John Fahey (musician)
Encyclopedia
John Fahey was an American
fingerstyle guitar
ist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar
as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism
, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk
and blues
traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian music into his œuvre. Fahey wrote a largely apocryphal autobiography and was known for his coarseness, aloof demeanor, and dry humour. He spent many of his latter years in poverty and poor health, but also enjoyed a minor career resurgence with a turn towards the more explicitly avant-garde
. He died in 2001 due to complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th in the Rolling Stone
"The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list.
. In 1945, the family moved to the Washington suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland
to a house on New York Avenue that Fahey's father Al lived in until his death in 1994. On weekends, the family often attended performances of top country
and bluegrass
groups of the day, but it was hearing Bill Monroe
's version of Jimmie Rodgers
' "Blue Yodel No. 7" on the radio that ignited the young Fahey's passion for music.
In 1952, after being impressed by guitarist Frank Hovington
, whom he met while on a fishing trip, he purchased his first guitar
for $17 from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue
. Along with his budding interest in guitar, Fahey was attracted to record collecting
. While his tastes ran mainly in the bluegrass and country vein, Fahey discovered his love of early blues upon hearing Blind Willie Johnson
's "Praise God I'm Satisfied" on a record-collecting trip to Baltimore with his friend and mentor, the musicologist Richard K. Spottswood
. Much later, Fahey compared the experience to a religious conversion and remained a devout blues disciple until his death.
As his guitar playing and composing progressed, Fahey developed a style that blended the picking patterns he discovered on old blues 78s with the dissonance of contemporary classical composers he loved, such as Charles Ives
and Béla Bartók
. In 1958, Fahey made his first recordings. These were for his friend Joe Bussard
's amateur Fonotone label. He recorded under the pseudonym Blind Thomas as well as under his own name.
In 1959, Fahey recorded at St. Michaels and All Angels Church in Adelphi, MD and that material would become the very first Takoma record. Having no idea how to approach professional record companies and being convinced they would be uninterested, Fahey decided to issue his first album himself, using some cash saved from his gas station attendant job at Martin's Esso and some borrowed from an Episcopal priest. So Takoma Records
was born, named in honor of his hometown. One hundred copies of this first album were pressed. On one side of the album sleeve was the name "John Fahey" and on the other, "Blind Joe Death"—this latter was a humorous nickname given to him by his fellow blues fans. He attempted to sell these albums himself. Some he gave away, some he sneaked into thrift stores and blues sections of local record shops, and some he sent to folk music scholars, a few of whom were fooled into thinking that there really was a living old blues singer called Blind Joe Death. It took three years for Fahey to sell the remainder.
After graduating from American University
with a degree in philosophy and religion, Fahey moved to California
in 1963 to study philosophy at the University of California
at Berkeley. Arriving on campus, Fahey—ever the outsider—began to feel dissatisfied with the program's curriculum (he later suggested that studying philosophy
had been a mistake and that what he had wanted to understand was really psychology
) and was equally unimpressed with Berkeley's (hippie
) music scene. Fahey loathed the polite Pete Seeger
-inspired revivalists he found himself classed with. The following year, Fahey moved south to Los Angeles
to join the folklore
master's program at UCLA at the invitation of department head D.K. Wilgus. Fahey's UCLA master's thesis on the music of Charley Patton was later published. He completed it with the musicological assistance of his friend Alan Wilson
, who shortly after became a member of Canned Heat
.
During this period, Takoma Records was reborn. Fahey decided to track down Blues legend Bukka White
by sending a postcard to Aberdeen, Mississippi
(White had sung that Aberdeen was his hometown, and Mississippi John Hurt
had been rediscovered using a similar method). When White responded, Fahey and ED Denson
, a Washington, DC area friend who had also moved west, decided to travel to Memphis and record White. The recordings by White became the first non-Fahey Takoma release. Fahey also, finally, released a second album in late 1963, called Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes. To their surprise the Fahey release sold better than White's and Fahey had a career going.
