An American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who pioneered the steel-string guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been greatly influential and has been described as American Primitivism, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of his art. Fahey himself borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American music but also incorporated classical, Brazilian, Indian and abstract music into his eclectic body of work.

He was born in Washington, DC into a musical household — both his parents played the piano. In 1945, the family moved to the Washington suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland. At weekends, the family often attended performances of top country and bluegrass groups of the day, but it was hearing Bill Monroe's version of Jimmie Rodgers' Blue Yodel No. 7 on the radio that ignited the young Fahey's passion for music.

He bought his first guitar at the age of 13. While his tastes ran mainly in the bluegrass and country vein, Fahey discovered his love of early blues on hearing Blind Willie Johnson's Praise God I'm Satisfied on a record-collecting trip to Baltimore. Much later, Fahey compared the experience to a religious conversion and remained a devout blues disciple until his death.

As his guitar playing and composing progressed, Fahey developed a style that blended the picking patterns he discovered on old blues 78s with the dissonance of contemporary classical composers he loved, such as Charles Ives and Béla Bartók. In 1958, Fahey made his first recordings for his friend Joe Bussard's amateur Fonotone label, recording under the pseudonym Blind Thomas.

The following year, having no idea how to approach professional record companies and being convinced they would not be interested, Fahey decided to issue his first album himself. So Takoma Records was born, named in honour of his hometown. One hundred copies of this first album were pressed, with his name on one side of the album sleeve and 'Blind Joe Death' on the other - the latter being a nickname given to him by his fellow blues fans.

After graduating from university with a degree in philosophy and religion, Fahey moved to California in 1963 to study philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. Arriving on campus, Fahey, ever the outsider, began to feel dissatisfied with the program's curriculum and was equally unimpressed with Berkeley's (hippie) music scene. Fahey loathed the polite Pete Seeger-inspired revivalists he found himself classed with. The following year, Fahey moved south to Los Angeles to join the folklore master's program at UCLA. Fahey's master's thesis on the music of Charley Patton, later published, is considered among the very best of folklore academia. He completed it with the musicological assistance of his friend Alan Wilson, who shortly after became a member of Canned Heat.

During this period, Takoma Records was reborn. Fahey and Ed Denson, a Washington, DC area friend who had also moved west, decided to track down blues legend Bukka White, who became the first non-Fahey Takoma release. Fahey also, finally, released a second album in late 1963, called Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes. To their surprise, the Fahey release sold better than White's and Fahey had a career going. But still Fahey did not begin playing in public for another year.

His releases during the mid-1960s employed odd guitar tunings and sudden style shifts rooted firmly in the old time and blues stylings of the 1920s. A hallmark of his classic releases was the inclusion of lengthy liner notes, parodying those found on blues releases. Typically, these were epic acts of self-mythologisation, mixing personal biography, reverie, folklore and myriad obscure blues and bluegrass references.

Later albums from the 1960s, such as Requia and The Yellow Princess found Fahey making sound collages from such elements as gamelan music, Tibetan chanting, animal and bird cries and singing bridges.

In addition to his own creative output, Fahey expanded the Takoma label, discovering fellow guitarists Leo Kottke, Robbie Basho and Peter Lang, as well as emerging pianist George Winston. Other artists with albums on the label included Mike Bloomfield, Rick Ruskin, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Maria Muldaur, Michael Gulezian and Canned Heat. In 1979, Fahey sold Takoma to Chrysalis Records. Chrysalis eventually sold the rights to the albums and Takoma was in limbo until bought by Fantasy Records in 1995.

By the mid-1970s, Fahey's output abated and he began to suffer from a drinking problem. He lost his home in the dissolution of his first marriage, remarried, divorced again and moved to Salem, Oregon in 1981 to live with his third wife. In 1986, Fahey contracted Epstein-Barr syndrome, a long-lasting viral infection similar to chronic fatigue syndrome, which exacerbated his diabetes and other health issues. He continued to perform in and around the Salem area. He broke up with his third wife and his life began to spiral downward. He made what appeared to be his last album in 1990.

Fahey spent much of the early 1990s living in poverty, mostly in cheap motels. Gigs had dried up, due to his health problems. He paid his rent by pawning his guitars and reselling rare records he found in thrift stores.

However, in 1994 there began a renewed interest in his music. A retrospective release called The Return of the Repressed was followed by a rapid succession of new releases, in parallel with the reissue of all the early Takoma releases by Fantasy Records.

The avant-garde musician Jim O'Rourke produced Fahey's 1997 Womblife album, while in the same year Fahey recorded an album with Cul de Sac, The Epiphany of Glenn Jones. BY this time, Fahey's music had changed from the melodic dreaminess and folk-based meditations of the 1960s and 1970s to a more harsh and confrontational style.

But his passion for traditional roots music had not gone away and after inheriting some money on the death of his father in 1995, Fahey used it to form another label, Revenant Records, to focus on reissuing obscure recordings of early blues, old-time music and anything else he took a fancy to. In 1997, the label issued its first crop of releases, including albums by artists such as British guitarist Derek Bailey, American pianist Cecil Taylor, guitarist Jim O'Rourke, bluegrass pioneers the Stanley Brothers, old-time banjo legend Dock Boggs, Rick Bishop of Sun City Girls and slide guitarist Jenks 'Tex' Carman. Revenant's most famous release was Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton, a 7-disc retrospective of Charley Patton and his contemporaries, which won 3 Grammy awards in 2003.

His live performances became more improvised and experimental. He performed in Europe in 1999, including a show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London in September. His life appeared to observers to be spiralling out of control. Old fans often walked out of these concerts, but Fahey did not care.

In February 2001, just a few days before what would have been his 62nd birthday, John Fahey died at Salem Hospital after undergoing a sextuple bypass operation.

There have since been six tribute albums, reinforcing his reputation as a giant of 20th century American music.