The Yellow Princess

The Yellow Princess was Fahey's ninth album and the second and last on Vanguard. Denny Bruce said it had other musicians on it and did not sell, and Fahey was released from the label before he made Of Rivers and Religion. Sources disagree on the date: The Fahey Files say it was recorded in the spring of 1968 and released that summer, while Richie Unterberger gives 1969.

The title piece is based on the overture to Saint-Saens's opera La Princesse jaune. Fahey wrote in the original notes that he began it in 1954 and finished it in December 1966 in Bastrop, Louisiana. The Singing Bridge of Memphis, Tennessee is a collage made with Barry Hansen around a two-minute section of Quill Blues by Big Boy Cleveland, and Fahey said Hansen understood tape editing better than he did. Other musicians on the record are Mark Andes on bass, Matt Andes on guitars, Jay Ferguson on keyboards and Kevin Kelley on drums. Ferguson and Mark Andes were members of Spirit, and Kelley was briefly in The Byrds. The cover painting is by Charles McVicker.

Eugene Chadbourne of AllMusic praised the recorded sound and called View (East from the Top of the Riggs Road/B&O Trestle) one of Fahey's masterpieces. Hansen later described the playing as some of the most technically accomplished of Fahey's career. Vanguard reissued the album on CD in 2000, 2001 and 2004, and the 2006 edition added an earlier version of Fare Forward Voyagers.