Up to this point, Fahey's LPs had been released on Takoma. This one came out on Riverbaoat Records (I don't know whether the label released anything else; I certainly don't have anything else from the label on my shelves). The edition of the album shown in the photos is not the “pre-subscription” edition (I wish!!!) or the “original” 1966 “Boston address” edition. Rather, this is the 1970 “Cambridge address” edition. The address is the only difference between this edition and the earlier commercial edition. It’s clearly not the 1972 edition because it has the original “Riverboat” font on the front cover (the last picture above shows the lower right portion of the album cover overlayed by the last page of the nice booklet insert that comes with the LP). I learned all this stuff (and more) at Stephen the Beard’s excellent John Fahey blog (specifically, this page) which I highly recommend if you ever find yourself wondering what Fahey vinyl you have and what you still need (God forbid you try to collect it all).
One aspect of Stephen's website I've been waiting for him to attend to is some elucidation of the mystery of the "Early Sessions" LP:
Judging from the notes and track listing on the back cover, the Early Sessions release was intended as a double LP release compiling the 1962-1963 (mostly 1963) recordings of the Blind Joe Death LP and Death Chants LP.Here's the mystery: every time I see a copy of this record for sale, it includes only one piece of vinyl: Blind Joe Death. Given the dodge-and-weave nature of the Takoma catalog through the mid-60s to early 70s, and the fact that the Early Sessions release was quickly withdrawn, I have always questioned whether this "compilation" was, in fact, ever actually sold with 2LPs in the sleeve. Note also that the sleeve is not a gatefold nor is it any thicker than other Takoma sleeves from the same period.
As you can see from the photos, the single slab of vinyl which came with my copy has a matrix and catalog number unique to the set (i.e., C-1000 Vol. 1). I'd like to see at least a photo of the label (which should read "C-1000 Vol. 2") and runoff groove of a Death Chants LP pressed for this compilation. Otherwise I'm sticking to my story: Early Sessions was never sold with 2LPs in the sleeve, in contradiction to the notes on the back of the sleeve, or if it was sold that way, Takoma simply stuck in spare copies of the Death Chants vinyl (cat. number C-1003) into the jacket.
Go ahead. Make my day. ;)
Back to Transfiguration. What turns Transfiguration into pure gold in my book is the all-time classic Fahey track, “On the Sunny Side of the Ocean,” and a fine version too. You can actually watch Fahey perform the track live in 1978 here:
If that were the only Fahey composition on Transfiguration and the rest was covers of the Osmonds’ Greatest Hits, I’d still be loving it. But in addition there’s “Orinda-Moraga,” and “Death of Clayton Peacock,” two fascinating Fahey compositions that are worth listening to, well, endlessly. Everything else (like the Uncle Dave Macon covers and the particularly lovely “Southern Medley”) is executed with Fahey’s genius ear for invention and his uncanny ability to milk whole cream out of the udder of our musical heritage where so many other artists end up with skim milk (or cheese).
There's a bunch of nice Fahey videos on YouTube, including some cool "instructional" videos that I assume you were made for commercial purposes at some later point in Fahey's life. Because it's one of my favorite songs, I'm partial to this vid of Fahey demonstrating his version of the Bobby Burns song "Auld Lang Syne. "
And if you like that, I highly recommend checking the other immortal video performance of that song, sung by Jean Redpath, with Roscoe Holcomb and Pete Seeger playing along. It doesn't get much better than that. Sadly, that segment of Rainbow Quest (episode 17) is missing from Youtube at the moment ...
