Obit: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died (Nov 2002)

Subject: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST,Mary Katherine
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 11:48 AM

From Tony Glover, the sad news has come:

Subj: RIP Dave Ray Nov 28, 2002
Date: 11/28/02 8:30:36 AM Pacific Standard Time

At 6:15 this AM Dave Ray passed away at home in his sleep.
As most of you know, he was diagnosed with lung cancer last spring. He continued performing up to the end. It seems fitting that his last gig was last Friday night in Princeton University with K,R&G. The circle was complete.

MJ has asked to please hold your calls and visits for the time being. No memorial service is planned at this time- instead the KR&G gig scheduled for Dec 13 at First Avenue will probably become a celebration of Dave's life and music with many of his friends and musical cohorts.

We will all miss him.

Tony

Subject: RE: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 12:56 PM

Thanks for letting us know. Sorry to hear this.

It's not updated, yet, but his website has some great stuff and can be accessed by clicking here.

kat

Subject: RE: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 12:58 PM

I don't know where you go when you die, but whenever I get there there sure will be some damned good music!

I'm sorry to hear this.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 04:14 PM

So sorry to hear this. I had a letter from him about four months ago. All three of those guys were singular talents.

Art

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Stewie
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 06:26 PM

Sad news indeed. Another fine blues musician done gone.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Fortunato
Date: 28 Nov 02 - 09:11 PM

Art and Stewie are correct. Dave 'Snaker'Ray was an early light in the darkness for me. K,R and G opened many and eye and ear and mine among them. And he did play the blues. How I wish I'd had the chance to meet him and talk to him. ...I'll bid farewell and be down the road. chance.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: reggie miles
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 01:38 AM

I had the pleasure to hear Dave and his Snakes (Tony and others) perform when I was last in the Minneapolis area, around 1978. That evening he recited a poetry piece called Love On A Street Corner. Afterward I remember wishing I had had the courage to ask him for the words to that.

I had listened to the recordings that he had made with John and Tony and loved their explorations into the roots blues stuff. I was, at that time, just beginning my own pursuit into the same.

More recently, I located his web page and found him still very active and performing in many different combinations. I had heard about his condition.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Coyote Breath
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 01:55 AM

A damn fine musician. It seems like yesterday I heard Dave and Tony performing at an obscure coffee house on Milwaukee's East side but in fact it was forty years ago! That's a lot of music.

Sorry to hear the news.

CB

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST,Chanteyranger
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 02:07 AM

"Blues, Rags and Hollers" albums helped me get through the disco era in college. Such unadorned great music from those guys. Very sad to hear of this. Thanks for letting us know. guest M.K.

Chanteyranger

Subject: Obit: Dave 'Snaker' Ray - 11/27/2002
From: Trapper
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 09:01 AM

I just received this email from Bob Jensen at www.Folkrocks.com...

At 6:15 this AM Dave Ray passed away at home in his sleep.

As most of you know, he was diagnosed with lung cancer last spring. He continued performing up to the end. It seems fitting that his last gig was last Friday night in Princeton University with K,R&G. The circle was complete.

MJ has asked to please hold your calls and visits for the time being. No memorial service is planned at this time- instead the KR&G gig scheduled for Dec 13 at First Avenue will probably become a celebration of Dave's life and music with many of his friends and musical cohorts.

We will all miss him.

Tony

Link to Mudcat discussion of Dave's illness

Link to Dave Ray's website

---

Messages from multiple threads combined.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Obit: Dave 'Snaker' Ray - 11/27/2002
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 09:31 AM

Blessings to him, his family, and friends. A great light has gone out.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 11:17 AM

Damn fine musician. R.I.P.

Rick

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST,Mr. Butts
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 12:05 PM

He was only 59 years old, but he smoked, smoked, smoked those cigarettes. He puffed, puffed, puffed himself to death.

Without the cancer sticks driving nails in his coffin, he could have had twenty or thirty more years of making music, and sharing life with his wife, kids, friends and fans.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST,Jim Dixon (away from home, sans cookie)
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 02:20 PM

Dave must have loved performing because he kept a busy schedule right up to the end.

