The fiery, pastoral steel-string guitar music of Jack Rose first entered the national consciousness in the mid 2000s, as part of a return-to-roots movement sometimes called “New Weird America.” If you were to ask Rose, however, he’d have likely told you there wasn’t much “new” about what he was doing. Rose’s inspiration came largely from pre-war American music: country blues, ragtime, and jazz. But his work never took on the tone of an archivist or academic: his guitar playing always sounded alive and in the moment. In his self-penned liner notes for his sophomore album, Opium Musick, Rose poked fun at himself. Writing under an acronymic pen name and paying homage to the tradition of steel-string albums with satirically self-important liner notes (see John Fahey and Leo Kottke), Rose invented an origin story in which an aged sensae urged him “not to let the ragtime die and to bring it into the 21st century.” Even early in his career, Rose was self-aware in his self-mythologizing, illustrating both a strong sense of humor and a defiant sense of purpose.

“A lot of people, when they view old-time music, they view it as gentle or nostalgic, which I don’t get at all,” Rose said around the release of Golden Apples of the Sun, a scene-establishing compilation for the “New Weird”/freak-folk moment, on which he was included among acts like Antony and the Johnsons, Joanna Newsom, and Vashti Bunyan. “It was totally bizarre sounding to me, and messed up,” he added. Throughout his too-short career and across his nine excellent solo albums, the Virginia-born, Philadelphia-based guitarist made a living out of bizarre sounding, messed-up, old-time music. Six of his albums have been reissued on vinyl by the VHF and Three Lobed labels, and they are each eye-opening testaments to his gift. Collecting his earliest recordings as a solo guitarist through some of his final collaborations before his tragic death in 2009 at the age of 39, these records illustrate Rose’s artistic mastery and his influence on the future of the genre.

On his 2002 debut, Red Horse, White Mule, the self-taught Rose already harbored an acute awareness of the possibilities of his instrument. In the opening “Red Horse,” he plays with a sprawling musicality and insistent rhythm, thumbing a steady picking pattern that picks up in intensity and speed as the track goes on. By the next song, a cover of Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground,” he’s using his slide to create an eerie buzz, calling back to his heavy, droning work with the improv group Pelt in the ’90s and forecasting the wilder compositions to come. Red Horse is a distinctive, if nascent, work—the sound an artist falling in love with his instrument and attempting to put all he knows on tape. Even just one album in, Rose had already created a signature sound and style, and there was a ghostly presence lurking throughout.

John Fahey’s solo guitar compositions cast a heavy shadow on anyone approaching the steel string guitar in a solo context. But, of all the guitar soli artists to emerge over the last two decades, Jack Rose is the one who followed most closely in Fahey’s footsteps. Like Fahey, Rose’s thoroughly researched and lived-in Americana hinted at a deep understanding of the nation’s history. Even his more psychedelic moments unfolded with a penchant for stark realism. His music was beautiful and familiar, without ever feeling predictable or cliched. The sonic similarities between the two guitarists can be effectively boiled down to a melodic sensibility that Glenn Jones called, in the excellent live DVD The Things That We Used to Do, a “resolutely anti-sentimental approach” (Rose puts it more bluntly: he doesn’t play any “pussy chords”). Rose’s music was a distinct turn away from the acoustic guitar’s more romantic qualities. It makes sense that he was ideologically opposed to the New Age-leaning acts like William Ackerman on the Windham Hill label and the more melodic recordings of Kottke.

As he developed as a guitarist, Rose would carve out his own niche. If Red Horse illustrated the myriad possibilities of his instrument, then its follow-up, Opium Musick, was a more intricate portrait of the artist behind the music. In the time between Red Horse and Opium Musick, Rose’s obsession with ragtime intensified, lending him a brighter and more dynamic picking style. The album also marks the moment when Rose’s interest in Indian sitar music and ragas blossomed, particularly with on the opening “Yaman Blues,” which features tanpura played by Pelt’s Mike Gangloff. “Linden Avenue Stomp” is another collaborative track, this time with Glenn Jones. Aside from becoming one of many new folk standards in Rose’s catalog, it is also the most Fahey-influenced track on the album, not to mention, one named for the house where Fahey cut most of his records (The title, however, marks another apocryphal moment in folk music: the street was actually called Linhurst Ave, but the duo thought “Linden” sounded more poetic).

