The Legend Of Blind John
* John Fahey: Requiem For Mississippi John Hurt (7.5 mb) | The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick (8.5 mb) | In Christ There Is No East Or West (3.5 mb)
From The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick : Water Records : water139
John Fahey (RIP) is an extraordinary guitar player, pure and simple. He understood the guitar so completely that hearing him play is like hearing a direct line from the thoughts in his mind to the sounds coming out of his guitar. He is really that good. His playing is completely unique but can be described as an amalgam of blues, folk, finger-pickin’ and ragas. In a way, he predated the whole free folk/new weird america movement by a good 30 to 40 years. Growing up in Tacoma Park, Maryland, he was immersed in the bluegrass musics that his parents introduced him to. Until the late 50’s when he really encountered the old black spirituals and blues for the first time.
…Fahey heard the record that turned his music and life around: Blind Willie Johnson’s “Praise God I’m Satisfied”. “[Blues connoisseur] Dick Spottswood and I were sat in a store where they were selling up old 78s,” he remembers. “They weren’t catalogued or anything, they were just lying around. We were going through them and I was not picking up any records by Negroes for myself because all I wanted was bluegrass. I found several black records and gave them to Spottswood. Then we went over to this other collector’s house and he put on the Blind Willie Johnson. I started to feel nauseated so I made him take it off, but it kept going through my head so I had to hear it again. When he played it the second time I started to cry, it was suddenly very beautiful. It was some kind of hysterical conversion experience where in fact I had liked that kind of music all the time, but didn’t want to. So, I allowed myself to like it.”
(from Wire magazine)
From the 60’s to the late 70’s, John Fahey was incredibly prolific. But the 80’s saw him falling out of music as he dealt with bouts of alcoholism, homelessness, failed marriages and Epstein-Barr syndrome. He was rediscovered through the efforts of one Byron Coley, who then was able to convince him to start playing music again. His new music was a complete change for him. He picked up the electric guitar and started playing in a more angry and experimental/avantgarde manner, confounding audiences who expected the old folk blues he had previously played to come pouring out of his guitar again. But he paid them no never mind and continued to do what he did best. Play the hell out of his guitar in a way that no one else could. Now honestly, while I can totally appreciate what he’s trying to accomplish, this latter period is not a favorite of mine
In addition to playing music again, he got involved with the industry in another way and started a record label called Revenant Records. This is, in every way, a phenomenal record label. The care and preparation that they put into each release is incredible. This is reminiscent of his earlier releases where he crafted impossibly dense and epic liner notes. For proof or Revenant Records greatness, just take a look at these releases: Albert Ayler, Charley Patton and Captain Beefeart. The amount of work they put into the packaging absolutely blows me away.
So, sit back and enjoy these tracks from a recently unearthed concert in 1968. This is probably my favorite Fahey period because there’s a sense that he’s still exploring what the guitar can do and that he’s still reveling in the sound that he’s producing.
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I’ve just finished reading Devil in a White City and it comes highly recommended. It’s a great historical telling of the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893 and the events leading up to it. It was an incredibly compelling story and I couldn’t stop reading it.
And I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but if you live in Chicago and have any sort of passing interest in the art of BBQ, then you need to visit Lems BBQ House at 311 E 75th Street. It’s located just east of the interstate 94 on 75th Street. They have some of the best rib tips I’ve ever eaten and they’re just scrumdiliumptious.
I’ve fallen in love with Achewood (if you’re new to the series, start from the very beginning).
Gary said,
April 8, 2005 @ 12:29 pm
Thank you for the great site and for posting these tracks.
I saw John Fahey in 1986 or so, if memory serves, and he gave what was by far the most intense, bizarre performance I have ever seen (and I have seen some truly mesmerising performances by the likes of Mark Eitzel and others). His guitar playing was incredible — complex, clean picking, simulataneous bass and melody lines. But over the course of the night it appeared that he was having a breakdown of some sort. In between songs he kept calling for more beer and telling, little by little, about the trauma of being molested by his father. At first we thought it was a put on, but by the end he was sobbing. Some in the audience walked out, the rest of us stayed, paralyzed.
I didn’t see him play again until a few years ago, shortly before his death. By that time, he had adopted a very minimalist “style,” that is, slowly plucking single notes as if improvising moment to moment. To this day, I don’t know if that’s what he was doing or if he was just plain out of it.
cb said,
April 8, 2005 @ 2:52 pm
Wow. I really wish that I could’ve seen him play live. His performances sound intense. It seems like he had a lot of demons to deal with.
I remember reading about one of his concerts and this fellow was marvelling at the transformation that Fahey has when he gets on stage. This fellow had seen him shortly before the performance and thought that he was just some ordinary dude, but when Fahey stepped on stage, there was an immediate change in the way that he stood and walked, and it looked like Fahey had become a different person. That he had turned into some old tyme blues/folk player.
At any rate. Glad you’re enjoying the blog.
-cb
Andrew said,
April 9, 2005 @ 11:49 pm
What a great post. Thanks for sharing. Also, thanks for doing such extensive bios on all your posts. It does not go unappreciated.
Jeremy P. Bushnell said,
April 18, 2005 @ 6:28 pm
As a Fahey fan, I’d guess that you might also like the solo acoustic work of Sir Richard Bishop– and since you seem to be a Chicago resident (?) I should give you a heads-up (if you don’t know already) that Richard Bishop is playing a free show at the Bottle about two hours from now… something you might want to check out.
Tommy said,
April 19, 2005 @ 10:42 pm
Just want to say thankyou for introducing me to the music of John Fahey. I really enjoyed the tracks you posted, I went out and bought a Best of John Fahey CD and I`ve been listening to it almost non-stop. It is incredibly beautiful music but you can hear so much sadness too. It sounds like he was troubled man.