Monday

Four Unique Fonotone LPs













These are labels for four 12" Fonotone LPs, produced as a set and almost certainly entirely unique. Here's the original owner's account of how he obtained them:

"I wrote to Joe Bussard Jr. in the early 1980s, and I asked him if he still had the early John Fahey recordings for sale. He wrote back that yes, he was still offering them on cassette. I wrote again and told him I really would rather have records, and he wrote that he could make me a set of 78 rpm acetate singles. But I didn't want 7" records, and I certainly didn't want anything that played at 78 rpm! I asked him if he could cut me 12" LPs at 33, and he refused to do it. I waited a year or so, and I wrote him again. By then he had the "Guitar Solo's" LP acetate available, and I bought one. It sounded great, which made me want the other tracks on 12" LP even more, so I asked him again. He told me he'd never custom made 12" discs to order for anyone EVER, because cutting full LPs by hand was a lot of trouble. I wrote him back right away and told him that I'd pay him whatever he asked, but I had to have LPs. I think it was another year before we closed the deal, but finally we agreed on a price and he sent the four LPs. He enclosed a note with them that said, "I can't believe how difficult it was to make these, I will never do this again for any amount of money!"

So, are these discs unique?

Oh, I have no doubt that they are. I chose the songs that I wanted from his master list and the order I wanted them in, and he cut the acetates. He custom made these LPs for me and told me flat out that he would never do it again for anybody!"

Saturday

The Fonotone catalog

Pages from two Fonotone catalogs listing the Fahey material Joe Bussard had to offer at that point. Joe Bussard, as always at Fonotone, typed these with an elderly typewriter. The 10" and 12" Guitar Solo's - titles unknown are no longer available on the second list.



Tuesday

Upcoming

I must apologise for my relative silence here over the Summer although I have certainly not been ignoring the blog, rather giving my time to research. As a consequence I should shortly be posting both Mystery of the Turtle II and Blind Joe Death Transfigured III - they will contain a lot of additional information, particularly the post related to VOTT. I also have a biography of Riverboat Ralph nearing completion.

Due to internet access problems I am not in a position to add further downloads at present. Hopefully this will be resolved soon and normal service will resume. In the meantime, thanks for bearing with me.