A painter friend was recently talking to me about the inspiration for his unearthly,
ethereal paintings featuring shimmery apparitions, figures neither there nor not
there, and explained his fascination for old photographs of long-dead, anonymous
people going about their lives. Having captured a frozen moment for posterity,
these ghostly photographs invite your curiosity – there is often slender hope
of ever determining what is going on, who is pictured, how and when they died,
but one can’t help but imagine and wonder. My friend had attempted to create a
similar intrigue with his paintings.
This thought appealed to me and has since taken me over in that I’ve begun
to hear a similar quality in a lot of music as well as in photographs, except
with music there is a far better chance of finding out about the people involved.
John Fahey’s Revenant Records have come to be my favourite ‘ghost music’ label
– even the artists still alive and kicking have that mysterious, rarefied quality
to them which I find so appealing and are able to instantly capture my imagination.
Spanning the ancient traditional to the modern avant-garde, there is a peculiar
cohesiveness to their output which makes it hard to isolate an individual recording
from the rest of the catalogue. No other label could so comfortably house recordings
of a 1920s banjo picker with a voice that could corrugate reinforced concrete,
a naked Japanese dancer leaping around a disused warehouse in the poring rain
accompanied by acoustic abstractions, a band locked together in a pink house for
a year while submitted to torturous brain-washing sessions, or a Cherokee steel
guitarist who may perform his Hawaiian tunes in either Indian headdress or a Stetson.
Have I made it sound like a freak-show? It isn’t – it’s an astonishing collection
of raw and enchanting American music from any era and genre at its very best,
thankfully preserved for evermore.
It is the rare quality of such raw musics that chiefly aroused Fahey.
Fascinated in his youth by Charley Patton, Blind Willie Johnson and the other
musicians featured in his collection of obscure old blues / country blues and
gospel 78s, and then in later years by the experimentalism of Sonic Youth and
John Cage, it is these two sides of the John Fahey coin that we find complementing
each other beautifully across the releases on Revenant Records. It is surprising
how well the traditional and the experimental, the ancient and modern, sit together
all raw and raggedy as if they were cut from the same cloth.
They don’t come much rawer than Dock Boggs (pictured above), the aforementioned
banjo picker whose voice is described in the accompanying hard-backed book as
sounding "as if his bones are coming through his skin". Saved by Revenant
from what could have been an eternity of obscurity, Country Blues documents
a weirder, rougher aspect to the American folk tradition that has nothing to with
Pete Seeger’s wholesome idealistic protest. Boggs’ songs concern themselves with
death, heartbreak, lonesomeness and some serious hard travelling and fit his extraordinary
voice like a glove. Boggs quit music on his wife’s insistence in 1930 and searched
fruitlessly for three decades for something to fill the void before finally picking
up his banjo again, playing constantly until his death in 1971.
Still fitting in nicely with the ghost music theme, although very much alive,
is Jim O’Rourke’s Happy Days. This is one continuous piece of minimalism
spanning 45 minutes which gradually progresses from repetitive gently plucked
notes on an acoustic guitar, through what may be either a hurdy-gurdy or the biggest
bumble-bee in the world, to an electronic fiesta of layers and layers of throbbing
drones as the guitar gradually resurfaces towards the end.
Then there’s the Stanley Brothers, a fine bluegrass duo whose congenial Earliest
Recordings collects their Rich-R-Tone releases on 78s from the late 1940s
/ early 1950s, the period before they fully hit their stride but an incredible
example of some swinging, occasionally gospel-tinged bluegrass which frequently
floors this listener.
The title of the first (and as yet only) volume of American Primitive
further helps to define Revenant’s field of expertise and moves deep into the
world of "raw pre-war gospel". Many black musicians from this era found
themselves caught somewhere between heaven and hell, depending on the slant of
their music – sinful blues or redemptive gospel. Charley Patton, interestingly,
was forced by record company executives to record the gospel tunes included here
under the pseudonym of Elder Hadley, presumably to avoid tarnishing the sacred,
redemptive songs with his blues association. The music on this collection is some
of the rawest, most soulful gospel – you need to listen to the beautifully sincere
"Honey In The Rock" by Blind Mamie Forehand today. Fahey’s sleeve-notes
bring a fascinating insight into the music, and into the lives of the musicians
as well, bringing the ghosts that little bit more into focus.
