Philadelphia Weekly

Jack Rose.

Photo by Dan Cohoon

Jack Rose, one of his generation’s best acoustic guitar players, died on Dec. 5 of a heart attack. Rose was born in Virginia but had made his home in Philadelphia for the last several years. He was 38.

Rose began his career in the early 1990s with the drone-experimental outfit Pelt. He began to develop his signature solo style – a mix of country blues, ragtime and raga indebted to John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Charlie Patton and John Martyn – in the early aughts, during that decade releasing over a dozen albums under his own name, as Dr. Ragtime and with the Black Twigs. Many point to 2005’s Kensington Blues (Tequila Sunrise) as his finest recording, a one-take masterpiece whose ragtime ditties sit comfortably alongside radiant 12-string epics like “Cathedral et Chartres”.

Still, most people, up until Saturday, would have guessed that Rose’s best work was still ahead of him. He had, at the time of his death, recently signed to Thrill Jockey, and was looking forward to greater exposure. (To friends, he joked about opening for Tortoise.) The album he recorded for Thrill Jockey, called Luck in the Valley, will be released in February 2010. A DVD with live performances from Rose and long-time friend Glenn Jones is also slated for release early next year on the Strange Attractors label.

Despite outsize talent and, on stage, unwavering focus, Rose was tremendously approachable. He’d spend time talking to nearly anyone who came up to him after a show, sharing his expertise and passion about finger-picked guitar styles. Musicians and fans alike have been swapping stories about encounters with Rose all weekend, remembering his personal warmth, musical knowledge and honesty.

Mike Gangloff met Rose nearly two decades ago in Virginia and played with him in Pelt and, more recently, Black Twigs. “The first time I actually heard him play, he wandered onto a Richmond bandstand during a set break, picked up an electric guitar and played a solo version of Neil Young's ’Like a Hurricane.’ The whole thing. Then he thanked the band and went back to his delivery job at the sandwich shop below the club,” he remembered.

“From a player's perspective, his technique was as supernatural as everyone says,” Gangloff added. “He was clean and fast, but he never lost the edge of pure sonics the way a lot of heavy-duty technique players do. Having played a lot of noisy music with him, I still heard in his acoustic music the intervals and oddities he'd pulled out of feedback and prepared electric mayhem.”

In a blog entry on the Tompkins Square website, label head Josh Rosenthal wrote, “[Jack’s] vast knowledge of pre-war blues and post-war guitar was immense. His playing felt like it channeled through him from somewhere else. At times it seemed effortless. Jack was an experimental player but he was also very formal, disciplined and traditional as well.” Rosenthal included Rose’s music on three of his compilations, Imaginational Anthems I and II and A Raga for Peter Walker.

Guitarist James Blackshaw observed, “a remarkable strength and confidence in his playing.” He said, “I rarely saw him miss a beat—he definitely had that ‘swing’ to his playing, a kind of exaggerated sense of timing the old country-blues guys had—but most of all I think it was just very genuine, the real deal, as they say, much like Jack himself.”

“Jack was a big character with a lot of soul,” Blackshaw added. “He didn't mix his words when it came to what he liked and what he didn't (as I found out one night at a local bar with Jack in Fishtown when I told him I didn't like John Martyn). You could talk about La Monte Young, Blind Blake, an old Flying Nun band or R. Kelly's ‘Trapped in the Closet’, which I believe he owned multiple copies of. I think he didn't care to keep up appearances and was just very much himself.”

Rosenthal remembers a conversation with Rose a few years ago, about the great guitarist John Fahey. “He said when Fahey died, he and other musicians said ‘Now what?’ I'm sure plenty of folks will now pose the same question about Jack. He leaves behind a fantastic body of work, and a legacy that is indeed larger than life. “

Friends, family and admirers are planning a service on Saturday, December 12 in Philadelphia. Time and location still to be determined.