Raag Manifestos from 2004 was an even more ambitious collection than its predecessor, a diverse and comprehensive record that transcends its odds-and-ends structure. Originally released as a tour-only CD-R, compiling material from various singles and compilations, Manifestos is a sprawling work that feels like a summary of Rose’s discography to that point. Across its seven tracks, Rose plays both steel and 12-string guitar with a newfound confidence, from the intense, lo-fi rumblings of “Hart Crane’s Old Boyfriends” and “Black Pearls From the River” (a composition also recorded by Pelt) to the quiet, bucolic fingerpicking in “Road.” Manifestos was a breakthrough for Rose, but it was also the jumping-off point that led to his greatest work.

The following year saw the release of Kensington Blues, an album that remains Rose’s most essential release and the one that defines his career to this day (although it is not included in either of these reissues). Rose himself referred to Kensington as a “really hard record to live up to,” while also speaking of the pleasure he took in hearing other guitarists cover its songs, hinting at the communal drive that fueled Rose’s later recordings. Jack Rose, the 2006 follow-up to Kensington Blues, marks another attempt on his part to make a deeper connection. Its songs are shorter and more melodic. Tracks like “St. Louis Blues” and “Miss May’s Place” are sprightly and sweet, even catchy, and the album’s most sprawling composition, the stunning “Spirits in the House,” is less meandering than Rose’s previous epics. “When I’m working on my solo material I obsess over every little detail,” Rose told an interview in 2009, “It basically takes over my life.” “Spirits in the House” is a composition that displays Rose’s obsessive tendencies; it is his single most gorgeous recording, and a marker of how far he had come since his debut.

The latter two releases in the reissue series—the live album I Do Play Rock and Roll and the collaborative Dr. Ragtime and His Pals, both released in 2008—each reveal completely different sides of Rose. Rock and Roll is one of his true masterpieces, but it could not have come from more humble beginnings. Culled from Rose’s archive of live recordings, after he agreed (while hungover) to release a new record, Rock and Roll actually offers Rose’s most adventurous compositions and highlights the wide potential he had left to explore. “Calais to Dover,” which appeared in a slightly condensed version on Kensington Blues, opens the album with a stately precision. Meanwhile, the closing “Sundogs” presents Rose as something of a provocateur—grinding his slide against the fretboard to create an incessant, noisy drone. The nearly half-hour track is an unabridged recording of a performance in Kutztown, Penn., that reportedly left his audience speechless. With the brief but gorgeous “Cathedral et Chartres” sandwiched between the two tracks, Rock and Roll could run at the risk of sounding tossed-off, but it makes for a visceral listen. For many fans, it is the quintessential Rose album: gorgeous, inspired, and deeply confrontational.

Comparatively, Dr. Ragtime and His Pals is simply a good time. Make no mistake, even though Jack Rose’s records can be cerebral and intimate, they are by no means insular affairs: there is palpable joy in his looser numbers, and a gripping physicality to his heavier work. Throughout Rose's records, you hear him huff and hum behind his guitar, further blurring the line between studio and live recordings. Even so, with its euphoric reimagining of Rose’s key tracks, Dr. Ragtime is the most human record he ever released. It finds Rose surrounded by an army of collaborators, from long-time friend and influence Glenn Jones to up-and-coming banjo player Nathan Bowles (who carries Rose’s torch to this day, particularly on the excellent Whole & Cloven). Regarding the following year’s similarly collaborative Jack Rose & The Black Twig Pickers LP, Rose gushed that he was finally “playing the music [he] loved as a kid,” and you hear that excitement throughout this record.

While his album with the Black Twig Pickers further developed Rose’s skill as a collaborator and his final release, 2010’s Luck in the Valley, took Rock and Roll’s intimate compositions to even headier territory, his 2008 releases serve as a fitting summation of Rose’s career. They represent an artist deeply committed to his craft and embedded within a community that still bears his mark today, making his influence more visible than ever. In conversation with Glenn Jones in 2008, Rose spoke fondly of his friend’s music, complementing Jones’ strength as a storyteller and his scope as a composer. He speaks particularly highly of one song from Jones’ debut album, though he couldn't remember its name (the song, as it turns out, was named for Rose). Ever averse to sentimentality, Jack Rose made records that showcased Americana as something to be explored and the blues as something to be lived, creating a vital body of work that will likely be rediscovered and fallen in love with the more time passes.