Frank Fairfield, new/old old time-y music

[howardfinkel]

So I bought this guy Frank Fairfield's record after finding out about him on the Tompkins Square records website. They release a bunch of really great old gospel/folk/soul compilations - Fire in My Bones, Goodbye Babylon and just recently This May Be My Last Time Singing.

I got around to watching this film that was shown at SXSW last year and it really reached me I guess. He's a captivating figure and certainly seems to live in his own world of 78s and passed on traditionals.

There's a handful of interviews with him - Pitchfork, No Depression, LA Record, Guardian.

Curious if any of you have already heard of 'em/what ya think

edit: also feel free to designate this a thread for personal recommendations of random old compilations and the great songs hidden in them. box sets can be intimidating beasts and sometimes it takes personal recommendations to spread the really worthwhile songs which I think is kind of nice.

[alex]

I've seen him around on the Tompkins Square website, but haven't really listened yet. I do like that label a lot. On the compilations end, I have People Take Warning: Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938 and To What Strange Place: The Music Of The Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929 (the latter I have yet to really explore; the former is awesome), as well as the first three volumes of their excellent Imaginative Anthems series (lots of finger-picked guitars and stuff, though not necessarily old). I have a bunch of solo releases as well, and they're generally pretty great too. I've been meaning to check out Fairfield, so maybe it's about time I actually do.

I've heard nothing but good things about Goodbye Babylon, but it's on a different label, Dust-to-Digital. Who have a whole lot of mouth-watering releases, but always a bit more expensive, so they tend to end up on wishlists rather than actually in my shopping basket.

[howardfinkel]

Oops dunno why I thought the same person compiled Goodbye babylon. I do know there's a few frank fairfield videos on the dust to digital YouTube channel.

I wanna check out that Music of the Ottoman American diaspora as well as Fairfield's comp called something like Unheard Ofs and Forgottens.

Heard good things about the imaginational anthem series too, maybe a purchase for later in the week.

I recently started relistening to this American primitive CD -
http://www.revenantrecords.com/index.php?section=releases&cd_ident=17

Really want this box too - http://dust-digital.com/africa

[howardfinkel]

Also People Take Warning is excellent

[Babar]

People Take Warning: Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938

This title sounds... so... good. And you say it's awesome so that clinches it, I must have this.

[davy]

I've got Dust-to-Digital's Fonotone Records box, and I absolutely love it, even if I don't listen to it all that often.

[fishjim]

People Take Warning: Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938

This title sounds... so... good. And you say it's awesome so that clinches it, I must have this.

I included this on my best of 2010 list (because it was re-released last year). Yes, it is awesome. After a few pass-throughs, you will think twice before approaching 1) trains 2) the Titanic 3) any river anywhere 4) a woman.

[alex]

Babar, you won't regret this.

Currently listening to the thanksgiving episode of the Root Hog or Die radio show. "I Heard the Voice of a Porkchop" is my new favourite song.

[YojimboMonkey]

I am a terrible person with bad taste in music but "Root Hog Or Die" immediately made me think of the Mojo Nixon album of the same name (and the song title you mentioned did not dissuade me from that thought either, possibly because of his song Louisiana Liplock which does reference a pork chop, but only metaphorically)

[howardfinkel]

finally had my article on Frank published, hoping it gains him some more fans : )

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/delorean/frank-fairfield

[fishjim]

finally had my article on Frank published, hoping it gains him some more fans : )

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/delorean/frank-fairfield

It just gained me. Awesome piece! And that clip is fantastic.

Never heard of Fairfield until this thread, but it's weird how much he comes off as a more genial John Fahey, who was often scornful of his audience. They both seem to have evolved their "from the earth" sound by digging through wax cylinders and found records and just picking songs and licks that strike them. Fahey called his method American Primitive, and I think of people like him and Fairfield just walking the tall cotton of American folk and filling up their bags.

"A drum with a stick on it? It's just tremendous. It's a wild thing."

Greatest description of banjo, ever?

[fishjim]

Hey HF, I liked your piece so much I just posted it to FB. Can't find you in the directory, so send me a friend request if you want to comment and/or check out the comments.

[howardfinkel]

dude that is really nice of you! i appreciate it and just sent ya a friend request.

Fahey's a pretty spot-on reference point. and yeah, Frank's got a way with words, I really love how he refuses to identify contemporary pop music as his type of music.

[fishjim]

that's exactly like Fahey refusing to call his music "folk" music. He preferred "Volk".

[coldforge]

Was he, like... a Nazi?

[fishjim]

No, he was just disgusted with what passed for folk back in the mid-to-late sixties. It was today's pop, it seems. The "Volk" were just one of his many ideas in his ironic cosmology, including the Great Koonaklaster, turtles, cat people, and visions of Hank Williams. Basically the "Volk" is the popular taste that's preserved and recycled over time. A folk tradition, but without all the marketing mumbo-jumbo surrounding the word "folk" at that time.

