[1][2][3] The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death was issued by Riverboat Records, initially in a hand-lettered edition of 50, before The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party (Guitar Vol.

The original 1965 liner notes came in a separate booklet, were lengthy and were written by John's roommate Alan Wilson of Canned Heat[6] though attributed to one Charles Holloway, Esq.

"[8] The distinctive cover of The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death is briefly focused on in a shot of a record store in Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange.

In his review for Stylus, Chris Smith gave it an A+ rating and wrote "Fahey excels at conjuring up a painstakingly developed sense of time and place in his playing, and if its predecessor at times accurately mapped out the restive confines of the dark night of the soul, this record no less vividly represents a (mildly acid-fried) return to the front porch and the prairie."

Calling "On the Sunny Side of the Ocean" the "undeniable highlight of the album", he refers to the rest of the songs generally as "...unpredictable, complex, and evocative as any of Fahey’s previous, more aggressively daring work.

"[17] Likewise, a 5 out of 5-star rating from Allmusic reviewer Steven McDonald conceded the album "has a lot of rough edges in terms of the recording but a tremendous amount of power when it comes to the music.

74 on their list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s", writing: "There’s a raw edge to the recording—strings buzz, notes echo, even a dog barks—that fits Fahey’s mission to get to the core of things.