“…John Davis Plays Blind Tom (Newport Classics), …has singlehandedly revived the lost legacy of Wiggins.”

Wendell Brock, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Click here to read article about John Davis and Blind Tom in The New Yorker

“The importance of John Davis’ resurrection of ‘Blind Tom’ by playing Wiggins’ own compositions, and the historical materials he has made available, in a series of concerts and with this recording [John Davis Plays Blind Tom], the first one ever done, should redraw Wiggins’ image so that he can be seen not just a some “black freak,” but as a creative personality, performer, composer, no matter his physical limitations…The music, played with much emotional empathy by John Davis, puts one in mind of Fred Douglass’ famous soliloquy on some bluff overlooking the Chesapeake, just before he made his dash to freedom. Identifying with the free sailing ships which whip his mind with the contrast of his own bondage, he whispers, ‘You are loosed from your moorings and are free; I am fast in my changes, and am a slave!…You are freedom’s swift-winged angels that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron! O that I were free! O, that I were on one of your gallant decks…Go on, go on…'”

Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. LeRoi Jones), Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music

Click here to listen to John’s performance of Blind Tom’s “Oliver Galop,” selected for the 2005 “Southern Music Issue” of the Oxford American

 

“Pianist John Davis plays Tom’s pieces spiritedly, and provides informative liner notes. He also includes some writing about Tom by Black Nationalist poet Amiri Baraka, magician Ricky Jay, and neurologist Oliver Sacks. Sacks comments that autistic people cannot be creative, but the music refutes this at every turn. Both musicologists and neurologists would benefit from investigating this miraculous contradiction further.”

Harvey Pekar, NPR

 

Click here to listen to John talk about Blind Tom on ABC Radio National’s “Into the Music”

 

Click here to read full transcript of John’s appearance on ABC Radio National’s “Into the Music” and supporting information about Blind Tom on ABC.net

Listen below to the story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about Blind Tom’s grave at Evergreens Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY,  and John’s behind-the-scenes role in the unveiling of a headstone over Tom’s previously-unmarked remains.

Click here to read the story on the “All things Considered” show page

THE JOHN DAVIS CARAVAN:  Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, New York, NY
“Pianist John Davis has made a mission of uncovering music by 19th-century black pianists, including slaves, whose work had a direct impact on the blues, jazz, rock, and R&B artists that came in their wake. So far his Caravan has made stops for the music of Blind Boone and Blind Tom, resulting in critical adulation.”

Time Out New York

“Mr. Davis specializes in American music. His performances of works by William Albright (A Ragtime Lullabyand Pianoagogo) and James P. Johnson (Yamekraw) were well conceived… Everything else was nicely done, especially Copland’s wonderful Piano Variations, in which Mr. Davis found the homespun lyricism beneath the severe Serialist gestures…The Bartok performance [of Out of Doors] was hardly less impressive than the Copland.”

“[Davis’] playing was nothing if not exciting. In a time which has too often seen the rise of ‘cookie-cutter’ pianists,…here is a pianist who takes risk after risk…thank heaven for the experience.”

The Newark Star-Ledger