His releases during the mid-1960s employed odd guitar tunings and sudden style shifts rooted firmly in the old time and blues stylings of the 1920s. But he was not simply a copyist, as compositions such as "When the Catfish is in Bloom" or "Stomping Tonight on the Pennsylvania/Alabama Border" demonstrate. Fahey described the latter piece as follows : "The opening chords are from the last movement of Vaughan Williams
' Sixth Symphony. It goes from there to a Skip James
motif. Following that it moves to a Gregorian chant
, Dies Irae
. It's the most scary one in the Episcopal hymn books, it's all about the day of judgment
. Then it returns to the Vaughan Williams chords, followed by a blues run of undetermined origin, then back to Skip James and so forth." A hallmark of his classic releases was the inclusion of lengthy liner notes
, parodying those found on blues releases. Typically, these were epic acts of self-mythologization, mixing personal biography, reverie, folklore, and myriad obscure blues and bluegrass references.
Later albums from the sixties, such as Requia and The Yellow Princess found Fahey making sound collages from such elements as Gamelan
music, Tibetan chanting
, animal and bird cries and singing bridges. In 1967, Fahey recorded with Texas psych-rock
trio The Red Crayola at the 1967 Berkeley Folk Festival, music that resurfaced on the 1998 Drag City
reissue, The Red Krayola: Live 1967. The Red Crayola subsequently recorded an entire studio album with Fahey, but the Red Crayola's label demanded possession of the tapes and recorded documentation of those sessions has been missing ever since.
In addition to his own creative output, Fahey expanded the Takoma label, discovering fellow guitarists Leo Kottke
, Robbie Basho
and Peter Lang
, as well as emerging pianist George Winston
. Kottke's debut release on the label, 6- and 12-String Guitar
, ultimately proved to be the most successful of the crop, selling more than 500,000 copies. Other artists with albums on the label included Mike Bloomfield
, Rick Ruskin, The Fabulous Thunderbirds
, Maria Muldaur
, Michael Gulezian
and Canned Heat
. In 1979, Fahey sold Takoma to Chrysalis Records
. Jon Monday
, who had been the General Manager of the label since 1970 was the only employee to go with the new company. Chrysalis eventually sold the rights to the albums, and Takoma was in limbo until bought by Fantasy Records
in 1995.
in 1981 to live with his third wife. In 1986, Fahey contracted Epstein-Barr syndrome, a long-lasting viral infection similar to chronic fatigue syndrome
, which exacerbated his diabetes and other health issues. He continued to perform in and around the Salem area, as he was managed by friends David Finke and his wife Pam. The trio attempted to keep Fahey's career afloat by radio appearances and small venue performances. He broke up with his third wife and his life began to spiral downward. He made what appeared to be his last album in 1990.
Although he won his five-year battle with Epstein-Barr, Fahey spent much of the early 1990s living in poverty, mostly in cheap motels. Gigs had dried up, due to his health problems. He paid his rent by pawning his guitars and reselling rare records he found in thrift stores.
Following a 1994 entry on Fahey in Spin magazine
's spin-off Alternative Record Guide publication, Fahey learned that he now had a whole new audience, which included alternative US bands Sonic Youth
and Cul de Sac
, and the avant-garde musician Jim O'Rourke
. Byron Coley
published a large article called "The Persecutions and Resurrections of Blind Joe Death" (also in Spin magazine) and at the same time a two-cd retrospective called The Return of the Repressed all combined to kick-start Fahey's career. Suddenly new releases started to appear in rapid succession, in parallel to the reissue of all the early Takoma releases by Fantasy Records.
Jim O'Rourke went on to produce a Fahey album, 1997's Womblife, while in the same year Fahey recorded an album with Cul de Sac
, The Epiphany of Glenn Jones (Glenn Jones is the lead guitarist of Cul de Sac). This late flowering showed Fahey had changed. Gone were the melodic dreaminess and folk-based meditations of the 60s and 70s, which Fahey himself characteristically denounced as "cosmic sentimentalism". In characteristically witty fashion, he once said of his style: "How can I be a folk? I'm from the suburbs you know." Now his music was harsh, grating, and confrontational.
