Mississippi John Hurt

With his beautifully soft delivery, elegant finger-picking technique and old-world, soulful storytelling, Mississippi John Hurt was an obscure country-blues player from the 1920s and 30s until he was re-discovered and became a hero to the young folk stars of the 1960s. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, he started playing the guitar of a family friend when he was nine and later teamed up with local fiddle player Willie Narmour to perform at barn dances and parties. He worked manual jobs as a farm hand and as a laborer for a railroad company, and only had two recording sessions for the label Okeh Records in 1928. His music gained little attention at the time, but decades later interest in blues and roots music grew and a new generation of musicians, record collectors and musicologists became desperate to preserve and learn about the culture. When two of Hurt's tracks, 'Frankie' and 'Spike Driver Blues', were featured on Harry's Smith hugely popular compilation album 'Anthology of American Folk Music' in 1952 a fan base formed. In contrast to the raw, harsh pain of early Delta blues stars like Son House and Robert Johnson, Hurt's sweet, hushed vocals and melodic, rhythmic self-taught guitar style was much more accessible to younger fans and in 1963 collector Tom Hoskins tracked him down and brought him to Washington D.C. He played in coffee houses, on college campuses, at the Newport Folk Festival and even at New York's Carnegie Hall, while his tracks 'Candy Man', 'Avalon Blues', 'Stack O' Lee' and 'My Creole Belle' became big favourites on the folk scene and influenced the likes of Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, John Martin and Paul Simon. Known for his humble, gentle nature and the warm intimacy of his music, he went on to release a new album 'Today!' for Vanguard Records before his death in 1966 from a heart attack.

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