I'm grateful that he maintained a website and kept it up to date with news of his gigs as well as his health. (I see it hasn't been updated to include news of his death.) He was astonishingly frank about his illness, e.g. on 26-Oct-02: "The primary mass in my mediastinal region continues to grow (slightly) and metastasize to other sites, notably liver, surrounding lymph nodes and, apparently, hip and lower spine. These spots are small, but new, so the primary is alive and kicking ass…." I call this exemplary courage.

Thanks to his web site, I was able to hear him perform 3 times after I first heard of his cancer. The local newspapers, I learned, usually didn't list his gigs in their weekly entertainment schedules. The types of places he performed were too far "below the radar" for them to take notice. For instance, he had a steady gig at the American Legion in Minneapolis, on Saturday afternoons. A lot of his friends hung out there. Some would jam with him. The beer was cheap. The popcorn was free. The décor was… well, you can hardly imagine anything more basic. The crowd was a lot older than what you'd find in the trendy nightclubs (except for a few kids who were probably Dave's friends' grandchildren).

The lesson I learned from this is, if you want to hear these old-timers play, you've got to seek them out. "Network", so to speak. Don't rely on newspapers.

For the record, here are the recent threads about him:
Dave 'Snaker' Ray hospitalized
Dave Ray update
Dave 'Snaker' Ray health update

Reggie Miles: Dave's website contains a poem, Lovelife on the Corner. I suppose that's the one you had in mind.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST,Roger in Baltimore
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 03:02 PM

It's so sad to hear this news. K, R, & G led me to much of the music I love today; Huddie Ledbetter, prison work songs, and the blues, in general. I've followed his career for 34 years. In his honor, I will do what I can to carry the tradition. I just know he's found his "Fine, Soft Land."

Roger in Baltimore

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 04:16 PM

Thanks for the link to that amazing poem. Indeed, it brings back the '60s and 70s almost as well as "Gentle On My Mind". This world of HIV sure is different than those mesmerizing times on the folk scene. Yes, we were excessive with smoking and relationships----but being excessive is what youth is for and about. Living through it all is a perk for some---the luck of the draw---and it was done for three things pretty much. As Lawrence Durrell said in his great books called The Alexandria Quartet (and I paraphrase), "There are three things you can do with a woman: You can lover her. You can suffer for her. Or you can turn her into songs."

Sorry if that's sexist, but, kids, that was before "sexist" was even a word. ;-) I'm gonna miss Dave --- and I hadn't seen him since those recording sessions in Rockford, Illinois over thirty years ago. But I sure did keep on listening to him all those years.

I'm sorry if this aside doesn't belong in an obit. I just liked that poem and wanted to say why.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 07:15 PM

Here is the Minneapolis Star Tribune obituary:

Folk-blues legend Dave Ray dies at 59
Chris Riemenschneider and Tim Campbell
Star Tribune

Published Nov. 29, 2002 RAY29
   

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?"

-- Chris Riemenschneider is at [e-mail].

-- Tim Campbell is at [e-mail].

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 07:21 PM

And the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

TWIN CITIES: Guitarist Dave Ray dies at 59
BY GITA SITARAMIAH
Pioneer Press

Guitarist Dave "Snaker" Ray of the legendary Minnesota folk-blues trio Koerner, Ray & Glover died Thursday morning at his home. He had been diagnosed with cancer last spring.

"Dave Ray was the best interpreter of blues music of his generation," said Dakota Dave Hull, a local guitarist and KFAI-FM radio personality.

Ray, 59, had continued performing despite his illness. His band mate, singer/guitarist "Spider" John Koerner, remembered performing with Ray and harmonica player Tony Glover last Friday in Princeton, N.J.

"His spirits held pretty well through the whole thing," Koerner said. "At the time, he was struggling. He couldn't walk very well."

A statement from Ray's family said: "It seems fitting that his last gig was last Friday night (at) Princeton University with K, R&G. The circle was complete."

Koerner, Ray & Glover's recordings were a key part of the '60s folk-blues revival. The band was a mainstay at Minneapolis nightspots, including the Triangle Bar on the West Bank, during that era.

