Customer Reviews

The Legend Of Blind Joe Death

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This record should be required listening for anyone interested in playing acoustic blues, and it is a magnificent place for an interested listener seeking an introduction to the genre. This disc collects incarnations of Blind Joe Death, John Fahey's fictional and representative blues guitar master in varied modes and recording sessions. The two incarnations here are from 1963 and 1967--two sets of Blind Joe's songs--all instrumentals, by the way--two versions each of nine songs. Then there are additional tracks, including Fahey's "Trannscendental Waterfall" and Blind Blake's "West Coast Blues." For some that might be too much, but this is the legend after all. And this is a good place to hear the development of Fahey's special guitar voice. Fahey began by recreating and like all original voices, found that he was creating indeed. This is a collection of blues with a spiritual or rag thrown in when the spirit strikes. You're never sure who you are going to hear--Skip James, Gary Davis, John Hurt, Pink Anderson, Robert Johnson--Delta blues, some Piedmont--a potpourri of styles. First Fahey commanded the idiom. His technique is a panoply of flat and finger picking styles, including the pattern picking with open tunings that he learned from Skip James and John Hurt. But his uses of the techniques are sometimes surprising. Once he learned the licks, the patterns, the fingerings, he expanded for his own purposes. As the fictional Blind Joe, Fahey played some blues standards, interpreting them to suit his tastes and voice. Fahey's versions of W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues" are distinctive. I say "versions" because there are two forms here, and the two sessions allow you to hear how Fahey grew between 1963 and 1967. The later recordings are clearer and more confident in their attack and accents. But they aren't necessarily "better," just different. The collection includes original songs such as "On Doing an Evil Deed Blues," "Poor Boy Long Ways from Town," "Desperate Man Blues," and some arrangements of known songs like "John Henry." This last owes some debt to John Hurt's "Spike Driver's Blues" although the second version is more experimental. When he is covering old blues songs, his recreations of the standards are convincingly authentic. In the original songs, Fahey uses the techniques, the methods of legendary figures and blends them in such a way that his originals are almost indistinguishable in style from the genuine article. This is the early John Fahey, before he diversified completely to blend the folk/blues idiom with eastern music and sonic experiments in texture and time. It is, nevertheless, a wonderful collection.

Now that John Fahey has left to contemplate the Void from the other side, it's time to consider his achievement. Ignore the peripheral--Fahey's rediscovery of legendary Delta blues players, his influence on other musicians, his cult-like status as enfant terrible/genius, the tragic path of his life--and listen to the music here. (An aside to those who complain that Fahey lacks the authenticity of his predecessors: get real. Fahey is no more a blues guitarist than James Joyce is an ancient epic poet because he alludes to Homer. The comparison is pointless.)

Cerebral, delicate, irrascible, wistful, earthy, contemplative, laconic, spiritual, desolate, joyous: these are the songs of an artist angry at the world because he loved it so much. All is unreconciled, all is reconciled; In Christ There Is No East or West. Through his original works, Fahey contributed some of the century's most remarkable songs:

"Sun Gonna Shine in My Back Door Someday Blues" leaps from raga to ragtime and back in what seems to be a simple conversation, until you realize the two sides are yin and yang, the same because the opposite.

"Sligo River Blues" opens with a pensive, circular phrase, then melds the uptempo rhythm of a nineteenth-century parlor song (e.g. Bicycle Built for Two) with nostalgic, melancholy chord changes--a mutually enobling sadness and beauty, a' la early Yeats.

"The Transcendental Waterfall," here in its original 10-minute length, anticipates the course of Fahey's work and life: restless, complex, dissatisfied; yearning for transcendence, finding it within the quest, not at its abrupt end; memorializing forever the young boy who, entranced by the score of the movie Thief of Baghdad, took up the guitar to recapture that lost magic.

The earlier takes here (tracks 1-9) are not merely for the scholar obsessed with footnotes; comparing the 1964 versions with those from 1967, you can better understand the architectural feat of the latter masterworks. If you own the 1967 original, buy the compilation, if only for the Transcendental Waterfall and the liner notes. If you're new to Fahey, ignore the samples here and beg, borrow, or buy this cd. Life's too short for lesser music.

I first discovered John Fahey via Leo Kottke on Fahey's own Takoma label on the "Leo Kottke/ Peter Lang/John Fahey" LP. On the back jacket is this notice:

"Takoma Records is widely ignored as a freckle on the soft white underbelly of the record business. Intrepid and enterprising, this indigestible little company has an unblemished record. The unblemished record can be seen in its glass case at the Takoma archives between the hours of 6 midnight and 12."

Fahey's humor aside, it's probably true that few people have ever heard of Fahey or his music and that is a shame. I would agree with the other reviewer that there would be no Leo Kottke without John Fahey, just like there would be no Rolling Stones without Chuck Berry or Howlin' Wolf, or no Oasis without the Beatles. It's fine to enjoy the imitators, but why wouldn't you seek out the originals?

Twenty years ago I purchased my first John Fahey album: The Best of John Fahey 1959-1977(now out of print). It included two tracks from Blind Joe Death: "St. Louis Blues" and "In Christ There Is No East or West" (the latter I first heard on Kottke's Greenhouse). I was hooked. I had to get my hands on all the John Fahey I could find. (Not an easy task, since he recorded for several labels other than his own and his albums quickly went out of print.) However, I found all of his Takoma and Vanguard LPs and even his two Reprise albums (Of Rivers and Religion and After the Ball), but not without having to enlist the services of record search companies. But it was worth it!

And Blind Joe Death is perhaps his best. First recorded in 1959 and all of 95 copies pressed it was quickly forgotten. He re-recorded the songs in 1964 and again in 1967. Now with this CD re-release, you essentially get both of these versions on one CD.

