The Voice of The Silence

Tribute albums frequently betray their subject, but not this homage to Johnny Cash’s Bitter Tears, the country giant’s 1964 salute to Native Americans. A concept album about a discomfiting cause – the US’s treatment of its indigenous people – Tears was a radical statement resisted, to Cash’s fury, by the Nashville establishment. For its 50th anniversary, producer Joe Henry gathers a stellar house band that takes turns to lead. Gillian Welch delivers an entrancing As Long As the Grass Shall Grow; Emmylou does likewise with Apache Tears. Steve Earle drawls: “I ain’t no fan of Custer” and instrumentals evoke North America’s haunted plains. Very fine.

John Fahey - The Voice of the Turtle (1968) {Takoma CDTAK 1019 rel 1996}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 211 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 93 Mb
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© 1968, 1996 Fantasy / Takoma Records | CDTAK 1019
Folk / Blues / Contemporary Folk / Finger-Picked Guitar / Folk Jazz / Folk-Blues / Progressive Folk

Like some of John Fahey's other projects in the '60s, this was actually recorded and assembled over a few years, and primarily composed of duets with various other artists (including overdubs with his own pseudonym, "Blind Joe Death"). One of his more obscure early efforts, Voice of the Turtle is both listenable and wildly eclectic, going from scratchy emulations of early blues 78s and country fiddle tunes to haunting guitar-flute combinations and eerie ragas. "A Raga Called Pat, Part III" and "Part IV" is a particularly ambitious piece, its disquieting swooping slide and brief bits of electronic white noise reverb veering into experimental psychedelia. Most of this is pretty traditional and acoustic in tone, however, though it has the undercurrent of dark, uneasy tension that gives much of Fahey's '60s material its intriguing combination of meditation and restlessness.

World-class classical musicians who can convincingly play any genre are rare. Enter trumpeter Lucienne Renaudin Vary, who transforms opera arias, songs, and numbers from Broadway musicals into virtuoso showstoppers, proving that anything the human voice can do, so too can the trumpet. On her journey, she shows herself to be dazzlingly versatile, her silvery tone soaring in Donizetti and Vivaldi and swinging in Richard Rodgers. Handel, Gershwin, Offenbach, and Harold Arlen have never felt so comfortable in each other’s company.