Sandy Bull
Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo

Sandy Bull, cult artist of the '60s folk scene, unknown to many, a niche musician, released his debut back in 1963 for Vanguard Records, a label that includes in its vast roster significant names like John Fogerty, still tied to the label, the folk-woman Joan Baez, bluesman Skip James, and the more recent Sinead O’Connor, an Irish artist famous for collaborating with numerous artists of the caliber of Peter Gabriel and for participating in Roger Waters' show “The Wall” in July 1990, staged in liberated Berlin. Child prodigy behind chordophones, Bull maneuvers in “Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo,” as the title suggests, performing pieces on the guitar and banjo. The only musician supporting him on the LP is Billy Higgins, a jazz drummer. Bull's musical maturity and his drawing from multiple sources are immediately evident: to the dominant folk revival, he contributes a change by adding instruments belonging to the Eastern culture, a fact made more evident in subsequent works with the use of the oud (a favored instrument in Arab and Middle Eastern cultures). This album does not feature the oud, but the guitar and banjo are played in such a way that they emit vibrations that evoke soundscapes far from the Western imagination.

At just twenty-two, Bull composes a twenty-two-minute folk suite in which improvisation reigns supreme, where the author showcases all his virtuosity. The atmosphere he evokes recalls the Eastern-inflected notes of “The End” by The Doors four years later (1967). In 22 minutes, the young New Yorker manages to enchant, captivate, and bind the listener to himself with highly hypnotic, seductive, and alluring music. “Blend” (“fusion”, “mix”) is an unprecedented work, one of the first compositions to cover an entire side of an LP.

The rest of the album is certainly not up to the level of the first great acoustic epic. The folk version of Carl Orff's cantata, an excellent composer, “Carmina Burana” (from 1937), appearing in the album as “Carmina Burana Fantasy,” is a pleasant example of cross-genre contamination. The same goes for “Non Nobis Domine” by William Byrd, a Renaissance composer. The last two tracks of “Fantasias…” are unreleased, along with the preceding “Blend.” Particularly evocative is the second of the two, “Gospel Tune,” ten minutes long, which conjures blues and, as the title suggests, gospel scenarios. After a two-minute introduction, the piece accelerates with Higgins' involvement, who acts with rhythmically perfect light strokes on the cymbals.

“Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo” is one of the most beautiful musical testimonies of the last fifty years (or almost—technically, fifty-one years)... too underrated, too little known. Author Kevin Fellezs writes that the album is a particular example of an “underacknowledged” recording of the nascent fusion-world that remains musically convincing to this day. How can one not agree with him? Sandy Bull indeed remains a pearl at the bottom of the sea that should be brought to the surface, and “Fantasias…” is one of the most exciting and genuine folk anthems ever created.