Mississippi John Hurt - Bluesville Presents '2024

Tracks list

Tracklist:

1. Candy Man (02:57)
2. Richland Woman Blues (04:01)
3. My Creole Belle (01:50)
4. Stagolee (05:35)
5. Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor (04:32)
6. Monday Morning Blues (Live) (03:59)
7. Boys You're Welcome (03:03)
8. Since I've Laid My Burden Down (02:44)
9. I'm Satisfied (02:54)
10. The Chicken (01:06)
11. Coffee Blues (03:46)
12. Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me (03:21)
13. Salty Dog Blues (Live) (03:04)
14. Spike Driver Blues (03:24)
15. I Shall Not Be Moved (Live) (03:30)


 moreJohn Hurt grew up in the Mississippi hill country town of Avalon,
population under 100, north of Greenwood, near Grenada. He began playing guitar
in 1903, and within a few years was performing at parties, doing ragtime
repertory rather than blues. As a farm hand, he lived in relative isolation, and
it was only in 1916, when he went to work briefly for the railroad, that he got
to broaden his horizons and his repertory beyond Avalon. In the early '20s, he
teamed up with white fiddle player Willie Narmour, playing square dances.

Hurt was spotted by a scout for Okeh Records who passed through Avalon in 1927,
who was supposed to record Narmour, and was signed to record after a quick
audition. Of the eight sides that Hurt recorded in Memphis in February of 1928,
only two were ever released, but he was still asked to record in New York late
in 1928.

Hurt's dexterity as a guitarist, coupled with his plain-spoken nature, were his
apparent undoing, at least as a popular blues artist, at the time. His playing
was too soft and articulate, and his voice too plain to be taken up in a mass
setting, such as a dance; rather, his music was best heard in small, intimate
gatherings. In that sense, he was one of the earliest blues musicians to rely
completely on the medium of recorded music as a vehicle for mass success; where
the records of Furry Lewis or Blind Blake were mere distillations of music that
they (presumably) did much better on-stage, in John Hurt's case the records were
good representations of what he did best. Additionally, Hurt never regarded
himself as a blues singer, preferring to let his relatively weak voice speak for
itself with none of the gimmicks that he might've used, especially in the
studio, to compensate. And he had no real signature tune with which he could be
identified, in the way that Furry Lewis had "Kassie Jones" or "John Henry."

Not that Hurt didn't have some great numbers in his song bag: "Frankie," "Louis
Collins," "Avalon Blues," "Candy Man Blues," "Big Leg Blues," and "Stack O' Lee
Blues," were all brilliant and unusual as blues, in their own way, and highly
influential on subsequent generations of musicians. They didn't sell in large
numbers at the time, however, and as Hurt never set much store on a musical
career, he was content to make his living as a hired hand in Avalon, living on a
farm and playing for friends whenever the occasion arose.

Mississippi John Hurt might've lived and died in obscurity, if it hadn't been
for the folk music revival of the late '50s and early '60s. A new generation of
listeners and scholars suddenly expressed a deep interest in the music of
America's hinterlands, not only in listening to it but finding and preserving
it. A scholar named Tom Hoskins discovered that Mississippi John Hurt, who
hadn't been heard from musically in over 35 years, was alive and living in
Avalon, MS, and sought him out, following the trail laid down in Hurt's song
"Avalon Blues." Their meeting was a fateful one; Hurt was in his 70s, and weary
from a lifetime of backbreaking labor for pitifully small amounts of money, but
his musical ability was intact, and he bore no ill-will against anyone who
wanted to hear his music.

A series of concerts were arranged, including an appearance at the Newport Folk
Festival, where he was greeted as a living legend. This opened up a new world to
Hurt, who was grateful to find thousands, or even tens of thousands of people
too young to have even been born when he made his only records up to that time,
eager to listen to anything he had to sing or say. A tour of American
universities followed as did a series of recordings: first in a relatively
informal, non-commercial setting intended to capture him in his most comfortable
and natural surroundings, and later under the auspices of Vanguard Records, with
folk singer Patrick Sky producing.

It was 1965, and Mississippi John Hurt had found a mass audience for his songs
35 years late. He took the opportunity, playing concerts and making new records
of old songs as well as material he'd never before laid down; whether he
eventually put down more than a portion of his true repertory will probably
never be clear, but Hurt did leave a major legacy of his and other peoples'
songs, in a style that barely skipped a beat from his late-'20s Okeh sides.

As with many people to whom success comes late in life, certain aspects of the
success were hard for him to absorb in stride; the money was more than he'd ever
hoped to see, even if it wasn't much by the standards of a major pop star; 1,000
dollar concert fees were something he'd never even pondered having to deal with.
What he did most easily was sing and play; Vanguard got out a new album, Today!,
in 1966, from his first sessions for the label. Additionally, the tape of a
concert that Hurt played at Oberlin College in April of 1965 was released under
the title The Best of Mississippi John Hurt; the 21-song live album was just
that, even if it wasn't made up of previously released work (more typical of a
"best-of" album), a perfect record of a beautiful performance in which the man
did old and new songs in the peak of his form. Hurt got in one more full album,
The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt, released posthumously, but even better was
the record assembled from his final sessions, Last Sessions, also issued after
his death; these songs broke new lyrical ground, and showed Hurt's voice and
guitar to be as strong as ever, just months before his death.

Mississippi John Hurt left behind a legacy unique in the annals of the blues,
and not just in terms of music. A humble, hard-working man who never sought fame
or fortune from his music, and who conducted his life in an honest and honorable
manner, he also avoided the troubles that afflicted the lives of many of his
more tragic fellow musicians. He was a pure musician, playing for himself and
the smallest possible number of listeners, developing his guitar technique and
singing style to please nobody but himself; and he suddenly found himself with a
huge following, precisely because of his unique style. Unlike contemporaries
such as Skip James, he felt no bitterness over his late-in-life mass success,
and as a result continued to please and win over new listeners with his
recordings until virtually the last weeks of his life. Nothing he ever recorded
was less than inspired, and most of it was superb. © Bruce Eder



Mississippi John Hurt - Bluesville Presents.rar - 260.3 MB

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