Gary D. Davis (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972), known as Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Gary Davis, was an American blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina, and blind since infancy, Davis first performed professionally in the Piedmont blues scene of Durham, North Carolina, in the 1930s, then converted to Christianity and became a minister. After moving to New York in the 1940s, Davis experienced a career rebirth as part of the American folk music revival that peaked during the 1960s. Davis' most notable recordings include "Samson and Delilah" and "Death Don't Have No Mercy".
Davis' fingerpicking guitar style influenced many other artists. His students included Stefan Grossman, Rick Ruskin, David Bromberg, Steve Katz, Roy Book Binder, Larry Johnson, Alex Shoumatoff, Nick Katzman, Dave Van Ronk, Rory Block, Ernie Hawkins, Larry Campbell, Bob Weir, Woody Mann, and Tom Winslow. He also influenced Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Wizz Jones, Jorma Kaukonen, Keb' Mo', Ollabelle, Resurrection Band, and John Sebastian (of the Lovin' Spoonful).
Davis was born in Laurens, South Carolina in the Piedmont region, on a farm that was, by his recollection, "way down in the sticks; so far you couldn't hear a train whistle blow unless it was on a cloudy day".
Of the eight children his mother bore, he was one of two who survived to adulthood. He became blind as an infant. He recalled his grandmother telling him he got "sore eyes" when he was three-weeks old, and the doctors put something in his eyes that "cause[d] ulcers to grow" over the eyes and he ended up blind.
He recalled being poorly treated by his mother and that his father placed him in the care of his paternal grandmother. Davis reported that when he was 10 years old, his father was killed in Birmingham, Alabama. He later said he had been told his father was shot by the Birmingham sheriff. His mother remarried and gave birth to a boy.
He sang for the first time as a boy in the choir at Gray Court's Baptist church in South Carolina. He took up the guitar, first attempting to construct home made instruments, then acquired a cheap mail order instrument paid for by his mother on which he played any time he could, learning his first chords from a local musician named Craig Fowler.
Most sources state (following Davis' own account) that around 1910/1911, when Davis would have been about 15 years old, he played for several years in a black string band in Greenville, a town some 35 miles from Laurens (though less from Gray Court), comprising (according to Ian Zack) Davis, a fellow blind guitarist of the same age Willie Walker who was also very competent, two violins, a bass violin and a mandolin, which would likely have performed a wide-ranging repertoire of blues, ragtime, dance tunes, vaudeville or minstrel show songs, plus any other popular songs of the day. Zack, does, however, make space for a comment (on his p. 275) that these dates for his (Davis') and Walker's membership of the string band may be wrong: in addition to both guitarists' seemingly young ages in 1910 or 1911, Davis on another occasion stated that he played with Walker when both resided in Greenville, which according to city directories and other sources was not until 1915 for Walker and 1917 for Davis.
In 1914 at the age of 18, Davis was enrolled in a Blind School, the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind in nearby Spartanburg County. He attended some classes in industrial training and possibly conventional music on orchestral instruments as well as learning New York Point, a counterpart of (and competitor to) the American Braille system of reading for the blind, but stayed for only six months, returning to the farm on which his family worked. He later said: "I stayed on the farm till I got grown ... When I left off the farm I was twenty-one years old. When I started travelin' through the country. Playing guitar. Goin' from one city to another".
By this time, Davis was already developing a unique multi-voice style on the guitar produced solely with his thumb and index finger, playing gospel, ragtime, and blues tunes along with traditional and original tunes in four-part harmony. By the time he was around 21 he had established himself in Greenville (whether or not he had performed there earlier), "performing in barrelhouses, chasing women, and singing on corners for nickels and dimes" (Zack), while at the same time keeping up at least a partial attendance in black churches, later to be a cradle for gospel music. However within a couple of years he had met a woman some five years his senior, Mary Hendrix, and a few months later on 17 June 1919 the couple were married. Davis continued his trade as an unaccompanied minstrel while his new wife took in washing and ironing; in 1923 the couple moved north to Asheville, North Carolina, and later to Winston-Salem. Their marriage ended there (in 1924 according to Davis' later welfare file). Davis spent most of the remainder of the 1920s as a wanderer, spending some time in Washington, North Carolina, and also Durham, which he would eventually adopt as his new home for a while, moving there in the late 1920s and staying with his mother, with whom he had evidently become reconciled, who had obtained a job as a tobacco stemmer in a local factory owned by Liggett and Myers.
