The Voice of the Turtle (album)
Encyclopedia
The Voice of the Turtle is a 1968 album by American folk music
ian John Fahey
. It is considered one of his more experimental albums, combining not only folk elements, but shreds of psychedelia, early blues, country fiddle
s, raga
s, and white noise
.
, appears again in the liner notes of The Voice of the Turtle. For years Fahey and Takoma continued to treat the imaginary guitarist as a real person, including booklets with their LPs containing biographical information about him and that he had taught Fahey to play.
The conceit that the blues guitarist Blind Joe Death was an actual person and contemporary of Fahey is carried further with some tracks credited to being performed by Death and Fahey. There is debate that Fahey never actually appears on some of the tracks and that they are instead old, little-known recordings. Fahey has been quoted as saying "That whole record was a hoax. On all the songs that say it's me it isn't and vice versa." Barry Hansen
, a friend and collaborator of Fahey's albums told Rolling Stone
reporter David Fricke that three of the tracks were old 78s that Fahey copied to tape and credited to Blind Joe Death. The first track "Bottleneck Blues" is a 1927 recording made by Sylvester Weaver
and Walter Beasley. The tracks with fiddlers Hubert Thomas and Virgil Willis Johnston were made with Fahey during his 1965 trip to the South with Barry Hansen.
The Voice of the Turtle was reissued on CD in 1996.
release was a gatefold
. The liner notes are extensive (the first sentence alone is 561 words long) and were included in a 12-page booklet, including photos in an old-time scrapbook format. The photos and their captions appear to be obvious fictions. Later pressings did not include the gatefold and booklet.
Voice of the Turtle has three quasi-subtitles on the cover. Directly underneath the main title is "Being a Musical Hodograph & Chronologue of the Music of John Fahey, including his most recent composition, The Story of Dorothy Gooch." On the right side of the cover appears "The Volk Roots & Hiart Leaves of John Fahey, Blind Joe Death, Hubert Thomas, Virgil Willis Johnston, L. Mayne Smith, Mark Levine." and directly below that "The Fahey Picture Album: Genuine photographs of Blind Joe Death, Knott's Berry Farm Molly, The Adelphi Rolling Grist Mill, Etc."
The photograph labeled Blind Joe Death is actually a retouched old Vocalion Records
advertisement of Blind Joe Taggart
who recorded in the late 20s and 30s under several different names.
The back cover quotes a "Song of Solomon
" verse, replacing "... and the cooing of turtledoves is heard in our land." with "... and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." After his death, the altered verse was printed in Fahey's funeral program.
stated in its December 1996 review: "Half of this 1968 album...is made up of pleasant, traditionally styled instrumentals... But it's the three lengthy improvisational pieces that dominate, pointing forward to his later, more elliptical work..." In a November 1996 review in Down Beat
it was rated 4.5 Stars — Very Good/Excellent — "...has to be the strangest folk trip of the '60s... it's Fahey's loopy sound collages and odd sonic touches that make this largely instrumental album a treasure." It received three-and-a-half stars in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
.
In his Allmusic review, music critic Richie Unterberger
called the album "One of his more obscure early efforts, Voice of the Turtle is both listenable and wildly eclectic, going from scratchy emulations of early blues 78s and country fiddle tunes to haunting guitar-flute combinations and eerie ragas." and its "...undercurrent of dark, uneasy tension that gives much of Fahey's '60s material its intriguing combination of meditation and restlessness."
American folk music
American folk music is a musical term that encompasses numerous genres, many of which are known as traditional music or roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American...
ian John Fahey
John Fahey (musician)
John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist 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...
. It is considered one of his more experimental albums, combining not only folk elements, but shreds of psychedelia, early blues, country fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
s, raga
Raga
A raga is one of the melodic modes used in Indian classical music.It is a series of five or more musical notes upon which a melody is made...
s, and white noise
White noise
White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency...
.
History
The mythical bluesman named Blind Joe Death, first introduced by Fahey on his debut album Blind Joe DeathBlind Joe Death
Blind Joe Death is the first album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey. There are three different versions of the album, and the original self-released edition of fewer than 100 copies is extremely rare...
, appears again in the liner notes of The Voice of the Turtle. For years Fahey and Takoma continued to treat the imaginary guitarist as a real person, including booklets with their LPs containing biographical information about him and that he had taught Fahey to play.
The conceit that the blues guitarist Blind Joe Death was an actual person and contemporary of Fahey is carried further with some tracks credited to being performed by Death and Fahey. There is debate that Fahey never actually appears on some of the tracks and that they are instead old, little-known recordings. Fahey has been quoted as saying "That whole record was a hoax. On all the songs that say it's me it isn't and vice versa." Barry Hansen
Dr. Demento
Barret Eugene Hansen , better known as Dr. Demento, is a radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present....
, a friend and collaborator of Fahey's albums told 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...
reporter David Fricke that three of the tracks were old 78s that Fahey copied to tape and credited to Blind Joe Death. The first track "Bottleneck Blues" is a 1927 recording made by Sylvester Weaver
Sylvester Weaver
Sylvester Weaver was an American blues guitar player and pioneer of country blues.-Biography:On October 23, 1923, he recorded in New York City with the blues singer Sara Martin "Longing for Daddy Blues" / "I've Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind" and two weeks later as a soloist "Guitar Blues" /...
and Walter Beasley. The tracks with fiddlers Hubert Thomas and Virgil Willis Johnston were made with Fahey during his 1965 trip to the South with Barry Hansen.
