TT 389: Blaine Billingsley and John Fahey

Guitar as instrument of folk sophistication, with an assist from Shuja Haider

The guitar is the people’s instrument. The guitar gets the party started. The guitar is for the bard or the troubadour, or the lonely blues man on a back porch somewhere where they are still waiting for the railroad. You tune it yourself, you play it yourself.

Melody and harmony are available, but they come with strict limitations, for the hand can only reach a certain number of intervals, let alone chords. Open strings are your friend, close-spaced chromatic clusters are not. Bill Frisell told me he appropriated far more of the bare harmonies of Thelonious Monk than the thicker harmonies of Herbie Hancock or Bill Evans simply due to the geography of the instrument.

There’s a certain kind of transcendent solo guitar tradition that sounds basically like folk or blues but nonetheless has long form compositional development. You strum away like any good party guitarist but build an exotic and epic journey.

Leo Kottke is a familiar name, but Kottke’s output is essentially conservative. Recently I’ve become aware of two more esoteric practitioners, Blaine Billingsley and John Fahey.

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Blaine Billingsley’s Tarnation is brand new; it also seems to be Billingsley’s first record. [Bandcamp link with full credits.]

The title track leaps straight into the fray, with a wandering chromatic line giving away to a groovy folk ethos. The lowest string (or maybe the whole guitar) is pitched lower than normal. Some of funky intervals might recall Thelonious Monk, but the drive is all-Americana. As the piece progresses, it gets weirder. It’s basically finger-style guitar, including finger tapping and plenty of strum. Billingsley is grooving hard despite the madness.

There are two “covers” that help define the music’s parameters. “Eleanor Rigby” takes the familiar Beatles tune for quite a ride. At first Billingsley plays the melody straight, but the second time there is some sort of “operation” at work, perhaps the tune is mirrored or in retrograde inversion or something. Then there’s “Hommage: Frescobaldi,” where stern intervals walk up and down like dour sentinels. It might be a counterpoint exercise gone “wrong.” Whatever the exact context, the sound of Billingsley’s fingers working hard on recalcitrant strings gives the highly chromatic music a unique sheen. The coda of harmonics barely speaks, but nonetheless retains a lonely grandeur.

Two other particularly good Billingsley originals are the freely flowing “I Will Tell You Everything” and the fancy dance of “Be Careful of What You Get Good At.” (The latter might be a reference to a line from True Detective.)

Overall, Tarnation is a must for guitar music connoisseurs.

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One of Billingsley’s antecedents is John Fahey, who I learned about only recently from Shuja Haider. Shuja sent me a wise email with Fahey recommendations, which I reproduce here:

John Fahey was a student of American folklore, writing a master's thesis at UCLA on Charley Patton and tracking down Bukka White and Skip James in person before hippies "rediscovered" them. His work is solidly within the country blues idiom, emphasizing the latent surrealism of the form and placing it in a resolutely minimalist context. It also draws on technical aspects of flamenco and the sensibility of modernist composition (perhaps there's a parallel to the fieldwork of Bartók). He called it "American primitive," in reference to the way art historians described 19th-century painters who lacked formal training, because he didn't want to be associated with the folk revival. I think you'll enjoy his song titles.

Fahey has become somewhat unfashionable lately, for mostly non-musical reasons. To me the music speaks for itself; it's forthcoming about its origins, but in the end, there is nothing quite like it. Some representative classics and related highlights below.

Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes

The second release on Fahey's own label, Takoma, and the place I'd recommend starting. Also an example of a bad habit he had of rerecording his own work. The same applies to his debut, Blind Joe Death, credited on release to the eponymous fictive bluesman. In 1959, it predated the vogue for country blues that would reach pop charts in the late 60s—by which time he had rerecorded it twice. Also in this vein is The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, which delves into Appalachian folk styles.

Days Have Gone By

Continuing the solo guitar template, but adding tonalities influenced by his study of Asian string instruments. More trademark compositions here. Introduces the tape experiments that would characterize this period, which go even further out in his records on Vanguard.

The Yellow Princess

His best on Vanguard; some of his least traditional, most idiosyncratic compositions, with occasional non-guitar accompaniment.

The New Possibility

After Vanguard ditched him for doing musique concrete instead of folk rock, Fahey recorded his bestselling record, which is made up of Christmas carols. It seems sarcastic, but it wasn't; this sinner was somehow an honest-to-god Christian. For a secular listener, these are the rare renditions of these tunes that make their melodies audible through the haze of association they invariably bring with them.

Of Rivers and Religion

Now on Reprise, Fahey gets to record with a whole band. But instead of rock and roll, it's early jazz. The ensemble includes Allan Reuss of the Benny Goodman orchestra, who also appears on After the Ball and Old Fashioned Love (along with Nick Fatool, Britt Woodman, and Dick Cary). I love all of these; record buyers in the 70s apparently didn't.

Fare Forward Voyagers

One ragaesque improvisation per side, an apparent middle finger to Reprise after they too ditched his ass. Thrilling moments, requires patience. A founding document for drone rock.

NB: I gravitate towards LPs by default, hence the above, but for a thoroughly respectable primer, there is an excellent selection of his Takoma output, chosen by the artist, on The Best of John Fahey 1959-1977. (It uses the rerecordings, which I don't have a problem with.). — SHUJA HAIDER

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Solipsistic coda: There is not really a pianistic equivalent to Blaine Billingsley and John Fahey, maybe the closest thing is a ragtime composer/performer like John Musto or John Novacek. I can’t think of any serious blues or boogie pianists who write long form works for their own performance. Perhaps "Blue" Gene Tyranny is another possible reference….

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