The trio, founded in 1962, cut several albums starting with "Blues, Rags & Hollers." That upbeat, folk-tinged blues record gained widespread praise from the likes of John Lennon and the Doors.

They performed at the Newport and Philadelphia folk festivals as well as the club and college circuits. The trio drifted apart in the late '60s, but Ray continued performing with both men over the years.

In 1972, he built a recording studio in the Minnesota woods. His label, Sweet Jane Ltd., engineered Bonnie Raitt's first Warner Bros. album.

Ray also led several blues and rock bands, including Bamboo, Snake, The Waist Band and The Volunteers of the Blue Knight.

During the '70s and '80s, Koerner, Ray & Glover reunited for several special shows.

The trio won the 2000 and 2001 Folk Group of the Year from the Minnesota Music Academy.

After rumors spread earlier this year in the music community that Ray had suffered a stroke, Ray's wife, Mary Jane Mueller, issued a statement in May that read: "The specific diagnosis, treatment and prognosis will follow further tests, which are in progress."

Ray was diagnosed with stage IV adenocarcinoma in May. The cancerous masses started in his lungs and had spread to other parts of his body.

Ray kept fans and friends informed of his condition by posting frequent updates about his battle with cancer on his Web site at www.jdray.com. The most recent entry was Oct. 26.

"The primary mass in my mediastinal region continues to grow (slightly) and metastasize to other sites, notably liver, surrounding lymph nodes and, apparently, hip and lower spine," he wrote. "These spots are small, but new, so the primary is alive and kicking ass."

Hull attended Ray's last Minnesota performance on Nov. 17 at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis. "Dave was on top of his game that night," he said. "It was as close to perfect as any gig I've seen."

Hull said: "Dave was doing his music, doing what he loved, right until the tail end of his life. He checked out with class and dignity. I hope I can do 10 percent that well when my time comes."

Formal services had not been scheduled Thursday, but a family statement said, "The KR&G gig scheduled for Dec. 13 at First Avenue (in Minneapolis) will probably become a celebration of Dave's life and music with many of his friends and musical cohorts."

In addition to his wife, Ray is survived by children, Barnaby and Nadine Ray; mother, Nellie; sister, Karen; and brothers, Tom and Max.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: greg stephens
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 07:35 PM

Sad news very sad news. Blues rags and Hollers amde a huge impact in England. People over here were turned on by Leadbelly etc etc and were worried that America was forgetting what it had got and collapsing into a Peter Paul and Mary/Baez morass. But Koerner Ray and Glover let us know that the light was shining. Alas I nevr met Dave Ray though I had some good times with John Koerner, but I have some treasured records and some one off live tapes of his inimitable stuff. Sadly missed.
And extra sad that an unpleasant troll gets off on sullying a tribute thread, but I guess it takes all sorts.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From:
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 10:57 PM

back in the mid 1970's i bought the Bamboo album at a flea market.. i had no idea who the musicians were but the guy insisted the LP was great and he said it was a "sleeper".. that someday this LP would be sought after.. i listened to the lp several times and after I got out of high school my record collection grew and i never played it again.. in fact i hadn't even thought about the album in 20+ years.. last night i had a dream about this lp and in the dream a friend was listening to it and i was amazed that he had heard about it.. i told him what the guy who sold it to me said about it being a "sleeper" and that one day people would be seeking it out.. like i said i hadn't even thought about this lp in over 20 years.. i still didn't know anything about the musicians but the dream was so real and so out of the blue that i logged on to the net today to look it up and see what i could find out about it.. i don't believe it was a coincidence that on the day i had this dream Mr. Ray passed on.. what it means i have no idea.. and i am now wondering how it all fits together..

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 29 Nov 02 - 11:55 PM

I found this on the [Minneapolis] Star Tribune's web site:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/3465058.html
Apparently it's going to be published tomorrow as an unsigned editorial.

