AVID Roots continues with its Three Classic Album Plus series with a re-mastered 2CD release from the Reverend Gary Davis, complete with original artwork, liner notes and personnel details (where available). ‘Pure Religion And Bad Company’; ‘Say No To The Devil’; ‘A Little More Faith’ plus side two of ‘American Street Songs: Harlem Street Spirituals’ If you were asked to come up with the perfect template for a blues singer you could not do better than coming up with the name of our next special guest, the Reverend Gary Davis. Born in South Carolina into a large family of eight siblings, he would be the only one to survive to adulthood. Blind from an early age he was also treated poorly by his mother and was eventually given to his paternal grandmother to raise him. His father would die when Davis was only ten years old. So in the mid 1920s, he took his guitar and headed down the road to try to make a living. He turned up in Durham North Carolina where he met Blind Boy Fuller and fell in with the Piedmont blues scene. More importantly he was introduced to the American Record Company where he was to make his first professional recordings. Perhaps even more importantly, and certainly so for Davis, he became a Christian and was ordained as a Baptist minister. From this time on Gary Davis became the Reverend Gary Davis and would never again play secular music but confine his live and recorded output to purely religious music. And what powerful music it is! A brilliant guitar style and rough sand-paper voice made an awesome combination as you will hear on our four selections.