My personal favourite of Revenant’s releases is the two CD and book set celebrating
the never-famous Charlie Feathers’ glorious rockabilly country, Get With It:
Essential Recordings (1954 – 69). The splendidly relaxed country tunes which
kick off the set boast Feather’s deliciously full-flavoured voice – think of a
less-lonesome Hank Williams – until the rockabilly and its accompanying vocal
inflections start to creep in. Recording at Sun, writing for Elvis Presley and
claiming to teach him everything he knew ("I arranged all of Elvis’ stuff"),
Charlie’s photograph was even used on the sheet music to "Blue Suede Shoes"
because he was better looking that the song’s author Carl Perkins, yet stardom
always unfairly eluded him. Sadly Feathers died within weeks of the release of
this exceptional collection.
Zipping back up to the end of the 20th Century again, and possibly
the rawest of all of Revenant’s catalogue is the striped down electric blues of
Bassholes on Blue Roots. Featuring only guitar, feedback, vocals and drums
this is crudely though perfectly recorded material. The songs sound as if they
had been buried in the middle of hay-barn by Dock Boggs to be dug up and brought
back to life again during the time of The Pixies and Giant Sand. Or perhaps a
snare, bass drum, badly tuned electric guitar, big amp and Iggy Pop were somehow
transported back seventy / eighty years. The sleeve-notes from Dick Rosenthal
only enhance the mystery with their tales of working all day to buy a silver bullet
to "shoot the boss at the shucking barn". Great, gritty, gnarly, combustible
stuff.
Sir Richard Bishop, otherwise know as the Sun City Girls’ guitarist Rick Bishop,
has produced something far more polished in terms of clarity of sound with Salvador
Kali, yet no less raw in its near hour of improvisations on guitars, piano
and harmonium. There is such an astonishing range to his repertoire, from the
Cage-esque through Spanish flamenco to Django Reinhardt and jazz / classical traditions
gleaned from all corners of the world. The long piano improvisation "Al-Darazi"
is startlingly atmospheric, perfect listening in a darkened room on a rainy night.
As is Derek Bailey’s Music and Dance, part of which was recorded during
a rainstorm, providing the perfect setting for the two near-half-hour pieces on
the album. As mentioned above, this features Bailey’s stark and abstract acoustic
wrestling to the accompaniment of Min Tanaka, a naked Japanese dancer who you
can hear shuffling and leaping around the disused warehouse in which the performance
took place. In "Rain Dance", by an exceptional stroke of luck, it started
raining heavily outside and you can also hear the water leaking / pouring through
the neglected ceiling and splashing in puddles on the floor for Tanaka to dance
and splash in, thus giving the piece its title. The music is simply beautiful.
Revenant’s primary foray into atonality occurs on Cecil Taylor’s dizzying Nefertiti,
The Beautiful One Has Come, a live recording of Taylor’s trio featuring Jimmy
Lyons and Sunny Murray in 1962. The band are excited, flexible and highly dextrous
and many people list this as one of their favourite Cecil Taylor albums due to
its extraordinary complexity which never loses sight of its delight and sense
of fun.
Dripping in fun is the chipper Jenks "Tex" Carman’s Chippeha!,
the cross-cultured oddity mentioned in the opening paragraphs above. Carman’s
delightful Hawaiian steel guitar zips all over the place in this sprightly set
of tunes. It’s hard to imagine from listening to the music that Carman is a Cherokee
and would frequently perform in full Indian headdress if he didn’t have his Stetson
with him. The three tunes from his appearance on Country Music Time in
which he attempts to recruit youngsters into the US Air Force with his perky steel
guitar and Jolson-esque voice is an unmissably surreal moment.
Finally, Revenant’s two highest-profile yet releases, volume four of Harry
Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and Captain Beefheart’s Grow
Fins have both been widely dissected and highly praised and I suspect that
readers of this article will need little encouragement to go and check them out
here.
The label’s coalescence through great diversity is remarkable, and it’s dedication
to preserving forgotten or otherwise lost raw, honest, important music from America’s
history (past and present) explains the respect with which the label is widely
held. It is a great shame that Fahey has not lived to see his label release their
upcoming extensive Charley Patton set, containing his 1970 dissertation on Patton’s
music which was so emotive for Fahey due to its inherent anger and fear.
Long may Revenant’s apparitions continue to haunt us.