The saga of
Blind Joe Death is an extremely confusing one, for those listeners who haven't been following
Fahey's career from the beginning. In short:
Fahey originally recorded
Blind Joe Death in 1959, in an extremely rare, self-released edition of less than 100 copies. Though few heard it, his debut album was a groundbreaker on the acoustic folk scene in its unusually experimental approach to blues and folk styles, though its innovations sound relatively tame when compared to the best of
Fahey's subsequent work.
Fahey reissued the album in 1964 on
Takoma, re-recording some of the cuts, and dropping one selection (
"West Coast Blues"). In 1967, when the album was issued for the stereo market,
Fahey re-recorded the entire album from scratch, resulting in performances of the exact same new material, but with improved fidelity and technique. This reissue does us all a mammoth favor by combining the 1964 and 1967 editions of the album (which, to make matters more confusing, bore the exact same catalog number,
Takoma 1002) onto one 75-minute disc. A previously unreleased 1964 version of
"West Coast Blues," a song which had been on the 1959 edition of
Blind Joe Death but was left off subsequent configurations, is added as a bonus cut. Completists should note that this is not the final word in the
Blind Joe Death saga. Several of the versions originally presented on the 1959 album that were re-recorded for both the 1964 and 1967 remakes are still absent, for space reasons and because the compilers themselves feel that the later renditions are notably superior. Still, it's a near-definitive package of the important
Blind Joe Death material, with extensive historical liner notes explaining the circumstances that gave rise to its various incarnations. ~ Richie Unterberger
