"Rev. Davis taught me, by example, to completely throw out my preconceptions of what can or can't be done on the guitar." – Bob Weir (The Grateful Dead)
"He was the most fantastic guitarist I'd ever seen." – Dave Van Ronk
"Gary Davis took you out of playing baby guitar and made you play it like a grown man." – Taj Mahal

Rev. Gary Davis was a musical genius. His music and guitar playing spanned a century of different techniques, styles and ideas and touched on so many musical formats, i.e. blues, ragtime, folk, gospel, marching songs and tin pan alley hits. In this series of four lessons, Ernie Hawkins teaches fourteen of Rev. Davis's most requested and famous gospel guitar arrangements. Rare footage of Rev. Davis playing many of the tunes taught in this collection is featured.

Ernie gives you a detailed rundown of each arrangement, analyzing the structure and timing of each phrase, verse and chorus and then replaying everything slower on a split screen with close-ups of both hands. A comprehensive 80 page tab/music booklet is included. All in all, almost six hours of instruction is presented.

Disc One: Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning, Samson and Delilah (If I Had My Way)
Disc Two: Children of Zion, Oh Glory How Happy I Am, I Belong To The Band, Goin' To Sit Down On The Banks Of The River
Disc Three: Death Don't Have No Mercy, Twelve Gates To The City, Let Us Get Together, Right Now
Disc Four: I Heard The Angels Singing, Crucifixion, I Am The Light Of This World, You Got To Move

354 minutes • Level 3/4 • 50 page PDF tab/music booklet

Review: Superb Instruction. This is my first experience with Ernie Hawkins guitar instruction and I am very impressed on a number of levels. The clips of The Rev are truly inspirational and the respect (almost reverence) of Ernie for his teacher is inspirational as well. The connection of the teacher, in this case Hawkins, to the music is a powerful component to this DVD set. The care and pace of repeatedly going over every musical detail was, for me, very similar to a personal lesson and enabled me to learn and play while “watching and pausing” the video without the necessity of going back to earlier sections again and again. Ernie, obviously, knows this music extremely well and is a Master of this style. Technically, the DVD is outstanding with excellent sound and video. It appears (not sure) that Ernie does the instruction on Rev. Davis' personal guitar! Great stuff. – P. Adams/Amazon Customer Review

Review: Ernie Hawkins does great service to his own memory and reverence for Davis and his own learning from him in almost a tribute instruction DVD of the Reverend's gospel music. His gospel music is great music and one doesn't have to be religious to be able to derive much listening pleasure from them and /or to learn superb finger picking possibilities from Hawkin's offering. One can either learn the tunes or some of them as is ( but most are pretty difficult ) or simply become aware of some new ideas, runs, riffs or whatever to incorporate into your pieces of like keys. These ideas become part of one's playing arsenal – as Stefan Grossman might say – of learning and playing other tunes. I've often thought that if Davis played with three or four fingers instead of just the index and thumb his greatness would even be more so. – Ken/Amazon Customer Review

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