Reverend Gary Davis – “Live” At The Manchester Free Trade Hall (1964)

DOCD-32-20-14. Reverend Gary Davis – Manchester Free Trade Hall 1964

On May 8, 1964 the Rev, on tour with something called the Blues and Gospel Caravan, was recorded in live performance with his Gibson guitar at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England. In 2008 Document released a compact disc containing all of the music known to have been taped during that set. This is a revealing and wonderfully honest album of traditional songs, including If I Had My Way, a ritual first recorded by Blind Willie Johnson decades earlier and lucratively covered by the Caucasian folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary. Also present at the Free Trade Hall was whoop-and-holler harmonica ace Sonny Terry, an expressive performer who exchanges words and blows up a duet with Davis on The Sun is Going Down and solos at length on Coon Hunt.

Davis alternately sang both sacred as well as bracingly worldly blues tunes, and also tapped into his own early roots with the Cincinnati Flow Rag and Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag, syncopated episodes that, along with everything else on this excellent album, link him directly to old time ragtime/blues guitar legends Henry Thomas, Blind Boy Fuller, and Blind Blake. – arwulf

The image above shows that Rev Gary Davis was also supposed to have appeared the Granada Studios filming of the Blues and Gospel Train event at the local railway station . As the late CP Lee noted in 2013  “The Rev. Gray Davies’ performance hasn’t been cut. He was, how do you say? Indisposed at the time of the recording and reclining in the tour bus” Muddy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

Informative booklet notes by Bob Groom and detailed discography.

Also available