Remembering the Rambling Ragtime Guitar Troubadour Roy Book Binder, 1943–2026

Roy Book Binder (1943–2026) carried the ragtime and country-blues tradition forward with wit, warmth, and a lifetime of stories from the road. A student of Reverend Gary Davis, Book Binder spent decades sharing that music with audiences everywhere from concert halls to small clubs. Below you’ll find his 2013 Acoustic Guitar Session performance, followed by an excerpt from a 1997 AG conversation about his blues origins.

“[Culture] was a big part of it. I got into this blues thing and this folk thing. It was 50 percent musical and it was 50 percent social. It was a rejection of the American values I was brought up on. I It was a rejection of the American values I was brought up on. I wanted to go out and do something that was much hipper, I thought.

Then when I met the old guys, and I started to travel with Gary Davis and go to church in Harlem with Mrs. Davis and take her shopping, it was like, “Whoa, man, this is cool.” All of a sudden it made me feel more for the music, I think because I was becoming part of it. People coming up today can never have what we have-we were very fortunate. We didn’t know how fortunate we were at the time. 

Reverend Gary Davis taught a lot of people how to play guitar, and I was probably his third worst student. He wanted everybody to sound and play exactly like he played, and I couldn’t. It’s to my blessing, because I know a lot of those kids today; they can play his  material note for note, but we got Gary for that. I was lucky to get my little bits from Gary and adapt them and create my own style . . . by accident.

I’m not known for being a songwriter, but I get my greatest satisfaction on stage playing my own songs. Often, without me saying they’re my own songs, the audience will surprise me during the break and say, “Oh, you know, those last two songs were the best ones. Which record are they on?” And I say, “Oh, I wrote those two.” That really makes me feel good. ‘Cause I think Gary Davis and all those guys really wanted us to continue a tradition, to get the roots from them and bring it to a different place, make it ours. To make it ours we have to sing about ourselves and our own experience, using the tools they gave us. To just sit there and play Blind Blake songs is not really relevant. I mean, I’m not going to sing any songs about picking cotton, because I’ve never desired to do that.

The thing that music gave me, it gave me a life. I told Reverend Davis on his deathbed, he was laying in the hospital, I said, “You know Reverend Davis, it’s great to be sitting here with you. You gave us all this music, and I was thinking the other morning, all my closest friends I have right now, I met all of them because of you.” I said, “You know that, Reverend Davis?” He said, “Yeah, I know that.”