RE: (TV) Fwd: John Fahey: 1939-2001

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@volpe.dot.gov>]

I second that.
Leo	

-----Original Message-----
From: Pontrelli, Paul Jay [mailto:jPontrelli@stites.com]
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 8:45 AM
To: 'tv@obbard.com'
Subject: FW: (TV) Fwd: John Fahey: 1939-2001


Anyone who claims to love guitar should have Fahey's "Transfiguration of
Blind Joe Death."

A little more info:

February 22, 2001

			     FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

		GUITAR INNOVATOR JOHN FAHEY DIES AT 61

Guitarist John Fahey, whose eccentric acoustic stylings influenced a
generation
of musicians, died this morning at Salem Hospital in Salem, OR after
undergoing
a sextuple bypass operation 48 hours previously.

John Fahey was born on February 28, 1939 in Takoma Park, MD. His father
played
popular songs on the piano and Irish harp, and his mother was also a
pianist.
John spent his youth raising wood turtles and fishing in the Susquehawa
River
and upper Chesapeake Bay. On Sundays the family went to the New River
Ranch in
nearby Rising Sun, MD where they heard the top country and hillbilly
groups of
the day, like Bill Monroe and The Stanley Brothers. On a fishing trip in
1952
John met a black singer and guitarist named Frank Hovington, whose
fingerpicking style so intrigued John that he bought his first guitar
soon
thereafter, a Sears Roebuck model that cost him $17.00, and started
teaching
himself to play.

After getting a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from American
University, Fahey
moved to Berkeley, CA in 1963, where he established his own label,
Takoma
Records, and began his long recording career. The following year he
moved to
Los Angeles, got an M.A. in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA, and was
instrumental in the rediscovery of blues artists Skip James and Bukka
White. He
expanded the Takoma label to include fellow guitarists Leo Kottke and
Peter
Lang, among many others, and New Age pioneer George Winston was another
whose
early career was nourished by the quirky innovator. In recent years the
Takoma
catalog has been purchased by Fantasy Records of Berkeley, CA, and
Fahey's
Takoma LPs are now being systematically reissued on CD. Bill Belmont at
Fantasy
calls Fahey "A true American musical genius."

Although Fahey preferred to be known as an American primitivist, he was
widely
acknowledged as the "godfather of the New Age guitar movement," and his
recordings (over thirty albums for a wide variety of labels) showcased
his
ongoing musical explorations. Several were sonic explorations in the
alternative music vein, and all had exotic titles (a 19-minute excursion
was
called "On the Death and Disembowelment of the New Age," while another
was
called "Old Girlfriends and Other Disasters." At the same time, he never
lost
his early love for traditional and roots music forms, and during the
early
1990s he formed another record label, Revenant, to reissue classic
recordings
of early blues and old time music. At the time of his death he had just
completed a new album.

For further information contact Mary Katherine Aldin via email at 
mkaldin@folkloreproductions.com or at the office number (310) 451-0767.

-----Original Message-----
From: Maurice Rickard [mailto:maurice@mac.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:28 PM
To: tv@obbard.com
Subject: (TV) Fwd: John Fahey: 1939-2001


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