At the same time as he was delving into more experimental electric music
, Fahey's passion for traditional roots music did not subside. After coming into some money upon the death of his father in 1995, Fahey used the inheritance to form another label, Revenant Records
, to focus on reissuing obscure recordings of early blues, old-time music
, and anything else Fahey took a fancy to. In 1997, the label issued its first crop of releases, including albums by artists such as British guitarist Derek Bailey, American pianist Cecil Taylor
, guitarist Jim O'Rourke, bluegrass pioneers the Stanley Brothers, old-time banjo
legend Dock Boggs
, Rick Bishop
of Sun City Girls
, and slide guitar
ist Jenks "Tex" Carman. Revenant's most famous release would become Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton
, a seven-disc retrospective of Charley Patton and his contemporaries, which won three Grammy awards in 2003. Fahey himself won only one Grammy in 1997 for his contributions to the liner notes for Revenant's Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4
On May 23, 1998, Fahey (guitar) performed an improvised experimental piece on the WNUR-FM Airplay show in Evanston, Illinois
in collaboration with Jim O'Rourke (electronics, live-mixing). Later that evening, he gave a solo guitar performance at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple
in Oak Park. In the summer of 1999, Fahey returned to WNUR to read from the manuscript for what would become How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life—the working title at that time was Spank. An interview with Fahey by WNUR's Joe Cannon followed the reading. Fahey appeared to have found new vitality through his writing as well as his now more experimental and improvised compositions.
Fahey performed in Europe
in Autumn 1999, including a show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
, London
in September. He came on stage, played a set, and then with the words, "It feels like it is time to go home", left.
In 2000, the American record label Drag City
published a volume of Fahey's esoteric autobiogaphical short stories, How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, edited by Damian Rogers with an introduction by Jim O'Rourke.
In February 2001, just a few days before what would have been his 62nd birthday, John Fahey died at Salem Hospital after undergoing a sextuple bypass
operation.
In 2006, five years after his death, no fewer than four John Fahey tribute albums were released as a testament to his reputation as a "giant of 20th century American music" (Byron Coley).
, through his success as a guitarist and record producer in California, follows him through his dark days in Salem, Oregon
, and ends with commentary on his contributions to American music. The film was accepted into the Takoma Park Film Festival and on Friday, May 7, 2010, premiered at the Takoma Park, Maryland
Community Center, accompanied by a live performance and discussion with Fahey's friend, guitarist Peter Lang
.
A full length, feature documentary is currently underway by James Cullingham and his Canadian film house, Tamarack Productions entitled In Search of Blind Joe Death—The Saga of John Fahey.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
fingerstyle guitar
Fingerstyle guitar
Fingerstyle guitar is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers, as opposed to flatpicking ....
ist and composer who pioneered the steel-string acoustic guitar
Steel-string acoustic guitar
A steel-string acoustic guitar is a modern form of guitar descended from the classical guitar, but strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound...
as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitivism
American Primitivism
American Primitivism, also known as American Primitive Guitar, is the music genre started by John Fahey in the late 1950s. Fahey composed and recorded avant-garde/neo-classical compositions using traditional country blues fingerpicking techniques, which had previously been used primarily to...
, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian music into his œuvre. Fahey wrote a largely apocryphal autobiography and was known for his coarseness, aloof demeanor, and dry humour. He spent many of his latter years in poverty and poor health, but also enjoyed a minor career resurgence with a turn towards the more explicitly avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
. He died in 2001 due to complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th in the Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
"The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" list.
Career
John Aloysius Fahey was born in Washington, DC, into a musical household—both his parents played the pianoPiano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
. In 1945, the family moved to the Washington suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland
Takoma Park, Maryland
Takoma Park is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and part of the Washington Metropolitan Area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea City," is a Tree City USA and a nuclear-free zone...
to a house on New York Avenue that Fahey's father Al lived in until his death in 1994. On weekends, the family often attended performances of top country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
and bluegrass
Bluegrass music
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and a sub-genre of country music. It has mixed roots in Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish traditional music...
groups of the day, but it was hearing Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe
William Smith Monroe was an American musician who created the style of music known as bluegrass, which takes its name from his band, the "Blue Grass Boys," named for Monroe's home state of Kentucky. Monroe's performing career spanned 60 years as a singer, instrumentalist, composer and bandleader...
