Halley's Comet:

Around the Piano with Mark Twain & John Davis

One hundred years to the day since Mark Twain's death on April 21st, 1910, comes the release of Halley's Comet: Around the Piano with Mark Twain & John Davis. Pianist John Davis' musical tribute to America's most famous author also honors the 175th anniversary of Twain's birth and the 125th anniversary of the publication of his most influential book, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, all being celebrated in 2010. Halley's Comet features piano works with connections to Twain by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Blind Tom, Blind Boone, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Felix Kraemer, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert, interspersed with often hilarious, sometimes appalling, and always fascinating readings from Twain and his contemporaries.

Marshfield Tornado:

John Davis Plays Blind Boone

At last, roots music lovers, comes Marshfield Tornado, the long-awaited, follow-up to the top-ten selling, critically-acclaimed Newport Classic recording (NPD 85660), John Davis Plays Blind Tom. With this latest CD, Davis' focus shifts to the music of John William "Blind" Boone (1864-1927), a sightless black pianist from Missouri who modeled his career after Blind Tom's, and who was the last of a trio of overlapping nineteenth-century pianist/composers who were crucial links between rural African-American folk culture of the Deep South and the more urban rhythm and blues, jazz, and pop styles to emerge in the twentieth century. In addition to Davis' commanding performances of Boone's piano works, Marshfield Tornado has been "enhanced" to include Music Miner, a film by Joan Grossman that can be viewed on any home computer about Davis' ongoing "archeological" adventures unearthing America's buried musical past.

John Davis Plays Blind Tom

This is the CD that started it all, folks. Featuring fourteen works by the Georgia slave sensation, Thomas Wiggins, more popularly known as "Blind Tom." This critically-acclaimed recording almost singlehandedly resurrected Wiggins' career and became a top-ten seller at Tower Records and Amazon.com. In addition to my own liner note, the accompanying booklet includes essays by the Hollywood actor, sleight-of-hand artist, and scholar of eccentric performers, Ricky Jay; the neurologist and eminent writer, Oliver Sacks; and the incendiary poet, playwright, music critic, and political activist, Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones).

African American Lives

Entry for Blind Tom: edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, published by Oxford University Press, 2004, in conjunction with the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University

"Blind Tom: a Celebrated Slave Pianist Coping With Stress" (co-written with M. Grace Baron) published by Oxford University Press, 2006

African American National Biography

Entries for Blind Tom, Blind Boone, and Louis Moreau Gottschalk: edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, and published by Oxford University Press, 2008, in conjunction with the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University