John Fahey

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Biography

John Fahey (February 28, 1939 – February 22, 2001) was an United States|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 music|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 , and created a series of abstract paintings during the last years of his life. 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.

Career

John Aloysius Fahey was born in Washington, DC , into a musical household—both his parents played the piano . 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 music|country and bluegrass music|bluegrass groups of the day, but it was hearing Bill Monroe 's version of Jimmie Rodgers (country singer)|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 and Company|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, Maryland|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. Retrieved December 2009.

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 Church in the United States of America|Episcopal priest. So Takoma Records was born, named in honor of his hometown. Retrieved February 2010. One hundred copies of this first album were pressed.According to The Rolling Stone Record Guide , First Edition (1979), "there were only ninety-five copies of the record available for distribution." The Guide assigns the record 5 stars out of 5. 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, 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, California|Berkeley's ( hippie ) music scene. Fahey loathed the polite Pete Seeger -inspired revivalists he found himself classed with. Eventually, 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 (musician)|Alan Wilson , who shortly after became a member of Canned Heat .

While Fahey lived in Berkeley, 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 Ralph Vaughan Williams|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 Last Judgment|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, Music of Tibet|Tibetan chanting , animal and bird cries and singing bridges. In 1967, Fahey recorded with Texas Psychedelic music|psych-rock trio The Red Crayola at the 1967 Berkeley Folk Festival, music that resurfaced on the 1998 Drag City (record label)|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 (guitarist)|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.

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, Oregon 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)|Spin magazine 's spin-off Alternative Record Guide publication, Fahey learned that he now had a whole new audience, which included alternative music|alternative US bands Sonic Youth and Cul de Sac (band)|Cul de Sac , and the avant-garde musician Jim O'Rourke (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 (band)|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 music|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 (guitarist)|Derek Bailey , American pianist Cecil Taylor , guitarist Jim O'Rourke, bluegrass pioneers the Stanley Brothers , old-time banjo legend Dock Boggs , Sir Richard Bishop|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 40th Grammy Awards#Packaging and notes|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 (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 (Oregon)|Salem Hospital after undergoing a sextuple Coronary artery bypass surgery|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).

Paintings

During the later years of his life, John Fahey painted a series of abstract paintings. Many of these were were exhibited from July 10-September 12, 2010, at The East Village, New York, presented by John Andrew and Audio Visual Arts (AVA). http://delta-slider.blogspot.com/2010/07/paintings-of-john-fahey.html, visited April 21, 2012. Audio Visual Arts (AVA) is located at 34 E. 1st Street, New York, New York 10003.
The exhibit featured 55 paintings, ranging in size from 6.75" by 9" to 22" by 29". The "sale sheet" for the exhibit listed prices from $750 for smaller works to $3,000 for the large paintings. The paintings were either framed or unframed. http://audiovisualarts.org/AVA_SaleSheet_JohnFahey.pdf, visited April 21, 2012.

Audio Visual Arts describes John Fahey's paintings as follows: "Pulling inspiration from the ‘French Primitive’, untutored painters, Fahey often referred to his music as ‘American Primitive’. The same alluring, raw, roots, mysterious, power, grit, obscure, industrial, ambient, epic, and tranquilizing aesthetics that one finds in Fahey’s music and his writings are equally present in his paintings. The 90’s proved to be a decade of regeneration for Fahey. Though he struggled with certain health problems, he was brimming with experimentation. Collaborating with noise artists and improvisational performers of the alternative movement, Fahey began to channel a new outlet for experimentation which included his return to painting; a bent he abandoned when he took up the guitar. Fahey’s works are evocative of action painters and abstract expressionists. He painted on found poster board and discarded spiral notebook paper. His painting studio floated from motel bed to motel bed and eventually ended up on the bed of his rental home in Salem, OR; occasionally painting with anti-freeze in the garage. He worked with tempera, acrylic, spray paint, and magic marker." http://audiovisualarts.org/2925/fahey-install, visited April 21, 2012.

Several of Fahey's paintings were sold on eBay by Michael R. Karn, Balcony Books and Music, Eugene, Oregon in July 2001. Kern attested that "John brought into the used book store I owned and operated, Balcony Books, located at 108 SW Third Street in Corvallis, Oregon, in December of 1998. John had been shopping and trading with me for several years. I originally became acquainted with him several years earlier when I operated a similar store in Salem, Oregon, where John lived at the time. John often brought in books or records he had scouted, and echanged them for books and records from our stock. He also generously signed several records and posters from my personal collection for me, and even performed a couple of in-store concerts." Karn said he received several paintings "directly from John in exchange for a large collection of Duke Ellington records which I had recently obtained. He had recently taken up painting as a creating outlet. He was aware the paintings could be sold some day, even though he himself would not sell his paintings, but he understood the nature of the used book and record business, and gave his blessing to me to sell them in the store if I wished. I never did sell a painting in store, but recently through auction at ebay."Notarized Certificate of Provenance for "a large abstract painting by the guitar legend John Fahey, dated 9/98 and signed in bold letters by John Fahey, measures 22" x 28"," by Michael Karn, Balcony Books and Music, P.O. Box 11024, Eugene, Oregon 97440, dated July 25, 2001. Subscribed and sworn to before Notary Amy Haich, Notary Public-Oregon, Commission No. 336122.

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, Maryland , 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 (guitarist)|Peter Lang .The Brightwoodian. http://thebrightwoodian.blogspot.com/2010/05/premier-showing-of-new-john-fahey-doc.html

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 .

Discography

Written works

Copyright Citations

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1. William Ackerman 2. Gastr Del Sol 3. Louis T. Hardin 4. Skip James 5. Charley Patton 6. George Winston 7. Bukka White 8. gamelan 9. Will Ackerman 10. M. Ward 11. Preston Reed 12. Charlie Patton 13. Danse Macabre 14. Gamalon 15. Layla 16. Leo Kottke 17. Woody Mann

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