When I got P2P, I started listening to a lot of old early '70s stuff I hadn't heard for years (separated as I am from my own music collections by geography, time, and theft). I vowed to ignore taste and popularity, and just listen to stuff I liked or found interesting. Come to think of it, my wife's been remarkably tolerant, given what she's been forced to listen to.
I began by listening to all sorts of old stuff - psychedelic, progressive, some old Dead, Airplane, Hot Tuna, and Jerry Garcia's first two solo albums. Then I found Garcia's bluegrass stuff (starting with The Pizza Tapes). I also started listening to Jorma Kaukonen's new stuff, including the exceptional Blue Country Heart, and some great live stuff he did with Sam Bush.
Of course, all of this with lots of detours into various prog, jam-band, blues, bluegrass, and blue-eyed soul byways. And then old blues pickers, and old acoustic blues in general, with plenty of Son House and Blind Willie McTell.
At the same time I seem to have picked up a taste for singer/songwriter types - from the squeaky clean Jack Johnson and Donavan Frankenreiter (I blame the nieces in NZ for those two), through Rufus Wainright, Mason Jennings and the like to Will Oldham. And, like many people these days, a renewed interest in Dylan, especially John Wesley Harding, always my favorite. My tastes have countrified quite a bit. Still, they've always been fluid and I've been there before.
And I now have countless versions of songs like "John the Revelator", "Tobacco Road", and "Wayfaring Stranger." And cheesy bluegrass covers of everything from the Dead to Zeppelin and Metallica.
Anyway, to the Reverend Gary Davis. If you haven't heard of him, he's a significant figure — up there with Blind Arthur Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Blind Willie Johnson.
The reason I discovered him was because Jorma Kaukonen studied under him before joining Jefferson Airplane, learning blues picking and a pile of tunes, and the Hot Tuna output reflects this. He inspired dozens of modern guitarists and singers including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, and Donovan; and Jorma Kaukonen, David Bromberg, and Ry Cooder, who also studied with Davis.
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