Blues Musician. His early life is rather sketchy, being partially blind at birth and loosing his sight completely during his formative years, he showed an interest in music at an early age and built a guitar from a pie pan around the age of seven, teaching himself to play. He also taught himself to play harmonica, and banjo, performing for parties and picnics in his hometown area before moving to Durham, North Carolina, where he played blues on street corners. In the early 1930s, he turned to religious music and was ordained as a baptist minister in 1933. It was about this time that he teamed up with Blind Boy Fuller in Durham. Both artists traveled to New York City and recorded several sides for the American Record Company in 1935. Eventually making New York City his permanent residence and subsequently making numerous recordings while also preaching the gospel and playing his songs in the streets of Harlem. With his ragtime flavored blues and fingerpicking style, Davis influenced a lot of artists, most notably Stefan Grossman, Dave Van Ronk, Taj Mahal, Dave Bromberg and Ry Cooder. He became a well known figure in folk circles and performed at all the major festivals in the early 1960s, appearing at the Newport Folk Festival, playing his raspy voiced sermons, most notably his "Samson and Delilah (If I Had My Way)," a song most closely associated with Blind Willie Johnson, and "Twelve Gates to the City." He was also the subject of two television documentaries, one in 1967 and one in 1970. His influence is also heard in modern American music from the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan to Keb Mo, Olabelle and Resurrection Band. He was known as "Blind Gary Davis" on earlier recordings. He died of a Heart attack on his way to a performance.