John Fahey

Starting his career in the late 1950s, John Fahey set the standard for instrumental acoustic guitar pieces, both in terms of composition and improvisation. Fahey's unique style, fully realized in the heady days of the late '60s, incorporated traditional folk, blues, and old-time country music into a decidedly modernist sensibility. A highly informed and irascible figure, he wrote two books about his life in music and started his own influential label, Takoma Records. An eccentric character, Fahey spent a lot of time under the radar, but was taken up as a hero by the more experimental end of the alt-rock generation in the '90s, enjoying a revival before his death in 2001.