[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 7669]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          WAMU 88.5'S RAY DAVIS CELEBRATES 60 YEARS ON THE AIR

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                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 1, 2008

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, Ray Davis, host of The Ray Davis Show on 
WAMU's Bluegrass Country, celebrates 60 years in broadcasting on May 2. 
Ray Davis joined WAMU 88.5 in 1985 to host Saturday Bluegrass, and 
shared hosting duties for the weekday afternoon program, Bluegrass 
Country, until 2001. He currently hosts 3 live hours of traditional 
bluegrass music on The Ray Davis Show at 3 p.m., weekdays, and 10 a.m., 
Sundays, on WAMU's Bluegrass Country, heard in Washington, DC, in HD 
Radio at 88.5, Channel 2, and online at bluegrasscountry.org.
  Davis provides area bluegrass fans and online listeners worldwide 
with a daily dose of the traditional American art form, from prison 
songs and ``plum pitiful'' tunes to the great train rides--and train 
wrecks--of bluegrass music, all delivered with Davis' encyclopedic 
knowledge of the artists and the music. More than a DJ, Ray Davis is 
both a musicologist and an archivist who takes listeners on a stroll 
down bluegrass music's memory lane. His specialties, the plum pitiful 
tunes, are tearjerkers that explore universal themes of death, 
betrayal, and jealousy.
  ``Ray Davis is a legend in music broadcasting. He has helped define 
bluegrass music on-air since its earliest days as a discrete genre, and 
has placed a lasting imprint on it with his dedication to playing, 
promoting, and recording its musicians,'' said Caryn G. Mathes, WAMU 
88.5's General Manager. ``His booming, resonant voice is synonymous 
with the sound of bluegrass at WAMU, and his willingness to explore 
broadcasting on multiple new media platforms as radio evolves has been 
an inspiration to me.''
  Davis began his radio career at the age of 15, when he left his 
boyhood home in Wango, MD, for a job at WDOV-AM in Dover, DE. He had 
jobs at other small town stations around the country, as well as a 
stint south of the border at XERF, the Mexican mail-order station that 
made Wolfman Jack famous, where he learned to be a radio pitchman. 
Davis returned to the east coast and spent 38 years hosting a popular 
bluegrass program from Johnny's Used Cars for WBMD in Baltimore, MD. In 
1962, he began recording some of the Nation's finest bluegrass 
musicians and selling these recordings under his own label, Wango.
  Davis hosts bluegrass festivals and concerts around the country, 
including the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival, and the Arcadia Music 
Festival. He also produces 15 hours of bluegrass music each week for 
WAMU's Bluegrass Country. When he's not acting as program host or 
concert emcee, chances are Davis is holed up in his basement studio 
producing CDs from hundreds of bluegrass tapes he's recorded over the 
years. Since the 1960s, Davis has been enlisting friends like Carter 
and Ralph Stanley, Don Reno, Bill Harrell, the Warrior River Boys, the 
Gillis Brothers, Owen Saunders, and a host of others to make his so-
called ``basement tapes.'' The basement tapes include previously 
unreleased jam sessions with many of these legendary bluegrass artists.
  American University's radio station since 1961, WAMU 88.5 is the 
leading public radio station for NPR news and information in the 
greater Washington, DC, area with more than 650,000 listeners in the 
region. WAMU 88.5 is ``your NPR news station in the Nation's capital.''

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