's version of Jimmie Rodgers
Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)
James Charles Rodgers , known as Jimmie Rodgers, was an American country singer in the early 20th century known most widely for his rhythmic yodeling...
' "Blue Yodel No. 7" on the radio that ignited the young Fahey's passion for music.
In 1952, after being impressed by guitarist Frank Hovington
Frank Hovington
Franklin "Frank" Hovington , also known as Guitar Frank, was an American blues musician. He played the guitar and banjo, and was a singer in the Piedmont style, who lived in the vicinity of Frederica, Delaware....
, whom he met while on a fishing trip, he purchased his first guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
for $17 from the Sears-Roebuck catalogue
Sears, Roebuck and Company
Sears, officially named Sears, Roebuck and Co., is an American chain of department stores which was founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in the late 19th century...
. Along with his budding interest in guitar, Fahey was attracted to record collecting
Record collecting
Record collecting is the hobby of collecting music. Although the main focus is on vinyl records, all formats of recorded music are collected.-History:Record collecting has been around probably nearly as long as recorded sound...
. While his tastes ran mainly in the bluegrass and country vein, Fahey discovered his love of early blues upon hearing Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson
"Blind" Willie Johnson was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals....
's "Praise God I'm Satisfied" on a record-collecting trip to Baltimore with his friend and mentor, the musicologist Richard K. Spottswood
Richard K. Spottswood
Richard K. "Dick" Spottswood is a musicologist and author from Maryland who has catalogued and been responsible for the reissue of many thousands of recordings of vernacular music in the United States. He earned his B.A. from the University of Maryland in 1960, and his Master's degree in Library...
. Much later, Fahey compared the experience to a religious conversion and remained a devout blues disciple until his death.
As his guitar playing and composing progressed, Fahey developed a style that blended the picking patterns he discovered on old blues 78s with the dissonance of contemporary classical composers he loved, such as Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
and Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
. In 1958, Fahey made his first recordings. These were for his friend Joe Bussard
Joe Bussard
Joe Bussard is an American collector of 78-rpm records.Based in Frederick, Maryland, Bussard maintains a collection of more than 25,000 records, primarily of American folk, gospel, and blues from the 1920s and 1930s, believed to be the largest in the world.He was the subject of a documentary film,...
's amateur Fonotone label. He recorded under the pseudonym Blind Thomas as well as under his own name.
In 1959, Fahey recorded at St. Michaels and All Angels Church in Adelphi, MD and that material would become the very first Takoma record. Having no idea how to approach professional record companies and being convinced they would be uninterested, Fahey decided to issue his first album himself, using some cash saved from his gas station attendant job at Martin's Esso and some borrowed from an Episcopal priest. So Takoma Records
Takoma Records
Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by John Fahey in the late 1950s.. It was named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C. suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland.-History:...
was born, named in honor of his hometown. One hundred copies of this first album were pressed. On one side of the album sleeve was the name "John Fahey" and on the other, "Blind Joe Death"—this latter was a humorous nickname given to him by his fellow blues fans. He attempted to sell these albums himself. Some he gave away, some he sneaked into thrift stores and blues sections of local record shops, and some he sent to folk music scholars, a few of whom were fooled into thinking that there really was a living old blues singer called Blind Joe Death. It took three years for Fahey to sell the remainder.
After graduating from American University
American University
American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...
with a degree in philosophy and religion, Fahey moved to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1963 to study philosophy at the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
at Berkeley. Arriving on campus, Fahey—ever the outsider—began to feel dissatisfied with the program's curriculum (he later suggested that studying philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
had been a mistake and that what he had wanted to understand was really psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
) and was equally unimpressed with Berkeley's (hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
) music scene. Fahey loathed the polite Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
-inspired revivalists he found himself classed with. The following year, Fahey moved south to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
to join the folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
master's program at UCLA at the invitation of department head D.K. Wilgus. Fahey's UCLA master's thesis on the music of Charley Patton was later published. He completed it with the musicological assistance of his friend Alan Wilson
Alan Wilson (musician)
Alan "Blind Owl" Christie Wilson was the leader, singer, and primary composer in the American blues band Canned Heat. He played guitar and harmonica, and wrote most of the songs for the band.-Early years:...