Dave Ray: Minnesota loses a giant

Published Nov. 30, 2002 ED30A

When John Koerner, Dave Ray and Tony Glover set out for Milwaukee in 1963 to make their first LP, they regarded the trip as a wild and perhaps hopeless gamble. But "Blues, Rags & Hollers" would become an international classic, and in their own way, the three young musicians did as much as Tyrone Guthrie or Stanislaw Skrowaczewski to put Minneapolis on the world's cultural map. So when Dave Ray died of cancer on Thursday, Minnesota lost a giant of its counterculture and its high culture too.

White kids didn't generally listen to black music in 1961, so the larger society didn't appreciate the endless beauty and infinite potential of the blues, gospel and R&B. But Dave Ray did. The St. Paul kid came home one day with a record by the blues singer Leadbelly and a strange look in his eye. "He disappeared into the basement with that record and his guitar and we didn't see him for two weeks," his sister, Karen, recalled Friday. "It changed his life."

The world noticed. John Lennon got his hands on a copy of "Blues, Rags & Hollers" and wrote Ray a note of passionate appreciation. Ray wrote back, allowing that the admiration was mutual, and the two began a regular correspondence. When a gifted but unknown Massachusetts singer named Bonnie Raitt was ready to make her first record, John Koerner told her that Dave Ray was setting up an independent recording studio in Minnesota. The record that Dave and his first wife, Sylvia, helped produce at an empty summer camp on an island in Lake Minnetonka during the summer of 1971 created a sensation and launched Bonnie Raitt's career.

Ray welcomed a broader audience for the folk-blues music he loved, but he vigorously resisted commercialism. He stayed in Minnesota because he loved it, and ultimately took over his father's insurance business because it was a responsible way to support two children. He turned down journalists seeking interviews more than once because he could never quite make himself comfortable with the establishment press. And when he produced John Koerner's marvelous record "Music is Just a Bunch of Notes," they wrapped it in plain brown paper cut from grocery bags and the whole family sat around labeling the jackets with rubber stamps and felt-tip pens.

On that album, Koerner recorded the great "Everybody's Goin' for the Money," a rollicking and bitter commentary on modern consumer culture. Dave Ray, of course, never did go for the money. He went for something more enduring and more venerable, and Minnesota is much the richer for it.

© Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. All rights reserved

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 30 Nov 02 - 04:42 PM

Below is yet another tribute to Dave Ray printed in today's St. Paul Pioneer Press, at http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/entertainment/4633620.htm

I must confess some ambivalence about seeing these tributes in the local papers. They seem to be falling all over themselves saying nice things about him now that he's dead, but they rarely reviewed his work or printed notices of upcoming performances while he was alive.

His performance at the Cedar Cultural Center on Nov. 17 was an exception, but that rated only one paragraph at the end of a long column, and that probably because (1) the Cedar is the biggest local "folk" venue, and (2) he was appearing with a big-name touring musician, Geoff Muldaur.

Now, it could be that the newspapers aren't totally to blame. Maybe Dave didn't bother to put out press releases, and only the Cedar did. Maybe Dave preferred to keep in contact with his fans through his web site. But I didn't know he had a web site until I read it in Mudcat, and that was only mentioned after it was announced that Dave had cancer.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on Sat, Nov. 30, 2002   

IN APPRECIATION: Spirit of the blues lived in Dave Ray
BY ROB HUBBARD
Pioneer Press

Dave Ray never shook the blues.

From the first time he picked up a guitar in his early teens to his death Thursday from cancer at age 59, the Minneapolis folk legend was a one-man blues revival, using his pick, slide and growling voice to bring the genre's classic tunes to life. Over the past four decades, a week would rarely pass when you couldn't find Ray on the stage of some Twin Cities bar or coffeehouse, singing and picking the blues from his soul.

Among the performers who brought the "folk scare" to the java joints around the University of Minnesota campus in the late '50s and early '60s, Ray was the youngest and bluesiest of the bunch. After turtleneck-clad young strummers would offer plaintive love ballads, Ray would rough up the proceedings with raw acoustic blues.

The passionate young picker was an inspiration to all of the other folkies who hung around the U, including Bob Zimmerman, who soon moved to New York, changed his last name to Dylan, and remained a lifelong friend of Ray.

While visiting New York, Ray and harmonica player Tony Glover met a fellow Minnesotan, John Koerner. An evening of club hopping, sitting in and talking music gave birth to a partnership built around complementary tastes and interactive energy.