In the late 1920s, when Davis moved to Durham, it was a major center of black culture at the time. There he taught Blind Boy Fuller and collaborated with a number of other artists in the Piedmont blues scene, including Bull City Red, while continuing his own activities as a street performer. However, by 1933–34, Davis' interest in performing Christian (Gospel) material appears to have slowly taken over, apparently accelerated by the illness and eventual death of his mother which occurred in June 1934. Zack writes that, although a number of sources give the date of Davis' ordination as a minister as 1933, this did not occur until 1937 in Washington, North Carolina; meanwhile his growing interest as an "evangelist in training" evidently set his life on a new course, although financially it came at the worst time (just following the Great Depression in the United States). This limited his earnings so that from 1934 for several years, he was in poor financial straits and had to apply to the Durham welfare office for assistance, stating that he was willing to undertake any menial work of the type(s) previously envisaged for its inmates at the South Carolina Blind School he had attended in his youth.
A potential breakthrough occurred in July 1935 when J. B. Long, a store manager with a reputation for supporting local artists, introduced Davis, Fuller, and Red to the American Record Company, recording 15 sides in New York with Davis, comprising two blues, "I'm Throwin' Up My Hands" and "Cross and Evil Woman Blues", and the remainder all gospel numbers. Fourteen of these were released but were not large sellers, possibly because the market for gospel tunes was small, and partly because (according to Zack) although Davis' performances on guitar were spectacular, his vocals sounded a little strained, possibly on account of poor health. Although these earliest recordings are of huge value to scholars and listeners today, at the time they produced little direct impact for Davis, who returned to a life of near destitution in Durham. When a follow-up recording session in 1939 was mooted, Davis declined the offer. Up to 1943 he was still an itinerant preacher existing on welfare, with visiting workers recording that "His main interest in life it seems is religion... he stated that he was more interested in saving souls than in money".
In 1942 things finally started to look up for Davis: on his preaching trips he often passed through Raleigh, North Carolina and there caught the eye of Annie Belle Hicks, a twice divorced religious woman who ran a boarding house there, was attracted to Davis and his music, and offered him companionship and a place to stay. Things went well and in November 1943 the couple exchanged vows before a justice of the peace in Durham; Ian Zack comments that most likely, Davis' second marriage would not have been recognized legally because Davis had never officially divorced Mary Hendrix, so while his first wife was still living he could not legally be married again. Davis and Annie went on to be together as actual or de facto husband and wife for the remainder of his life. In late 1943, Annie followed two of her daughters who had relocated to New York City and was able to obtain a position as housekeeper to a family there; in January 1944 Davis joined her, and before long the couple had taken up residence in a second floor apartment in the East Bronx, where they were to stay for the next 16 years. Annie worked intermittently as a domestic help, while Davis remained an itinerant circuit minister (becoming ordained for a second time in either Harlem or The Bronx), preaching and singing the gospel primarily at storefront Baptist churches around the city; although it was by then illegal, he also brought in a little more funds performing Christian songs on the city streets. In 1945 his playing on the street came to the attention of the up-and-coming folk record producer Moses Asch who recorded around 31 minutes of music, of which, however, only one piece, the non-religious instrumental "Soldier's Drill" (retitled "Civil War Parade") was to appear on a U.S. release, 1967's Folkways collection of Asch recordings. Meanwhile, another four tunes were eventually licensed to appear in Britain, as part of the 1965 XTRA release Rev Gary Davis/Short Stuff Macon. Despite their historic value, these recordings were unlikely to have made much difference to Davis' situation since he was probably not paid for the session.