John Fahey; Folk Guitarist Noted for Blending Genres

John Fahey, an eccentric folk guitarist heralded as a unique alchemist of American roots music and a powerful influence on his peers, died Thursday. He was 61.

Fahey had been hospitalized since last week in Salem, Ore., after complaining of chest pain. Early this week, he underwent a heart bypass that led to kidney failure, according to his close friend, guitarist Leo Kottke. Fahey slipped into a coma after a second heart surgery on Thursday and was removed from life support hours later.

Fahey’s music defied tidy categorization, with experimentations that mined the blues of the Mississippi Delta, melodies of the Scottish Highlands and the ragas of India. His defining reputation is as the mercurial father of contemporary finger-picking guitar style, which he himself described as “American primitive guitar.”

Born John Aloysius Fahey in Takoma Park, Md., he spent many days of his youth fishing the waters of Chesapeake Bay or listening to music. His parents were accomplished pianists, and they took their son to numerous concerts. It was the country and bluegrass shows that caught young Fahey’s ear.

In 1957, he heard a Blind Willie Johnson song that mesmerized him, and he began combing the South for old blues recordings that would shape his musical mind-set. His own foray into recording would become an instant rarity--famously, only 95 copies were made of his first album, “Blind Joe Death,” in 1959.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from American University in Washington, D.C., he studied at UC Berkeley before getting his master’s degree in folklore and mythology at UCLA. Fahey’s music career blossomed after college and, eventually, he would put out more than three dozen albums. His music was featured in the film “Zabriskie Point,” but mainstream success generally eluded him. Fahey also wrote a book of memoirs with the tongue-in-cheek title, “How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life.” In recent years, his personal life was marked by medical problems, alcoholism and financial woes.

His most loyal following may have been by other guitarists, and his influence can be traced to rock bands such as Sonic Youth and Mazzy Star and--to his frustration--many in the ranks of New Age artists. “This New Age music is all background music . . . I’ve tried to write some, because it sells well, but I’m incapable,” Fahey told The Times in 1989.

Fahey also mentored Kottke, the noted guitarist whose style is perhaps closest in sensibility to his own. “John created living, generative culture,” Kottke said Friday in a statement. “With his guitar and his spellbound witness, he synthesized all the strains in American music and found a new happiness for all of us. With John, we have a voice only he could have given us. Without him, no one will sound the same.”

Roots rocker Dave Alvin praised Fahey’s ability to draw on a wide range of American heritages in novel and inventive fashion.

“Technically he was a wonder,” Alvin said. “What he did was a synthesis of Mississippi blues guitar styles and pre-World War II hillbilly guitar techniques and jazz to make this unique hybrid . . . the sound could be reassuring, the sound could be troubling--it could be all the things that classic blues playing should be.”

Alvin, who won a Grammy this week for best traditional folk album of 2000, said Fahey should be celebrated for “leading a rediscovery” of blues greats such as Bukka White and Skip James, acts that Fahey signed to his own label.

Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, praised Fahey as a musical explorer who ventured into many corners of the pop music landscape.

“Fahey’s first great gift was his open-mindedness,” Hilburn said. “Rather than limit himself to a single genre, he drew upon a wide range of musical sources, from folk and rural blues to classical and jazz. But he was also blessed with a love of music that kept him from recycling. Whether his latest release was a blues package or a Christmas music collection, it was likely to touch his audience and inspire other musicians because it would be fresh and unbendingly personal.”

Funeral services are scheduled for Wednesday in Salem, Ore.