Like almost all of Fahey's solo guitar excursions, his folk and rural blues-influenced music has an exhilirating and haunting quality to it. It's too bad more people haven't heard his music. However, I rented the video The Horse Whisperer last week and (surprise!) during one of the scenes they used "Desperate Man Blues." Buy this CD and prepare to be dazzled. ESSENTIAL

The Blind Joe Death albums originally appeared during my formative years as a guitar player. In many ways they opened my eyes to the potential of fingerstyle guitar in the same way that Mississippi John Hurt did, but with a special difference. While Hurt and his kindred had masters a style, Fahey was struggling to extend it. Struggling and succeeding, for the most part. This album, which covers several sessions, displays many of Fahey's sides and is an required album for those who are interested in the development of steel-string guitar music in the U.S.

The base strata of this music is ragtime and blues, as displayed by greats like Hurt, Jefferson, and Lipscomb. Heavy handed at times, with a strong alternating bass approach, Fahey displays technical brilliance andf a willingness to wander into places that the blues doesn't normally go, stretching harmony and melodics at the same time he displays a demonic adherence to driving rhythms. This is music for people who like to pound their heels, at the same time it provides moments of intense exploration.

Blind Joe Death was Fahey's composite here - the mythical musician after whom Fahey modeled himself. Fahey's sense of humor was notorious in the music business. He was fond of hoaxes and in-jokes, perfectly willing to confuse the heck out of those who were threatening to turn the blues into an intellectual endeavor. But, somehow, he stayed true to his muse - playing the music he believed in and delighted when someone hopped on for the ride. As long as he got to share in the fun.

Recording quality is classic 60's kitchen style, unfortunately, and the guitar lacks the high end resonance of today's instruments. But this hardly makes a difference once you realise that you are listening to a musician make exactly the music he wants to. These instrumentals have remains some of my favorites for all 40 of their years, and I still find surprises in them.

While most guitar buffs know and worship Leo Kottke for his flash and technical perfection on a 12 string (which I fully acknowledge), he couldn't have done it if he hadn't heard Fahey (aka Blind Joe Death-- a running joke at the folk-blues scene) getting just as much sound out of a 6 string 10 years before "6 and 12" on these recordings. Fahey took Mississippi John Hurt's style and twisted it into his own and became the first to record solo guitar compositions of this calibur, and nobody since has come close to this creation. For an interesting contrast, listen to Fahey's original arrangement of "In Christ There Is No East or West," and compare it to Kottke's version on Greenhouse...

While it's true that both the 1959 version and the 1967 version of BLIND JOE DEATH are contained on this CD, the disc is missing the 1967 version of "The Transcendental Waterfall." While that is certainly no reason not to buy this disc, buyer should beware that this track is missing. In my opinion, this missing track smokes the 10-minute version that was included on this reissue. This missing track is why I did not give this disc five stars. But get the disc anyway; it's still worth your time and money.

Rather than trying to recap or extend the effusive comments of other Fahey reviewers, I'll simply say that I've loved this album (1967 version) since I first heard it about 1970. And I love it still. This is music to relax the mind: you can float on it, ride on it, travel with it, and keep it close by to your heart and inner ear forever. And now this new CD issue is really a treat, because the listener can hear both versions Fahey recorded, the one from 1959 and the (more familiar) one from 1967. Essential listening. "Must have" music.

I think I was the only kid at Bancroft Junior High in Lakewood, California who listened to this record. Probably the only kind in Lakewood. It made me want to be a guitar player, but unfortunately at the time I was playing oboe in the school band and we, Mr. Peters, the band leader, and everyone else in the class, discovered I was tone deaf. I hear music fine, I'm not tone deaf when other's are playing it, but when I am, my ears don't have a clue.

But I think it was my brief, but aborted band experience that taught me to appreciate instrumental music. Nobody I knew back then was interested in music without words, wouldn't be till Wipe Out , by the Surfaris came out four years later and that's a whole different kind of music.

But back to John Fahey. I used to put this record on my portable record player and listen to it when I did my homework. It wasn't soothing, but something about the music kept me from being bored with boring homework. Something about the music made me remember just enough so that I could float through class.

This version of John Fahey's "Blind Joe Death" is considerably different than the version I listened to in 1959. He'd re-recorded some of the songs, added more, but you can't get that older version anymore and this one does sound better, so I'm including it in my list of the thirteen best records of 1959. John Fahey, influenced a lot of musicians. Give the record a listen, you'll see what I mean.

This Record is Number 3 on my list of the Best Thirteen Records of 1959.

Of course this is a very influential album, but that's not what makes it valuable. It's just really, really good. Fahey modernized the blues/ragtime repertoire on the acoustic guitar, making it relevant to modern, mostly white audiences, and his style was plagiarized into everything from Kottke's drive to New Age blandness. What's really great about this, though, is that the old country blues is his touchstone for sound. To those who think fingerstyle acoustic guitar sounds like Windham Hill, it's going to sound harsh and aggressive. But then again, Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon would give them heart attacks.

Apart from "Live In Tasmania," "The New Possibility" and seeing him live and bearish in 1982, I am merely guessing that this re-re-recorded debut album is the best John Fahey record there is. Fahey's deeply stoic (not to say gnostic) adaptation of archaic flat-picking blues guitar styles evokes Debussy's Preludes or Satie's "Avant-dernieres Pensees" as clearly as it evokes Charley Patton (Fahey's dissertation topic). Fahey's point is that the reverse is also true . . . or that all of the above and others engage unaccountable fate with a stony anger disguised as diffidence. One hint is the way the magnificent deliberation of "Uncloudy Day" makes you think you actually do know what it's like to be dead.