the past comes back to haunt you: the fonotone years 1958-1965

the day before yesterday we were into the takoma records years - john fahey launches one of the first independent labels and turns the solo steel-strung acoustic guitar into a concert instrument all the time while writing hippie and folkie baiting sleeve notes. like harry smith, like al ‘blind owl’ wilson (and the other ‘blues purists’), he doesn’t like the woody guthrie/ pete seeger ‘folk music as politics by other means’ strategy. 

horsemouth is remiss in not writing about this yesterday but he was out with john clarkson first at a daytime stick in the wheel gig in islington and then down at the buddhist medicine exhibition down at the welcome museum (both good). they then distracted from enlightenment by a pint of craft beer (hiss boo) in one of the old gatehouses to euston station before heading off their separate ways. in the evening horsemouth watched godard’s weekend and mike figgis’s comments on it.

before he started takoma records fahey had recorded for blues collector joe bussard - (both as himself and as blind thomas) these recordings from 1958 eventually emerged in 2011 as the past comes back to haunt you: the fonotone years 1958-1965.

fahey will go to university then on to berkeley, then on to UCLA to study folklore and to write his thesis on charlie patton.

before he will be a record collector making collecting trips with richard k. spottswood - in baltimore they will find the copy of blind willie johnson’s praise lord i’m satisfied that will start fahey’s interest in the blues.

fahey week is over for another year but today is also the anniversary of the death of another guitarist fahey distributed via takoma records, robbie basho. other guitarists put out by takoma include leo kottke, bola sete and peter lang, as well as emerging pianist george winston. both basho and winston will end up putting out albums on ECM.