бет Chris Thile: “Samson and Delilah” by Reverend Gary Davis
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