Album with John Fahey

A lost 1967 recording session with The Red Crayola and John Fahey.

Retrospectives

Steve Cunningham, 2011

When we were in CA for the 1967 festival, Ed Denson who was Country Joe & The Fish's manager and also John Fahey's, set up a recording session for John and us at Ed's studio (on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley) a day or so before we were to leave town. I remember Barry Melton of the Fish being there too. A few hours of tape were rolled as the Crayola did free-form stuff and the others joined in with whatever struck their fancy (our standard modus operandi). After the session we told IA [International Artists] about it, but instead of being pleased they focused on the legalisms around out being under contract to IA. They demanded the tapes from Denson, who surrendered them as requested. The tapes have sat idle for decades. [...] IA had already experienced a problem with the 13th Floor Elevators, who had previously recorded an entire album for another label, so when they heard about the new Red Crayola recordings they went ballistic... To avoid any possible legal implications Mayo was dispatched to collect the tapes and deliver them to IA. Despite searching through the stash of surviving IA tapes nothing remains of the Crayola/Fahey collaboration but hopefully someone has kept a safety copy which might surface one day.