Say No to the Devil by Ian Zack5/19/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() There, he gained entry into a circle of musicians that included, among many others, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Dave Van Ronk. ![]() Drawing on extensive research and interviews with many of Davis’s former students, Ian Zack takes readers through Davis’s difficult beginning as the blind son of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South to his decision to become an ordained Baptist minister and his move to New York in the early 1940s, where he scraped out a living singing and preaching on street corners and in storefront churches in Harlem. The first biography of Davis, Say No to the Devil restores “the Rev’s” remarkable story. Ian Zack takes ‘Blind Gary’ out of the footnotes and into the footlights of the history of American music.” -Steve Katz, cofounder of Blood, Sweat & Tearsīob Dylan called Gary Davis “one of the wizards of modern music.” Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead-who took lessons with Davis-claimed his musical ability “transcended any common notion of a bluesman.” And the folklorist Alan Lomax called him “one of the really great geniuses of American instrumental music.” But you won’t find Davis alongside blues legends Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. ![]()
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