He adopted pseudonyms when no one had heard of him and drifted into poverty and alcoholism. But Fahey was one of the distinguished pioneers of American blues and folk,as a unique film showsI bought my first John Fahey album around about the same time that I discovered the novels and short stories of Richard Brautigan and the two American mavericks are linked in my consciousness to this day. The album in question was The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, originally released in 1965 in its ornately drawn gothic cover, and on Fahey's own Takoma label and later reissued on Transatlantic.
It may believe been the way the name evoked the mythology of an older,lost America that made me connect it in some vague way with Brautigan book titles like Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar and A Confederate General from large Sur.
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Source: theguardian.com