, who shortly after became a member of Canned Heat
Canned Heat
Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists...
.
During this period, Takoma Records was reborn. Fahey decided to track down Blues legend Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
by sending a postcard to Aberdeen, Mississippi
Aberdeen, Mississippi
Aberdeen is a city in Monroe County in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The population was 6,415 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Monroe County....
(White had sung that Aberdeen was his hometown, and Mississippi John Hurt
Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt was an American country blues singer and guitarist.Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine...
had been rediscovered using a similar method). When White responded, Fahey and ED Denson
ED Denson
Eugene "ED" Denson is an American music group manager, producer, record label owner, and - later - lawyer, who has made notable contributions to folk, blues, and early San Francisco rock.-Biography:Denson was born in Washington D.C. in 1940...
, a Washington, DC area friend who had also moved west, decided to travel to Memphis and record White. The recordings by White became the first non-Fahey Takoma release. Fahey also, finally, released a second album in late 1963, called Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes. To their surprise the Fahey release sold better than White's and Fahey had a career going.
His releases during the mid-1960s employed odd guitar tunings and sudden style shifts rooted firmly in the old time and blues stylings of the 1920s. But he was not simply a copyist, as compositions such as "When the Catfish is in Bloom" or "Stomping Tonight on the Pennsylvania/Alabama Border" demonstrate. Fahey described the latter piece as follows : "The opening chords are from the last movement of Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
' Sixth Symphony. It goes from there to a Skip James
Skip James
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
motif. Following that it moves to a Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
, Dies Irae
Dies Irae
Dies Irae is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano . It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic...
. It's the most scary one in the Episcopal hymn books, it's all about the day of judgment
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, or The Day of the Lord in Christian theology, is the final and eternal judgment by God of every nation. The concept is found in all the Canonical gospels, particularly the Gospel of Matthew. It will purportedly take place after the...
. Then it returns to the Vaughan Williams chords, followed by a blues run of undetermined origin, then back to Skip James and so forth." A hallmark of his classic releases was the inclusion of lengthy liner notes
Liner notes
Liner notes are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.-Origin:...
, parodying those found on blues releases. Typically, these were epic acts of self-mythologization, mixing personal biography, reverie, folklore, and myriad obscure blues and bluegrass references.
Later albums from the sixties, such as Requia and The Yellow Princess found Fahey making sound collages from such elements as Gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
music, Tibetan chanting
Music of Tibet
The music of Tibet reflects the cultural heritage of the trans-Himalayan region, centered in Tibet but also known wherever ethnic Tibetan groups are found in India, Bhutan, Nepal and further abroad...
, animal and bird cries and singing bridges. In 1967, Fahey recorded with Texas psych-rock
Psychedelic music
Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...
trio The Red Crayola at the 1967 Berkeley Folk Festival, music that resurfaced on the 1998 Drag City
Drag City (record label)
Drag City is a Chicago-based independent record label. It was established with a Royal Trux release in 1990 in Chicago, Illinois by Dan Koretzky and Dan Osborn.Drag City specializes in experimental indie rock acts...
reissue, The Red Krayola: Live 1967. The Red Crayola subsequently recorded an entire studio album with Fahey, but the Red Crayola's label demanded possession of the tapes and recorded documentation of those sessions has been missing ever since.
In addition to his own creative output, Fahey expanded the Takoma label, discovering fellow guitarists Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke
Leo Kottke is an acoustic guitarist. He is widely known for his innovative fingerpicking style, which draws on influences from blues, jazz, and folk music, and his syncopated, polyphonic melodies...
, Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho was an American composer, guitarist and pianist, and one of the pioneers of the acoustic steel string guitar in America.-Biography:...
and Peter Lang
Peter Lang (guitarist)
Peter Lang is an accomplished acoustic guitarist, from the same genre, American Primitivism, as the better-known guitarists Leo Kottke and John Fahey. All three artists shared the Takoma Records label, and a joint-titled album released in 1974 features a selection of songs from...
, as well as emerging pianist George Winston
George Winston
George Winston is an American pianist who was born in Michigan, and grew up mainly in Miles City, Montana as well as Mississippi and Florida. He attended Stetson University in Deland, Florida and lives in Santa Cruz, California.-Background:...
. Kottke's debut release on the label, 6- and 12-String Guitar
6- and 12-String Guitar
-Side Two:-Personnel:* Leo Kottke – 6- & 12-string guitarsCover design by Annie Elliott -External links:* Read some contemporary and retrospective reviews of * *...
, ultimately proved to be the most successful of the crop, selling more than 500,000 copies. Other artists with albums on the label included Mike Bloomfield
Mike Bloomfield
Michael Bernard "Mike" Bloomfield was an American musician, guitarist, and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his instrumental prowess, since he rarely sang before 1969–70...
, Rick Ruskin, The Fabulous Thunderbirds
The Fabulous Thunderbirds
The Fabulous Thunderbirds are an American, Grammy-nominated Blues rock band, formed in 1974.-Career:After performing for several years in the Austin, Texas blues scene, the band won a recording contract with Takoma/Chrysalis Records, and later on signed with Epic Records.Their first two albums,...
, Maria Muldaur
Maria Muldaur
Maria Muldaur is a folk-blues singer who was part of the American folk music revival in the early 1960s...
, Michael Gulezian
Michael Gulezian
Michael Gulezian is an American composer and Fingerstyle guitarist. He is noted for dramatic compositions, a penchant for manipulating metre, an affinity for open tunings, and an unconventionally free two-handed technical approach...
and Canned Heat
Canned Heat
Canned Heat is a blues-rock/boogie rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1965. The group has been noted for its own interpretations of blues material as well as for efforts to promote the interest in this type of music and its original artists...
. In 1979, Fahey sold Takoma to Chrysalis Records
Chrysalis Records
Chrysalis Records was a British record label that was created in 1969. The name was both a reference to the pupal stage of a butterfly and a combination of its founders names, Chris Wright and Terry Ellis...
. Jon Monday
Jon Monday
Jon Monday is an American producer and distributor of CDs and DVDs across an eclectic range of material such as Swami Prabhavananda, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Huston Smith, Chalmers Johnson, and Charles Bukowski...
, who had been the General Manager of the label since 1970 was the only employee to go with the new company. Chrysalis eventually sold the rights to the albums, and Takoma was in limbo until bought by Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records is a United States-based record label that was founded by Max and Sol Weiss in 1949 in San Francisco, California. They had previously operated a record-pressing plant called Circle Record Company before forming the Fantasy label...
in 1995.
Later years
By the mid-1970s, Fahey's output abated and he began to suffer from a drinking problem. He lost his home in the dissolution of his first marriage, remarried, divorced again, and moved to Salem, OregonSalem, Oregon
Salem is the capital of the U.S. state of Oregon, and the county seat of Marion County. It is located in the center of the Willamette Valley alongside the Willamette River, which runs north through the city. The river forms the boundary between Marion and Polk counties, and the city neighborhood...
in 1981 to live with his third wife. In 1986, Fahey contracted Epstein-Barr syndrome, a long-lasting viral infection similar to chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome is the most common name used to designate a significantly debilitating medical disorder or group of disorders generally defined by persistent fatigue accompanied by other specific symptoms for a minimum of six months, not due to ongoing exertion, not substantially...
, which exacerbated his diabetes and other health issues. He continued to perform in and around the Salem area, as he was managed by friends David Finke and his wife Pam. The trio attempted to keep Fahey's career afloat by radio appearances and small venue performances. He broke up with his third wife and his life began to spiral downward. He made what appeared to be his last album in 1990.
