''Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo'' is the debut album of the

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fo ...

guitarist

Sandy Bull Alexander "Sandy" Bull (February 25, 1941 – April 11, 2001) was an American folk musician and composer. Bull was an accomplished player of many stringed instruments, including guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo, and oud. His early work blends n ...

, released in 1963 through

Vanguard Records Vanguard Recording Society is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It was a primarily classical label at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but also has a catalogue of recordings by a n ...

Recording

Bull recorded the album accompanied by

Billy Higgins Billy Higgins (October 11, 1936 – May 3, 2001) was an American jazz drummer. He played mainly free jazz and hard bop. Biography Higgins was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. Higgins played on Ornette Coleman's first records, ...

, a session

jazz drummer Jazz drumming is the art of playing percussion (predominantly the drum kit, which includes a variety of drums and cymbals) in jazz styles ranging from 1910s-style Dixieland jazz to 1970s-era jazz fusion and 1980s-era Latin jazz. The techniques a ...

who had previously appeared on early Ornette Coleman records.Fellezs, Kevin
''Birds of Fire: Jazz, Rock, Funk, and the Creation of Fusion''

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 D ...

. 2011. pg. 50. Retrieved August 11, 2012. Together they recorded three original pieces as well as interpretations of Carmina Burana Fantasy and Non nobis Domine.

Music

The highlight of ''Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo'' is usually considered to be its opener "Blend", a lengthy improvisational piece.Larkin, Colin. ''The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz''. Virgin Books. 1999. pg. 135. Retrieved August 11, 2012. According to Bull, the ideas behind the piece originated from his admiration of Folkways Records, which documented ethnic music from across the world. He also claimed to being particularly inspired from hearing

Ravi Shankar Ravi Shankar (; born Robindro Shaunkor Chowdhury, sometimes spelled as Rabindra Shankar Chowdhury; 7 April 1920 – 11 December 2012) was an Indian sitarist and composer. A sitar virtuoso, he became the world's best-known export of North In ...

and

Ali Akbar Khan Ali Akbar Khan (14 April 192218 June 2009) was a Indian Hindustani classical musician of the Maihar gharana, known for his virtuosity in playing the sarod. Trained as a classical musician and instrumentalist by his father, Allauddin Khan, he a ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

.Leech, Jeanette
''Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Psychedelic Folk''
Jawbone Press. 2010. pg. 43. Retrieved August 11, 2012. "Blend" has been viewed as a "virtual travelogue of styles done in a then revolutionary modal tuning". The tuning is in the key of B.Williams, Paul

Hal Leonard Corporation Hal Leonard LLC (formerly Hal Leonard Corporation) is an American music publishing and distribution company founded in Winona, Minnesota, by Harold "Hal" Edstrom, his brother, Everett "Leonard" Edstrom, and fellow musician Roger Busdicker. Curre ...

. 2002. pg. 102. Retrieved August 11, 2012.

Release and reception

Matthew Greenwald of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

describes ''Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo'' as an "incredible debut" and lauds it for being well ahead of its time. Writing in ''

Crawdaddy The Crawdaddy Club was a music venue in Richmond, Surrey, England, which opened in 1963. The Rolling Stones were its house band in its first year and were followed by The Yardbirds. Several other notable British blues and rhythm and blues acts a ...

'' in December 1966,

Sandy Pearlman Samuel Clarke "Sandy" Pearlman (August 5, 1943 – July 26, 2016) was an American music producer, artist manager, music journalist and critic, professor, poet, songwriter, and record company executive. He was best known for founding, writing for, ...

recognized the album as a work that presaged pop music's move toward

raga rock Raga rock is rock or pop music with a pronounced Indian influence, either in its construction, its timbre, or its use of Indian musical instruments, such as the sitar and tabla. In addition, rock music from the 1960s and 1970s that incorporate ...

. Pearlman said that, with ''Fantasias'', Bull "became a leading innovator in the assimilation of Indian influences into a Western musical context". Available a
pastemagazine.com
(June 9, 2015). Retrieved July 3, 2017. Author Kevin Fellezs views the album as a prime example of an "underacknowledged early fusion-world recording that remains musically compelling today".

Track listing

Personnel

– banjo,

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

– drums

External links

References

{{Authority control 1963 debut albums Vanguard Records albums Sandy Bull albums