Blind Gary Davis: Harlem Street Singer [CRAFT RECORDINGS]

Why you'll love it

This Bluesville Acoustic Sounds Series pressing has all-analog lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Matthew Lutthans, 180g vinyl pressed at QRP and a tip-on jacket with an obi. "Samson And Delilah" and "Death Don't Have No Mercy" are the two songs he's best known for.

This edition

• Bluesville Acoustic Sounds Series
• 180g vinyl
• Lacquers cut from the original master tapes
• Tip-on jacket
• Obi strip with notes by Scott Billington
• Pressed at QRP
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

Some musicians play the street corner because it's all they can get. Gary Davis played it as a calling. Blind since infancy, he came up in the Piedmont blues scene of Durham, North Carolina in the 1930s, became a minister, and after moving to New York in the 1940s preached and sang on Harlem's sidewalks until the folk revival came looking for him. Prestige's Bluesville imprint caught him in 1960, at the height of his powers.

Harlem Street Singer captures that ministry at full strength: twelve gospel blues driven by his astonishing fingerpicking, with a voice that could fill a block without trying. "Twelve Gates To The City" rolls, "I Belong To The Band" swaggers, and "Lord, I Feel Just Like Goin' On" closes things on a note of plain determination. Kenneth S. Goldstein produced.

His students included Dave Van Ronk, David Bromberg, Rory Block and the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir, and the Dead took two of these songs into their own sets. It's quite possibly the best guitar lesson on vinyl, and the teacher never once checks his watch.

Also at Kops: more Reverend Gary Davis on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Craft Recordings / Prestige Bluesville (cat# CR00748), a reissue of the 1960 album.