{"id":2408,"date":"2017-01-28T07:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-01-28T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2408"},"modified":"2026-03-20T14:46:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T18:46:54","slug":"cincinnati-flow-rag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/","title":{"rendered":"Cincinnati Flow Rag (Rev. Gary Davis)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Cincinnati Flow Rag\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5XYKYWzZuLg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I always loved Gary Davis&#8217;s guitar playing, but was into blues and ragtime a long time before I got into gospel music &#8212; so for many years my favorite of his albums was <em>The Guitar &amp; Banjo of Reverend Gary Davis<\/em>.\u00a0 As far as I know, this is the only instrumental album by any of the foundational blues or gospel guitarists of the prewar era, so it was also the one album I could listen to when I was in the mood to hear guitar without vocals. (There were only two banjo tracks, plus one on harmonica, all on side two,<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2455 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Guitar-and-Banjo-of-Rev-Gary-Davis-1.jpg?resize=326%2C326\" width=\"326\" height=\"326\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Guitar-and-Banjo-of-Rev-Gary-Davis-1.jpg?w=360&amp;ssl=1 360w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Guitar-and-Banjo-of-Rev-Gary-Davis-1.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Guitar-and-Banjo-of-Rev-Gary-Davis-1.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 326px) 100vw, 326px\" \/> so I mostly stuck with side one.) I&#8217;ve since heard other versions of a lot of the pieces on this record, and if I compared them back to back I might prefer them, but these are the versions I heard first and know best, and generally the ones I learned.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years I tried my hand at pretty much every track, and the first three were all at some point highlights of my repertoire. I&#8217;m not sure I recall all the parts of Davis&#8217;s reworking of Scott Joplin&#8217;s &#8220;Maple Leaf Rag,&#8221; which started things off, but I still regularly fool around with the second (titled &#8220;Slow Drag&#8221; on this release, though more commonly known as &#8220;Cincinnati Flow Rag&#8221;) and third (often titled &#8220;Twelve Sticks,&#8221; but here called &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/boy-was-kissing\/\">The Boy Was Kissing the Girl [And Playing the Guitar at the Same Time]<\/a>). The fourth tune was an instrumental version of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/\">Candyman<\/a>,&#8221; and then a reimagining of some John Philip Sousa compositions called &#8220;United States March&#8221; &#8212; all in all, it&#8217;s a hell of an album.<\/p>\n<p>Davis was without doubt the most versatile and virtuosic guitarist in the ragtime-based style popularized by Blind Blake &#8212; at least on record. I assume there were other contenders back in the teens and twenties: apparently some of his ragtime arrangements were based on pieces by Willie Walker, a friend a playing partner of Davis&#8217;s during his youth in South Carolina, who unfortunately recorded only two songs, one of them the astonishing &#8220;South Carolina Rag,&#8221; and Davis himself only recorded his ragtime instrumentals after being &#8220;rediscovered&#8221; in the 1960s. By the time record companies got interested in African American guitar players, the ragtime period was over and they were looking for blues and gospel singers, so any virtuoso ragtimers who were still around would have been ignored. <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2453 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/johnny-st-cyr.jpg?resize=200%2C199\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/johnny-st-cyr.jpg?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/johnny-st-cyr.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>(Another whom we know of only ex post facto was Johnny St. Cyr, who was presumably playing his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H47Xg_xZ_TY\">intricate solo guitar version<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H47Xg_xZ_TY\"> of Jelly Roll Morton&#8217;s &#8220;Jelly Roll Blues&#8221;<\/a> by the 1920s, but only recorded it by chance many years later, when Alan Lomax interviewed him about Morton for the Library of Congress.)<\/p>\n<p>I went through various stages of trying to play Davis&#8217;s pieces, and &#8220;Cincinnati Flow&#8221; was from one of the earlier rounds and undoubtedly simplifies a lot of the subtleties of his arrangement &#8212; or sometimes complicates it, like when I reach my little finger up to the 5th fret on the first string while holding down G and C chords in first position; my fingers do that comfortably, but he would have held down the basses with his thumb. I later had the pleasure of spending many long afternoons with Ernie Hawkins, a longtime student and disciple of Davis&#8217;s who really knows how to play this stuff, which considerably refined my approach to some tunes, but by then I&#8217;d been playing this one so long that I stuck with the way it felt comfortable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I always loved Gary Davis&#8217;s guitar playing, but was into blues and ragtime a long time before I got into gospel music &#8212; so for many years my favorite of his albums was The Guitar &amp; Banjo of Reverend Gary Davis.\u00a0 As far as I know, this is the only instrumental album by any of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Cincinnati Flow Rag (Rev. Gary Davis)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Cincinnati Flow Rag (Rev. 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As explained in earlier posts, I shied away from most of Davis's material because I was not interested in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/Harlem.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1143,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/spike-drivers-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":2408,"position":1},"title":"Spike Driver&#8217;s Blues (John Hurt\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The first song Dave Van Ronk taught me was John Hurt's powerfully understated meditation on the John Henry legend.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"dave van ronk7","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/dave-van-ronk7.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3991,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gary-davis-medley\/","url_meta":{"origin":2408,"position":2},"title":"Gary Davis Medley","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 22, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I can't remember when I first heard Rev. Gary Davis, but he was one of my guitar heroes long before I could even think about playing his music. I loved the power and virtuosity of his playing, the soulful\u00a0 excitement of his singing, the dynamics, the dynamism... So by my\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Pure-Religion.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":28,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/casey-jones-kassie-jones\/","url_meta":{"origin":2408,"position":3},"title":"Casey Jones (Furry Lewis\/banjo to guitar)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 11, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was doing the book tour for Escaping the Delta, my book on Robert Johnson and the history of blues, I started playing this song regularly at the various events, and fell completely in love with it. It is Furry Lewis's take on a song that has been recorded\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/casey-jones-kassie-jones\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1151,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/","url_meta":{"origin":2408,"position":4},"title":"Candyman (Rev. Gary Davis\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A classic from Rev. Gary Davis, and then Dave Van Ronk, Jack Elliott, and the rest of us... with commentary on guitar technique and lyrical confusion","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Dave van ronk8","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Dave-van-ronk8.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":979,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/blues-in-the-bottle\/","url_meta":{"origin":2408,"position":5},"title":"Blues In the Bottle (The Holy Modal Rounders)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another I got from the Holy Modal Rounders, though somewhat amended after listening to their source, Prince Albert Hunt, a Texas fiddler, guitarist, and legendary hell-raiser who recorded it in 1928. I still go back and forth between his first verse and theirs: Rounders: Blues in the bottle, blues\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"prince-albert-hunt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/prince-albert-hunt.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2408"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6035,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408\/revisions\/6035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}