{"id":3991,"date":"2018-09-22T01:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-09-22T05:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=3991"},"modified":"2018-09-21T23:25:46","modified_gmt":"2018-09-22T03:25:46","slug":"gary-davis-medley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gary-davis-medley\/","title":{"rendered":"Gary Davis Medley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Gary Davis Gospel Medley\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kOdOempCEWk?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 can&#8217;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&#8230; So by my high school years I had assiduously hunted down all the extant LPs &#8212; as well as taping a library copy of the out-<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4003 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Pure-Religion.jpg?resize=289%2C291&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"289\" height=\"291\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Pure-Religion.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Pure-Religion.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Pure-Religion.jpg?resize=298%2C300&amp;ssl=1 298w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 289px) 100vw, 289px\" \/>of-print <em>American Street Songs <\/em>LP from the 1950s that he shared with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hes-jailhouse-now\/\">Pink Anderson<\/a>, which still may be my all-time favorite.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, as a Dave Van Ronk fan and eventually Dave&#8217;s student, I learned <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/\">Candyman<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cocaine-blues\/\">Cocaine Blues<\/a>, but mostly I worshipped Davis from afar. Part of the problem was that his greatest performances were of Evangelical Christian music, and much as I loved them, I had no interest in singing those lyrics. The other problem was that even if I&#8217;d wanted to sing them, I couldn&#8217;t make the guitar parts sound right. After studying with Dave I worked out a couple of Davis&#8217;s ragtime instrumentals, and even began performing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/\">Cincinnati Flow Rag<\/a>, but it was only after I got back from Africa that I took serious crack at the gospel arrangements.<\/p>\n<p>That trip had convinced me that if I wanted to understand how someone played I needed to try to replicate their tool kit &#8212; which in Davis&#8217;s case meant wearing fingerpicks and trying to play with just thumb and index finger. The fingerpicks were a first hurdle, because they always felt clumsy, but they definitely got me closer to his sound. As for that thumb-and-index style, it took ages to get the hang of it, and I never figured out the roll Davis used in his ragtime showpieces until I met Ernie Hawkins &#8212; about whom more in a <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-4004\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Little-More-Faith.jpg?resize=275%2C274&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"275\" height=\"274\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Little-More-Faith.jpg?w=275&amp;ssl=1 275w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rev-Gary-Davis-Little-More-Faith.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 275px) 100vw, 275px\" \/>future post &#8212; but it fundamentally reshaped my understanding of early blues guitar.<\/p>\n<p>As far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of early players used only those two fingers. There were exceptions, including John Hurt, Josh White, and Blind Blake, but they were outliers: from Blind Lemon Jefferson to the Mississippi Delta masters, Gary Davis to Merle Travis, thumb-and-index seems to have been the rule. To some extent, that was just a matter of custom, but it also was a matter of power &#8212; those are the two strongest fingers, which mattered in the days before amplification &#8212; and an even attack: when you use the index finger for all your treble notes, they all have the same attack. (Charlie Christian got a similar effect by playing only down-strokes with his flatpick.)<\/p>\n<p>So anyway, I went through an extended Gary Davis period and learned a dozen of his gospel arrangements, though the only one I performed regularly was &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/samson-and-delilah\/\">Samson and Delilah<\/a>,&#8221; which felt like a story rather than a religious exhortation. As for the rest, I sang them as part of the learning process, but mostly just for my own amusement, and that&#8217;s still where they fit in my repertoire. I particularly kept playing instrumental versions of these two, &#8220;A Little More Faith&#8221; and &#8220;I Belong to the Band,&#8221; because they work nicely as an instrumental medley &#8212; but more for fun than performance, and as an exercise. They&#8217;re a great way to practice that thumb-and-index style, to work on relaxing and freeing up the thumb to play brushes and accent some of the melody notes &#8212; I particularly like the power it gives to the bend in the F chord on the verse of &#8220;I Belong to the Band.&#8221; As for using fingerpicks, I eventually decided I preferred the feel of bare fingers, but I doubt I could have got here without them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;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&#8230; So by my high school years I had &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gary-davis-medley\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Gary Davis Medley<\/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":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - 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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":1151,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":1},"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":2408,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/cincinnati-flow-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":2},"title":"Cincinnati Flow Rag (Rev. Gary Davis)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"January 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I always loved Gary Davis's guitar playing, but was into blues and ragtime a long time before I got into gospel music -- so for many years my favorite of his albums was The Guitar & Banjo of Reverend Gary Davis.\u00a0 As far as I know, this is the only\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\/2017\/01\/Guitar-and-Banjo-of-Rev-Gary-Davis-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5336,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/you-got-to-move\/","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":3},"title":"You Got to Move (Rev. 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He was, of course, one\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\/2026\/07\/R-2200687-1561035842-7024-e1752163624665.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1219,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/maple-leaf-rag\/","url_meta":{"origin":3991,"position":5},"title":"Maple Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Dave Van Ronk was hailed as the pioneering arranger of \"classic\" ragtime for fingerstyle guitar more or less by default. In the early 1960s he did an arrangement of \"St. Louis Tickle\" that was the first recording of a multi-part piano or orchestral ragtime composition on fingerstyle guitar -- but\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"sunday st","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/sunday-st.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991","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=3991"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3991\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}