Ray Davis
Host, The Ray Davis Show
Davis joined WAMU 88.5 in 1985 to host Saturday Bluegrass and shared hosting duties for the weekday afternoon program, Bluegrass Country, with Jerry Gray until 2001.
Ray Davis left his boyhood home in Wango, Md., on his 15th birthday, and began his radio career at WDOV-AM in Dover, Del., a few weeks later. He went on to jobs at other small town stations around the country and a south-of-the-border stint at XERF, a Mexican mail-order station where he learned how to be a radio pitchman. Davis came to the East Coast to work at WBMD in Baltimore, where he spent 38 years hosting a popular bluegrass program from Johnny's Used Cars. Beginning in 1962, Ray began recording some of the nation's finest bluegrass musicians and selling these recordings under his own record label, Wango.
Davis joined WAMU 88.5 in 1985 to host Saturday Bluegrass and shared hosting duties for the weekday afternoon program, Bluegrass Country, with Jerry Gray until 2001. On Sunday mornings at 10 a.m., he hosts The Ray Davis Show, three hours of traditional bluegrass music. He also hosts bluegrass festivals and concerts far and wide, including the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival, the Arcadia Music Festival, and the Graves Mountain Bluegrass Festival. Ray also produces six hours of bluegrass music each week on WAMU's Internet radio station, BluegrassCountry.org
When he's not acting as program or concert host, Davis is holed up in his basement studio producing CDs from hundreds of bluegrass tapes he's recorded over the years. These "basement tapes" include previously unreleased jam sessions with many legendary bluegrass artists, but they are not available for purchase. Davis provides the recordings as premiums for WAMU 88.5 members who pledge during bluegrass programs during the station's on-air membership campaigns.
