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John Aloysius Fahey (February 28, 1939 - February 22, 2001) was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as the foundation of American Primitive Guitar, 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 oeuvre.

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 friend from the Washington, D.C., area, 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 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.  In the later half of the sixties, Fahey continued to issue material through Takoma as well as Vanguard Records, which had signed him along with similar instrumental folk guitarists Sandy Bull and Peter Walker. Albums from this period, such as Days Have Gone By, The Voice of the Turtle, 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 release 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, Bola Sete 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, Rabindra Danks, 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.
John Fahey (musician)