[howardfinkel]

I feel like I need to read that Fahey book that came out recently, shamefully unaware of the term Volk

[coldforge]

Man, I still can't help but find that an incredibly unfortunate choice of words

[fishjim]

Man, I still can't help but find that an incredibly unfortunate choice of words

Keep in mind that he chose the word precisely because it would piss people off.

Here's a long interview with him in the 90s, by some fans in Portland. One of the craziest religious texts I've read, but also one of the smartest.

[fishjim]

I feel like I need to read that Fahey book that came out recently, shamefully unaware of the term Volk

No need to know the term, really, except as a reference-point for Fahey. I'd never call folk music "Volk" myself, for the same reason CF hates the word.

Anyway, when reading Fahey, it never hurts to remember that, in both appearance and rhetorical style, he was perhaps the greatest troll to ever pick up a guitar. By calling the genius of a folk tradition the "Volk" he was not only calling out all the sanctimonious folkies who equated folk music with liberal politics (Pete Seeger et al.) but all the busy-bee folk scholars he encountered at UCLA (where he got his MA in folk musicology) who consistently overlooked the role of communities in the genesis of folk traditions, focusing instead on individual artists. Easier to research, you know?

Part of the reason Fahey chose Charley Patton for his dissertation, I think, was that this performer allowed him to make the case that the American folk tradition is, at its root, a ongoing conversation between black and white musical communities.

Patton himself was mixed race, and so suited Fahey's purpose.

[RoyBiggins]

Man, no wonder Almanzo loves Fahey so much.

That Fahey box that Dust-to-Digital put out last year looked wonderful, but I din' get it.  Heck, I dont' think Almanzo did either, or I'd borrow it now.


http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15959-your-past-comes-back-to-haunt-you-the-fonotone-years-19581965/

[RoyBiggins]

Hey, also, Finkel, that was a great piece. Good work.

[fishjim]

Man, no wonder Almanzo loves Fahey so much.

That Fahey box that Dust-to-Digital put out last year looked wonderful, but I din' get it.  Heck, I dont' think Almanzo did either, or I'd borrow it now.

If you're new to Fahey, I wouldn't start there. Davy clued me in about that box set when it came out, and I got it the same day. Good stuff, but definitely for hardcore fans. More about it here.

If you scroll down a few posts on that thread, I link to my 4 essential Fahey albums.

Back to Fairfield - it's worth remembering that a lot of the early Dylan came about through just this sort of "primitive" process. Dylan's notorious for lifting whole chunks of stuff off the Harry Smith AFM, just like Fairfield's doing when he grins and says, "Kill yourself!" in that video, which is of course a famous yelp of Uncle Dave Macon at 2:28 in "Way Down The Old Plank Road", included on the AFM. There's even passages in Dylan's Chronicles and in interviews of the time where he's sounding a lot like Fahey & Fairfield regarding the dark forces of folk.

Greil Marcus quotes some choice interviews with Dylan in his introduction to the Folkways re-issue of the AFM, "The Old Weird America". The essay is a pretty handy distillation of his book of the same name, originally titled Invisible Republic. But be careful with Marcus. My feeling toward his ideas about American folk is about the same as Fahey's in that interview with him I posted upthread.

Q. What about Greil Marcus?

Well, Greil got ahold of something of my extension, something of my
worship, my "religion".  No doubt about it.

But something got ahold of Marcus and Marcus, through bold acclimation,
through great intuition, unstated implication, guilt by association,
profound observation, tried to mesh my extension with

                    Bob Dylan qua himself
                    and Bob Dylan qua interpretation
                    of the corpus, the canon I created,
                    the music which I am and you are.

Greil's book is full of inconsequential trivial mistakes, omissions and
some ignorance.  Remember I said trivial.  It doesn't matter.  I love you.

[howardfinkel]

is there a definitive fahey book that i should read? i'm probably going to shell out the cash for the box set after listening to fahey all day at work. transfiguration of joe blind death is my fav. with dance of death not far behind.

[fishjim]

is there a definitive fahey book that i should read? i'm probably going to shell out the cash for the box set after listening to fahey all day at work. transfiguration of joe blind death is my fav. with dance of death not far behind.

yeah, dance of death is a goodun, too. for me the best will always be the Takoma 1967 stereo recording of blind joe death, which had an effect on me something like that of bill monroe on fahey, which fahey describes in the title story of his collection How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life.

i'd start with either that book, or the Patton dissertation linked to upthread. or maybe just start with the patton dissertation because it'll give you some intellectual respect for fahey, who pretty much everywhere else (except on the essays he wrote for the Folkways re-issue of the AFM and for his first Revenant anthology, American Primitive Vol 1: Raw Pre-War Gospel) is the aforesaid troll of the Koona-kosmos.

this is especially true when you start reading the liner notes and booklets he'd write for the blind joe death series of recordings. he's just spinning crazy folk tales at this point, trying to get a reaction. if you like them, you'll know it. but even a hardcore fan like me can only take so much.