Although he won his five-year battle with Epstein-Barr, Fahey spent much of the early 1990s living in poverty, mostly in cheap motels. Gigs had dried up, due to his health problems. He paid his rent by pawning his guitars and reselling rare records he found in thrift stores.
Following a 1994 entry on Fahey in Spin magazine
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
's spin-off Alternative Record Guide publication, Fahey learned that he now had a whole new audience, which included alternative US bands Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
and Cul de Sac
Cul de Sac (band)
Cul de Sac are a rock music group formed in 1990 in Boston, Massachusetts and led by guitarist Glenn Jones. Their music is primarily instrumental. Jones and keyboardist Robin Amos have been the only constant members....
, and the avant-garde musician Jim O'Rourke
Jim O'Rourke (musician)
Jim O'Rourke is an Irish-American musician and record producer. He was long associated with the Chicago experimental and improv scene...
. Byron Coley
Byron Coley
Byron Coley is an American music critic who wrote prominently for Forced Exposure magazine in the 1980s, starting with their fifth issue until the magazine ceased publication in 1993. Prior to Forced Exposure, he wrote for NY Rocker, Boston Rock, and Take It! magazine. Coley is one of the first...
published a large article called "The Persecutions and Resurrections of Blind Joe Death" (also in Spin magazine) and at the same time a two-cd retrospective called The Return of the Repressed all combined to kick-start Fahey's career. Suddenly new releases started to appear in rapid succession, in parallel to the reissue of all the early Takoma releases by Fantasy Records.
Jim O'Rourke went on to produce a Fahey album, 1997's Womblife, while in the same year Fahey recorded an album with Cul de Sac
Cul de Sac (band)
Cul de Sac are a rock music group formed in 1990 in Boston, Massachusetts and led by guitarist Glenn Jones. Their music is primarily instrumental. Jones and keyboardist Robin Amos have been the only constant members....
, The Epiphany of Glenn Jones (Glenn Jones is the lead guitarist of Cul de Sac). This late flowering showed Fahey had changed. Gone were the melodic dreaminess and folk-based meditations of the 60s and 70s, which Fahey himself characteristically denounced as "cosmic sentimentalism". In characteristically witty fashion, he once said of his style: "How can I be a folk? I'm from the suburbs you know." Now his music was harsh, grating, and confrontational.
At the same time as he was delving into more experimental electric music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
, Fahey's passion for traditional roots music did not subside. After coming into some money upon the death of his father in 1995, Fahey used the inheritance to form another label, Revenant Records
Revenant Records
Revenant Records is a record label based in Austin, Texas, which concentrates on folk and blues. Revenant was formed in 1996 by John Fahey and Dean Blackwood...
, to focus on reissuing obscure recordings of early blues, old-time music
Old-time music
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music, with roots in the folk music of many countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland and countries in Africa. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dance, buck dance, and clogging. The genre also...
, and anything else Fahey took a fancy to. In 1997, the label issued its first crop of releases, including albums by artists such as British guitarist Derek Bailey, American pianist Cecil Taylor
Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...
, guitarist Jim O'Rourke, bluegrass pioneers the Stanley Brothers, old-time banjo
Banjo
In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...
legend Dock Boggs
Dock Boggs
Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs was an influential old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player. His style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues...
, Rick Bishop
Sir Richard Bishop
Sir Richard Bishop is a composer, improviser, and explorer on acoustic and electric guitar whose work often reflects the shadow worlds of India, the Middle East, North Africa, and other points along the Gypsy trail. This is combined with a singular, experimental approach to the guitar that takes...
of Sun City Girls
Sun City Girls
The Sun City Girls were an American experimental rock band, formed in 1979 in Phoenix, Arizona. From 1981 the group consisted of Alan Bishop , his brother Richard Bishop , and the late Charles Gocher . Their name was inspired by Sun City, Arizona, an Arizona retirement community...
, and slide guitar
Slide guitar
Slide guitar or bottleneck guitar is a particular method or technique for playing the guitar. The term slide refers to the motion of the slide against the strings, while bottleneck refers to the original material of choice for such slides: the necks of glass bottles...
ist Jenks "Tex" Carman. Revenant's most famous release would become Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton is a boxed set collecting Charley Patton's recorded works. It also features recordings by many of his friends and associates, as well as supplementary interviews and historical data...