The Voice of the Turtle was reissued on CD in 1996.
Packaging
The original LPLP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
release was a gatefold
Gatefold
A gatefold is a type of fold used for advertising around a magazine or section, and for packaging of media such as vinyl records.- LP covers :...
. The liner notes are extensive (the first sentence alone is 561 words long) and were included in a 12-page booklet, including photos in an old-time scrapbook format. The photos and their captions appear to be obvious fictions. Later pressings did not include the gatefold and booklet.
Voice of the Turtle has three quasi-subtitles on the cover. Directly underneath the main title is "Being a Musical Hodograph & Chronologue of the Music of John Fahey, including his most recent composition, The Story of Dorothy Gooch." On the right side of the cover appears "The Volk Roots & Hiart Leaves of John Fahey, Blind Joe Death, Hubert Thomas, Virgil Willis Johnston, L. Mayne Smith, Mark Levine." and directly below that "The Fahey Picture Album: Genuine photographs of Blind Joe Death, Knott's Berry Farm Molly, The Adelphi Rolling Grist Mill, Etc."
The photograph labeled Blind Joe Death is actually a retouched old Vocalion Records
Vocalion Records
Vocalion Records is a record label active for many years in the United States and in the United Kingdom.-History:Vocalion was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Piano Company of New York City, which introduced a retail line of phonographs at the same time. The name was derived from one of their...
advertisement of Blind Joe Taggart
Blind Joe Taggart
Blind Joe Taggart was an American blind country blues musician, from the 1920s and 1930s. He was a great influence on folk singer, Josh White, whom he traveled with. According to White, Taggart was a mean-tempered man. He recorded a few duets with Emma Taggart, whom is believed to have been his wife...
who recorded in the late 20s and 30s under several different names.
The back cover quotes a "Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs of Solomon, commonly referred to as Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible—one of the megillot —found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim...
" verse, replacing "... and the cooing of turtledoves is heard in our land." with "... and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." After his death, the altered verse was printed in Fahey's funeral program.
Reception
Q MagazineQ (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
stated in its December 1996 review: "Half of this 1968 album...is made up of pleasant, traditionally styled instrumentals... But it's the three lengthy improvisational pieces that dominate, pointing forward to his later, more elliptical work..." In a November 1996 review in Down Beat
Down Beat
Down Beat is an American magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond" to indicate its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois...
it was rated 4.5 Stars — Very Good/Excellent — "...has to be the strangest folk trip of the '60s... it's Fahey's loopy sound collages and odd sonic touches that make this largely instrumental album a treasure." It received three-and-a-half stars in The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
Rolling Stone Album Guide
The Rolling Stone Album Guide, previously known as The Rolling Stone Record Guide, is a book that, along with its sister publication Rolling Stone magazine, contains professional reviews of popular music...
.
In his Allmusic review, music critic Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger
Richie Unterberger is a US author and journalist whose focus is popular music and travel writing.-Life and writing:Having worked as a DJ at WXPN in Philadelphia, he started reviewing records for Op magazine in 1983...
called the album "One of his more obscure early efforts, Voice of the Turtle is both listenable and wildly eclectic, going from scratchy emulations of early blues 78s and country fiddle tunes to haunting guitar-flute combinations and eerie ragas." and its "...undercurrent of dark, uneasy tension that gives much of Fahey's '60s material its intriguing combination of meditation and restlessness."
Side one
- "Bottleneck Blues" – 3:06
- Blind Joe Death & John Fahey
- This is a lo-fi recording with hissing and pops, an old 78-rpm recording by Sylvester WeaverSylvester WeaverSylvester Weaver was an American blues guitar player and pioneer of country blues.-Biography:On October 23, 1923, he recorded in New York City with the blues singer Sara Martin "Longing for Daddy Blues" / "I've Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind" and two weeks later as a soloist "Guitar Blues" /...
and Walter Beasley.
- "Bill Cheatum" – 1:56
- Hubert Thomas & John Fahey
- "Lewisdale Blues" – 2:18
- Nancy McClean & John Fahey
- "Bean Vine Blues" – 2:45
- Blind Thomas Curtis, Blind Joe Death & John Fahey
- This is a lo-fi recording with hissing and pops. This is a vocal track with at least two singers.
- "Bean Vine Blues #2" – 2:51
- This is not labeled on the jacket, but is noted on the LP label.
- "A Raga Called Pat, Part III" – 9:04
- Tibetan Buddhist Monks, John Fahey & Gamblin' Gamelan Gong
Side two
- "A Raga Called Pat, Part IV" – 4:28
- Monks, Fahey & Gong
- "Train" – 1:47
- L. Mayne Smith & John Fahey
- On the record label, this is titled "The Little Train that Couldn't"
- "Je Ne Me Suis Reveillais Matin Pas En May" – 2:22
- Harmonica ED & John Fahey
- "The Story Of Dorothy Gooch, Part I" – 5:27
- John Fahey
- "Nine-Pound Hammer" – 1:59
- Blind Joe Death & John Fahey
- "Lonesome Valley" – 1:42
- Virgil Willis Johnston & John Fahey
Personnel
- John FaheyJohn Fahey (musician)John Fahey was an American fingerstyle guitarist 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...
– guitar - L. Mayne Smith – banjo (on "Train")
- Mark Levine – guitar (on "Train")
- Nancy McLean – flute