Blind Joe Death

Fahey recorded the first version of this album in 1959 at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Adelphi, Maryland, and paid for a pressing of one hundred copies. One side of the sleeve carried the name John Fahey and the other the name Blind Joe Death. The sides are headed Selections by Blind Joe Death and Selections by John Fahey. The first holds standards and hymns such as St. Louis Blues, John Henry and In Christ There Is No East or West. The second holds his own pieces, among them The Transcendental Waterfall and Sligo River Blues.

Some copies went to folk music scholars, a few of whom believed that a living old bluesman of that name existed. Fahey later re-recorded selections on other occasions. The Library of Congress notes that he preferred the more technically demanding performances on the 1967 stereo release. The album was added to the National Recording Registry for 2010. Its description hears the old blues and folk 78s he had collected since youth alongside the work of Charles Ives and Bela Bartok.