, a seven-disc retrospective of Charley Patton and his contemporaries, which won three Grammy awards in 2003. Fahey himself won only one Grammy in 1997 for his contributions to the liner notes for Revenant's Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4
Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4
Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4 is a two-disc compilation of twenty-eight American folk recordings originally released on 78 rpm records between 1927 and 1940, issued in May 2000 on Revenant Records, catalogue #211...
On May 23, 1998, Fahey (guitar) performed an improvised experimental piece on the WNUR-FM Airplay show in Evanston, Illinois
Evanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
in collaboration with Jim O'Rourke (electronics, live-mixing). Later that evening, he gave a solo guitar performance at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple
Unity Temple
Unity Temple is a Unitarian Universalist church in Oak Park, Illinois, and the home of the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation. It was designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and built between 1905 and 1908. Unity Temple is considered to be one of Wright's most important...
in Oak Park. In the summer of 1999, Fahey returned to WNUR to read from the manuscript for what would become How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life—the working title at that time was Spank. An interview with Fahey by WNUR's Joe Cannon followed the reading. Fahey appeared to have found new vitality through his writing as well as his now more experimental and improvised compositions.
Fahey performed in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in Autumn 1999, including a show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
Queen Elizabeth Hall
The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in September. He came on stage, played a set, and then with the words, "It feels like it is time to go home", left.
In 2000, the American record label Drag City
Drag City (record label)
Drag City is a Chicago-based independent record label. It was established with a Royal Trux release in 1990 in Chicago, Illinois by Dan Koretzky and Dan Osborn.Drag City specializes in experimental indie rock acts...
published a volume of Fahey's esoteric autobiogaphical short stories, How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, edited by Damian Rogers with an introduction by Jim O'Rourke.
In February 2001, just a few days before what would have been his 62nd birthday, John Fahey died at Salem Hospital after undergoing a sextuple bypass
Coronary artery bypass surgery
Coronary artery bypass surgery, also coronary artery bypass graft surgery, and colloquially heart bypass or bypass surgery is a surgical procedure performed to relieve angina and reduce the risk of death from coronary artery disease...
operation.
In 2006, five years after his death, no fewer than four John Fahey tribute albums were released as a testament to his reputation as a "giant of 20th century American music" (Byron Coley).
Documentaries
Starting work in 2007, Washington D.C. filmmaker Marc Minsker produced a 30-minute documentary on the life of John Fahey entitled "John Fahey: The Legacy of Blind Joe Death." It chronicles his humble beginnings in Takoma Park, MarylandTakoma Park, Maryland
Takoma Park is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and part of the Washington Metropolitan Area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea City," is a Tree City USA and a nuclear-free zone...
, through his success as a guitarist and record producer in California, follows him through his dark days in Salem, Oregon
Salem, Oregon
Salem is the capital of the U.S. state of Oregon, and the county seat of Marion County. It is located in the center of the Willamette Valley alongside the Willamette River, which runs north through the city. The river forms the boundary between Marion and Polk counties, and the city neighborhood...
, and ends with commentary on his contributions to American music. The film was accepted into the Takoma Park Film Festival and on Friday, May 7, 2010, premiered at the Takoma Park, Maryland
Takoma Park, Maryland
Takoma Park is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and part of the Washington Metropolitan Area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea City," is a Tree City USA and a nuclear-free zone...
Community Center, accompanied by a live performance and discussion with Fahey's friend, guitarist Peter Lang
Peter Lang (guitarist)
Peter Lang is an accomplished acoustic guitarist, from the same genre, American Primitivism, as the better-known guitarists Leo Kottke and John Fahey. All three artists shared the Takoma Records label, and a joint-titled album released in 1974 features a selection of songs from...
.
A full length, feature documentary is currently underway by James Cullingham and his Canadian film house, Tamarack Productions entitled In Search of Blind Joe Death—The Saga of John Fahey.