Manchester Free Trade Hall 1964

Performer: Reverend Gary Davis
Producer: Gary Atkinson (Compilation)
Distributor: Allegro Corporation (Dist

Notes: Personnel: Reverend Gary Davis (vocals, guitar, harmonica); Sonny Terry (harmonica). Recording information: Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England (1964); 1964. Almost 40 years after his prime, the Reverend Gary Davis could still deliver a corker, as this live set from 1964 demonstrates. MANCHESTER FREE TRADE HALL 1964 is Davis at his best, employing a tortured, near demon-possessed holler as he rips through standards such as "You've Got To Move" and "Cocaine Blues." Davis's spry, ragtime guitar playing was always his calling card, and on this disc it is as nimble as ever. Only two years later, San Francisco psychedelic avatars like Jerry Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen would be regularly dipping into the Davis catalog. With performances this gripping, it is easy to see what captured those rock & rollers' imaginations.

Dirty Linen (pp.60-61) - "The guitar craftsmanship, as you would expect, is as expansive and complex as ever, while his vocals showed that he was in top form."

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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