Takoma Records was a small but influential
record label founded by
John Fahey in the late 1950s.
It was
named after Fahey's hometown, the Washington, D.C.
suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland
.
Takoma Records began with a custom pressing of 100 copies of
John Fahey/Blind Joe Death,
an album of his own guitar playing released by John Fahey around
1959. He had no distribution and sold the pressing mainly to
friends, and at music parties. A copy of this record recently sold
on
eBay for several thousand dollars.
John moved
to Berkeley,
California
, and the label was really launched when John
rediscovered the country bluesman, Bukka
White. With Eugene "ED"
Denson, John drove to Memphis
and the pair produced Bukka's first recording in 23
years. Later in 1963 they released it, as well as John's
second album of his own music.
Independent labels were a novelty at that period in American
musical history, but gradually in the next several years word
spread about the music. At the same time independent "
folk music" labels like
Rounder were springing up, and establishing
distribution systems. The content of the Takoma label expanded to
include other guitarists, such as Robbie Basho, and other types of
folk music. At the same time the label ventured into the
avant-garde with
The Psychedelic Saxophone
of Charlie Nothing.
Acoustic
guitar music, especially that of John Fahey, remained the
mainstay of the label.
Around 1967, Denson moved to full-time management of the rock band
Country Joe and the Fish
and John became the sole owner of Takoma.
He moved the label and
himself to Los
Angeles
, where he was studying for his Masters degree at UCLA
under
D.K. Wilgus.
Leo Kottke's
6 and 12-String
Guitar became a surprise hit and the profits funded an
expansion of the label which now had a staff.
In 1970
Jon Monday joined the label,
first as Promotion Manager, and working his way up to General
Manager. The label grew as progressive radio stations played new
releases by Fahey and other Takoma artists. In 1973 Charlie
Mitchell became Takoma's president. Takoma was one of the founding
companies of NAIRD - the National Association of Independent Record
Distributors.
Fahey had started a new genre of guitar music, known later as
American Primitivism, which
comprised traditional fingerpicking
steel string guitar techniques applied
to neo-classical compositions.
The Takoma label showcased such music; its
roster included Leo Kottke, Peter
Lang, Mike Aldridge, Robbie Basho
and already famous Mississippi
bluesman Bukka White. George Winston released his first album on
Takoma and
Mike Bloomfield released
several solo albums on the label. American composer and electronic
music pioneer
Joseph Byrd released three
records in 1975-76 on Takoma, which were co-produced by
Jon Monday.
In 1979, Fahey sold Takoma to
Chrysalis Records, owned by
Terry Ellis and
Chris
Wright, which had artists such as
Blondie,
Pat
Benatar, and
Huey Lewis.
Jon Monday continued as General Manager of the
label for Chrysalis until 1982 when Chrysalis sold the Takoma
catalog. During the Chrysalis years, Takoma released albums by
The Fabulous Thunderbirds,
Maria Muldaur,
Canned Heat,
Mike
Bloomfield, and
T-Bone Burnett.
The catalog was purchased in 1995 by
Fantasy Records, which in 2004 was taken
over by the
Concord Music Group.
Fantasy has a handful of the Takoma recordings on the market as CDs
as of this writing in 2007.
The label's best selling release was Kottke's
6 and 12-String
Guitar (often called The Armadillo Album because of the cover
art). Another influential album on Takoma was the 1974
eponymous compilation LP
featuring Fahey, Kottke and Lang.
ED Denson went on to co-found and manage
Kicking Mule Records, which similarly
featured acoustic guitarists. In 1995, he left the music business
and became a criminal defense lawyer. By the early 21st century,
the news about the label seems limited to death notices. Robbie
Basho died in 1986, John Fahey in 2001, and
Charlie Nothing died of cancer October 23,
2007.
See also
External links
), Universal Music Group
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