[Deathwatch] Dave Ray, musician, 59

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Thanks to a reader for this one - Ed.

Folk-blues legend Dave Ray dies at 59
Chris Riemenschneider and Tim Campbell
Star Tribune
 
Nov. 29, 2002

Minneapolis folk-blues legend Dave Ray, who won quiet renown for his
virtuosic guitar work and sly, insinuating vocals, died at his home
early Thursday after a battle with cancer. He was 59.

As part of the Twin Cities trio Koerner, Ray and Glover, he was an
influence on musicians for more than four decades, from Bob Dylan and
the Beatles to Bonnie Raitt and Beck.

Fittingly, his final public performance was with his partners,
harmonica player Tony Glover and singer/guitarist Spider John Koerner,
last weekend at a folk conference in Princeton, N.J.

"It felt really right that the last gig he played was with me and John,
41 years later," Glover said Thursday night. He said that Ray's
condition had been deteriorating and that he needed help in walking --
but still managed to play well.

Ray was a high-school student when he and Glover met around 1961. "I'd
been hearing about this kid who'd been playing this amazing 12-string
guitar," Glover said.

"Some people sort of hooked us up," Glover recalled. "I came by the
apartment and heard this amazing kind of Leadbelly music coming out. I
looked around the room, and saw this apple-cheeked kid in the corner
with a guitar. It turned out to be Dave."

They and Koerner rode the wave of the '60s folk explosion, making a
series of albums and playing festivals.

"Every time they play, the lights shine," wrote Dylan when they
released their last album in 1996. As young Bobby Zimmerman, Dylan had
listened to records at Ray's house and traveled in the same circles.

Still, the trio never achieved more than cult status, hindered by lack
of support and divergent personal lives.

"It's amazing how much these guys accomplished with so little," Rolling
Stone senior editor David Fricke said, referring to the 25 albums the
members made among them. "The whole indie-rock business owes them a
long debt of gratitude."

Ray said last week that "I don't have any regrets, because I know what
you have to give up to make it."

Seated in a recliner, feet up, at the Seward neighborhood duplex where
he lived for 25 years, Ray spoke proudly of how he took over his
father's insurance business in 1981 and ran it until 1996. That, not
music, was how he raised two kids and coped with medical bills.

In May, he was found to have stage IV adenocarcinoma. The cancerous
masses started in his lungs and had spread to other parts of his body.

Still, he soldiered on. "I'm going to keep playing as long as I can,"
he said in an interview about an upcoming concert. "It's what I was
meant to do."

"Dave told me a couple months ago, 'I'm ready to die; I've always been
ready to die,' " said Minneapolis musician Willie Murphy, a
contemporary whose career often intertwined with the trio's. (He and
Ray were enlisted by Bonnie Raitt to record her 1971 debut at Ray's
studio.)

Murphy said Ray's life ended the way he wanted: "He died at home, he
played up to the last, he refused chemo. The saddest part is that just
in the last few years, he had gotten out of insurance and become a
full-time musician. He was at his peak artistically."

Ray is survived by his wife, Mary Jane Mueller, children Barnaby and
Nadine Ray, mother Nellie, brothers Tom and Max and sister Karen.

Services are pending, but it's likely that a concert planned by
Koerner, Ray and Glover for Dec. 13 at First Avenue in Minneapolis will
turn into a memorial.

A way to 'get into the cool parties'

Initially weaned on classical music by his grandmother, a music
teacher, Ray came across his first blues records during his early
teens. When he met Glover and Koerner, he was attending the old
University High School in Dinkytown by day, and playing coffeehouses
and house parties at night. Somehow, the trio clicked.

"It was our way to get into the cool parties," Ray said. "But it was
also our way of hearing the music we liked. Popular music at the time
was terrible. I couldn't take it, man."

Their first step to national recognition came in March 1963, when they
traveled to Milwaukee for a 12-hour recording session with a small
label, Audiophile Records. The result was "Blues, Rags & Hollers" -- an
album that become a favorite of John Lennon and the Rolling Stones.
Made for a pittance, it had the clean quality of folk records at the
time but not the stiffness. The blues sounded surprisingly unforced and
natural.

"They gave hope to white college kids everywhere," Fricke said.

Of the 600 copies originally pressed, one wound up in the hands of
Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman. He re-released the album and
arranged for the trio to record a second one in New York. On their way
home, they picked up a gig at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. A gig at
the 1964 Newport Folk Festival followed.

"And we were off and running," Ray said wryly. "Or off and crawling,
anyway."

After five albums, the trio separated, but reunited periodically over
the years, including a pair of Minneapolis concerts in 1996 that became
their final disc, "One Foot in the Groove."

Beck, who had Ray and Glover open his first big Twin Cities show, said
of the trio: "They seemed to be one of the only people from that
folk-revival period who would just completely play their music with
abandon. They were just so raucous."

Ray's last Twin Cities performance was Nov. 15, a concert at the Cedar
Cultural Center shared with another '60s folk-blues figurehead, Geoff
Muldaur. Ray had to be helped to the stage, but once there he picked up
a thick book of songs and swapped tunes all night with Muldaur.

During one song, he moved around his guitar neck with such caressing
wizardry, a gasp rose from the crowd, and from Muldaur.

When the set ended, Muldaur walked up to the center's manager and
joked, "How much do I owe you?"