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- Date Released: January 22, 2000
- Genre: Blues
- Style: Delta Blues
- Label: Yazoo - Shanachie Records / The Orchard
One of the patron saints of folk and blues revivalists yesterday and today.
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We Say...
It’s been 80 years since Mississippi John Hurt recorded the thirteen sides for Okeh that later made him one of the patron saints of folk and blues revivalists from Bob Dylan and Fred Neil to Dave Van Ronk and Taj Mahal. Yet the refined, pastoral music gathered on 1928 Sessions continues to exert a powerful influence on pickers, singers and writers in music from blues to bluegrass; you can hear echoes of Hurt in Devendra Banhart, Ben Harper, Gillian Welch, Steve Earle and PJ Harvey — to name just a few.
His rolling, syncopated finger-picking style is so agreeable it sounds simple; as any guitarist who’s tried to play it will confirm, it isn’t. Hurt created alternating bass lines with his thumb while picking crisp, elegant melodies and chords with his index and middle fingers. He played guitar like it was a piano and did it with such finesse and ingenuity that on songs like “Candy Man Blues” you’d swear there are at least two pickers. The sweet, rippling sound had less to do with the harsh, jagged Delta blues of Robert Johnson and Son House than with the era’s country music. Indeed, Okeh first recorded him on the recommendation of white Mississippi fiddler Willie Narmour, with whom Hurt often played. Yet the train-like propulsion of songs like “Avalon Blues” and the rhythmic sureness of his riffing on others like “Spike Driver Blues” could only have come from the blues. Whatever brutalities were surely visited upon him in his native Mississippi, Hurt still sang in a gentle baritone that conveyed contentedness, quiet pride and wonder; though he didn’t reject songs of violence — “Frankie,” “Louis Collins,” “Stack O’Lee” — his interpretations, unlike most others, didn’t romanticize such tales.
If these descriptions suggest that he’s not a bluesman at all, so be it. Mister Hippie John Hurt, as a friend of mine dubs him, was actually more of a pre-blues songster whose music incorporated elements of blues; he was classified a bluesman mainly due to the color of his skin. That’s probably why traditional music revivalists of all generations and genres unequivocally embrace him. Hurt made it possible for white, upper-middle-class, college-educated kids to play “blues” without making fools of themselves by moaning about hellhounds on their trails, selling their souls to Satan and mean mistreating women.
Or maybe we all just love him because his music speaks so wholeheartedly to our best, most humane impulses. -
They Say...
The 13 original 1928 recordings of Hurt. Justifiably legendary, with gentle grace and power on these understated vocal and fingerpicking masterpieces. These are the ones to hear, although all Hurt is worth listening to.
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You Say...
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| 01. |  |
Ain't No Tellin' |
2:56 |  |
| 02. | |
Stack O' Lee Blues |
2:57 | |
| 03. | |
Candy Man Blues |
2:46 | |
| 04. | |
Spike Driver Blues |
3:15 | |
| 05. | |
Avalon Blues |
3:03 | |
| 06. | |
Louis Collins |
3:00 | |
| 07. | |
Frankie |
3:21 | |
| 08. | |
Big Leg Blues |
2:51 | |
| 09. | |
Nobody's Dirty Business |
2:53 | |
| 10. | |
Got The Blues, Can't Be Satisfied |
2:52 | |
| 11. | |
Blessed Be The Name |
2:47 | |
| 12. | |
Blue Harvest Blues |
2:53 | |
| 13. | |
Praying On The Old Camp Ground |
2:36 | |
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Credits
- Mississippi John Hurt - Main Performer // Mississippi John Hurt - ? // Nick Perls - Producer
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