Rev. Gary Davis was an incredible ragtime guitar player. His arrangements illustrate what has become known as the Piedmont guitar style.

As a young man Rev. Davis played in a string band with the legendary Willie Walker. Several of the tunes featured on this double DVD lesson come from Walker’s repertoire, i.e. "Make Believe Stunt." Rev. Davis used to talk about Blind Blake’s “sportin’ right hand” and you can hear this influence in all of Rev. Davis’s ragtime playing.

These are challenging and difficult multipart arrangements. Ernie Hawkins teaches each section phrase by phrase and carefully shows you the right hand picking as well as the left hand fingerings that were unique to Rev. Davis’s approach. You will be able to easily follow the instruction with the tab/music booklet. Also featured are split screen segments where each section is played slowly and you can study the movements of each hand. As a bonus we have included various audio performances of Rev. Davis playing each song.

Disc One: Slow Drag (Cincinnati Flow Rag)

Disc Two: C Rag, Don’t Let My Baby Catch You Here and Make Believe Stunt (Maple Leaf Rag)

173 minutes • Level 3 • Detailed tab/music PDF file on each DVD

Review: Another classic from Ernie Hawkins on Rev. Gary Davis. If you are a fan of the Rev. Gary Davis, or if you are just a fan of the blues and would love to learn some very unique songs and fingerstyle play, this is a terrific opportunity to spend many hours with a master player and teacher.

Hawkins is a gifted teacher who is an expert on the music of Rev. Gary Davis, including many of the lesser known songs. This collection has some wonderful songs not normally known by many. Hawkins is a low key, patient teacher, who like all skilled teachers, is able to anticipate where his student will struggle. For this reason, he will slow down at certain points, repeat himself, and bring the student along with great skill.

For the intermediate guitarist, or for the high drive late beginner, this DVD set equals months of great lessons at an incredible value. Ernie Hawkins also taught the terrific C-A-G-E-D series, helping the student learn the fret board, which is here at Amazon.

Hawkins does a great job teaching the various works of Rev. Gary Davis, so do a search here at Amazon on some of the other offerings from Hawkins, which also have 5 Star ***** ratings for excellence. Between his slow, methodical teaching, his easy going personality, terrific selection of songs, and skilled camera work, you are purchasing months of "personal" lessons with one of our country's best teachers of acoustic guitar. – Peter Hyatt/Amazon Customer Review