Just as Ray was the bluesman of the U's folk scene, Koerner, Ray & Glover became the prime purveyors of the blues in America's burgeoning folk movement, astounding audiences at such high-visibility venues as the Newport Folk Festival. Like the blues musicians they idolized, they took on nicknames: "Spider" John Koerner, "Snaker" Ray and "Little Sun" Glover.

The trio went in different directions later in the '60s but continued to reunite occasionally for concerts at such Minneapolis haunts as the Cedar Cultural Centre and First Avenue. Ray proved the perfect partner for Koerner's old-timey spirit and Glover's down-home harmonica. He often traveled in tandem with Koerner and performed a weekly gig with Glover for 10 years at the Times Bar in downtown Minneapolis. Up until recently, the duo continued the weekly evening of acoustic blues at Lee's Liquor Lounge.

But Ray was never a relic of the '60s seeking to recapture past glory. He was a working musician who enjoyed nothing more than conjuring the spirit of the blues to life with a variety of bands that sported such names as the Three Bedroom Ramblers, the Elegonzos and the Volunteers of the Blue Knight. While the groups were reviving seldom heard songs from a variety of traditions — ragtime, early jazz, vintage soul — Ray was always the one finding the blues that lurked beneath the surface of each style, plumbing it to the surface in exhilarating fashion.

Ray played his last local gig at the Cedar two weeks ago and bid his final farewell to audiences in the company of Koerner and Glover at Princeton University on Nov. 22. It was an appropriate end for a trio that found much of its early audience on Eastern college campuses.

Ray will be memorialized in a private service next week, but his many admirers are encouraged to attend a First Avenue show on Dec. 13 that was originally scheduled to be a Koerner, Ray & Glover performance. There, many of the musicians whose lives he touched over the past four decades will doubtless pay tribute to him in word and song.

LISTEN TO RAY

To hear samples of Dave Ray's music, go to www.amazon.com and search for "Koerner, Ray and Glover."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Hubbard can be reached at [e-mail] or [phone].

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Nov 02 - 05:27 PM

DAMN!

troll

Subject: Obit: Dave 'Snaker' Ray
From: M.Ted
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 02:37 PM

Here is the obituary from the Minneapolis paper--that Koerner,Ray, and Glover album was my first "real" blues album, and also the first record that I ever wore out--Thanks for leading me astray, Dave--


Folk-blues legend Dave Ray dies at 59

Chris Riemenschneider and Tim Campbell


Star Tribune


 


Published Nov. 29, 2002
        RAY29         
 

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?"



© Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

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Message transferred from duplicate thread. --JoeClone

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: reggie miles
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 07:21 PM

Jim Dixon, yep I found it there. Right after I posted, (above) I decided to take a closer look at his site and there it was. It's dated 1978 and that's when I heard him perform it at the Left Bank with The Snakes. When I went to see his show that evening I wanted to hear some of the stuff he had done with the trio but he had progressed beyond that earlier material. This one piece really stood out that evening because the band was just playing back up to his reading. It reminded me of much earlier examples of poets reading their work along with a backup band vamping and accents. Thanks for the link. Reg

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Dec 02 - 07:31 PM

Please see the "Memorials for Dave Ray" thread to find out where memorial donations can be made, and for information on the public memorial.

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST,Albion
Date: 17 Dec 02 - 09:52 PM

Thank you, Dave, for music that lives on, and has been living on, for all these years. I only am aware of a few genuises; when I listen to
"Baby Please Don't Go" from Fine Soft Land, I am swept up by yours.

Bless you wherever you are,

Dave Albion

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died
From: GUEST,Dale Palmer
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 03:03 AM

I got turned on to Dave Ray in the early '70's. He and his cohorts made some of the best music ever recorded. Long may his music play, and long may he be remembered. R.I.P Dave Ray. You are and will be missed. dp

Subject: RE: OBIT: Dave 'Snaker' Ray has died (Nov 2002)
From: Peace
Date: 02 Feb 05 - 03:36 AM

Man, I am sorry to read this obituary. Rest well, Dave.

BM