Browse by Artist: DAVIS, REVEREND GARY

Artist:	DAVIS, REVEREND GARY
Title:	The Sun of Our Life (Solos, Songs, a Sermon 1955-1957)
Label:	WORLD ARBITER
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	WA 2005CD

2002 release. This collection by legendary blues/ragtime guitarist Reverend Gary Davis (1896-1972) contains many otherwise unrecorded solos and a walloping sermon to boot, adding more flesh to his catalog of medicine show tunes, ballads, military marches, country instrumentals, ragtime piano, old church hymns, revival holler-ups, gospel songs, and more. Reverend Gary Davis profoundly influenced Blind Boy Fuller, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead (Bob Weir was his pupil), Jorma Kaukonene, Taj Mahal, and the entire folk scene of the 1960s. World Arbiter discovered professional tapes Davis made of works otherwise unrecorded, including a Sunday service during which he offered a fiery sermon. These unique documents, in excellent sound, capture a full cross-section of a remarkable musician who brought to culmination so many traditions. This is the most comprehensive cross-section of his artistry ever presented: blues, ragtime, gospel and more. Recorded 1955-1957; 78 minutes; extensive liner notes by World Arbiter's Allan Evans. "Davis' musical world parallels the richness of the nature, social milieus, characters and flow inhabiting Mark Twain, a sonic Huckleberry Finn, evoking deception, seduction, gamblers, dance halls, bordellos, cocaine, sexual repartee masked in double entendres, bucolic country pastimes, evangelism, self-realization, agonizing over one's fate, biblical themes, yearning for the divine presence, life's evanescence, timely events recast as morality plays, and so much more. His repertoire of over 300 compositions remains a marvel and historic repository, supported by a high musical level imparted to every work he performed, bearing an imprimatur of uniqueness and identity recreated on each occasion, a living expression outside any limits of time and style. Through uncanny rhythmic precision, sensitivity to nuance, an articulated tone both commanding and sensual, his voice roaring as an instrument, one sensed that each work was a fragment drawn from a larger constellation which he alone had access to and kindly offered." --Allan Evans

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