Day 25 of my song a day in February in memory an appreciation of guitarist John Fahey.
Spanish Fandango. An interesting song as it was probably one of the first tunes to be specifically played in open G tuning for the guitar. As a result, many blues musician tuned the guitar in open G (DGDGBD) to play slide/bottleneck guitar as it would perfectly lend itself to that style playing. Hence the tuning became known as ‘Spanish’ among the, then, blues fraternity - after Spanish Fandango.
It was written by an Englishman, Henry Worrall, who was born in Liverpool 1825 who then moved to the USA in 1835 - he copyrighted the song in 1860.
John Fahey would most definitely have heard a version by John Dilleshaw and The String Marvel Band released on OKeh records in 1929, as they are both remarkably similar.
Like so many of his songs, Fahey used several different titles for this tune: On the album After The Ball it’s called Hawaiian Two Step; The Best Of John Fahey he re-records and names it Spanish Two Step; Live In Tasmania it’s Tasmanian Two Step!
I’ve stuck with the original title. During my performance I had a flash of inspiration and completely improvised the middle section. The intention was to keep it short and straight but when the muse appeared from somewhere.. nowhere - I thought I’d go for it.
Thank for listening and please share.
18 сен 2024
