playing". Legacy Music Johnson's music experienced a revival in the 1960s thanks in large part to the efforts of blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis. A highly regarded figure within the burgeoning New York folk scene, Davis gave copies of Johnson's records to young musicians and taught them to play his songs. The Soul Stirrers, Staples Singers, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Peter, Paul & Mary all covered Johnson. In 1969, the English folk-rock band Fairport Convention released the album What We Did on Our Holidays which included a song inspired by "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" called "The Lord Is in this Place...How Dreadful Is this Place". A compilation album titled Dark Was the Night was released in 2009 by the Red Hot Organization, a charity that raises awareness of HIV and AIDS issues through music. The Kronos Quartet recorded an arrangement of "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" that appears on the album. The song "Excavating Rita" by Half Man Half Biscuit on their 2011 album 90 Bisodol (Crimond) quotes the song's title. Singer-guitarist Jack White of The White Stripes called "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" "the greatest example of slide guitar ever recorded" and used the song as a standard to measure such iconic rock music that followed in its wake, such as "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin. In 2003, John Clarke in The Times wrote that "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was "the most intense and startling blues record ever made". Francis Davis, author of The History of the Blues concurs, writing "In terms of its intensity alone—its spiritual ache—there is nothing else from the period to compare to Johnson's 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground', on which his guitar takes the part of a preacher and his wordless voice the part of a rapt congregation." Johnson's recording of "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Wire included the song in their 1998 list of "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)". The staff wrote that Blind Willie "recorded nothing else like this and, therefore, it has no equal in recorded music, even though Ry Cooder has made a good