Lifting The Veil: The First Bluesman - Rev. Gary Davis & Peers

Performer: Rev. Gary Davis
Distributor: Qualiton

Notes: This interesting collection draws from recordings in the Harry Smith archive and includes what sounds like songs taken from casual, private sessions with various country blues artists along with a few scratchy songs from commercial 78s. The sound is all over the map, but the value of sets like this aren't really in their sonic qualities but in their historical value. Worth noting here is Rev. Gary Davis' striking and stark "The Blood's Done Signed Your Name," a kinetic version by Leadbelly of "Gallows Pole," and Charley Patton's classic "Mississippi Boll Weevil." ~ Steve Leggett

Dirty Linen (p.61) - "[T]he vocals on 'Leaving Blues' find this charismatic performer at his most compelling." Global Rhythm (Publication) (p.43) - "[A] trove of blues obscurities by such giants of the genre as Charley Patton, Leadbelly, Big Bill Bronzy and the Rev. Gary Davis..."

Blind blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis is one of the most influential bluesmen in terms of the evolution of folk and rock fingerpicking. A key member of the Piedmont blues movement of the 1920s and '30s, Davis put his own upbeat yet simplistic spin on the rural picking style that marked that scene's sound. Davis moved to New York City in the 1940s where he recorded for the famed Folkways label, eventually becoming a darling of the folk revival that would explode in the coming decades. Everyone from Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk to Taj Mahal, Jackson Browne, and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead cite Davis as an influence.

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