Mississippi John Hurt
The Best Of

This writing, more than a review, aims to be a signal. It wants to leave a testimony on this site of the artistic greatness of Mississippi John Hurt. One of the most genuine yet original interpreters of that blues more country, more rural and more rooted but also a man like many others.

Since he was a laborer from a young age, he lived, musically speaking and otherwise, in relative isolation: he played only "old-time" music at street parties, where the Black population gathered to exploit by singing and dancing those few moments of leisure that the grueling work on the plantation allowed. He experienced a small turning point around 1916 when he went to work on the railroad, left his hometown of Avalon, a tiny rural center with just under a hundred inhabitants, and began playing in city festivals along the Mississippi delta with the violinist Willie Narmour. Thus, he was noticed by a scout from Okeh Records who had him record "Avalon Blues" around '27-'28, but, since it had minimal success in terms of sales, the name "John Hurt" was soon forgotten. His voice was too sweet and soothing, his guitar lines too calm and not wild enough and, more generally, his style was too far from that blues, from that "music of the devil" that was beginning to become popular and successful even in the white world. But good Mississippi John Hurt was not interested in commercial success at all, he was one of those who embodied in the most coherent and clear way the blues spirit; he played the blues in the circumstances and for the purposes for which this immense musical genre was born: he played to improve himself, for the pleasure of it, to relax and provide relaxation to his friends after fourteen hours spent breaking bones in the plantations. A shy and pure personality in the world of blues, far from the excesses that characterized Robert Johnson and the like, he nevertheless developed his very personal style: an intimate, soothing blues, with a voice always a bit melancholic and with an innovative guitar style (he invented the "finger-picking," where the thumb of the right hand imitated the rhythms of ragtime pianism while the other fingers played the melody) that had a vast influence on future generations of songwriters.

In fact, Mississippi John Hurt achieved media success, along with Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Blind Limon Jefferson, etc., during the so-called "folk revival" scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s, a good thirty-five years after his recordings for Okeh Records. A student came looking for him, in 1965, all the way to his hometown, Avalon, where the now seventy-year-old John Hurt was enjoying his old age, resting his back worn out from years and years of work in the delta plantations of Mississippi. He, despite his advanced age, had still preserved his musical prowess, continuing to cultivate the love for the guitar that had captivated him since his youth. He accepted the young man's offers and began recording new records, speaking in schools, and playing at folk festivals, colleges, auditoriums, and even on television on the Tonight Show. He died shortly after this sudden boom of success, in 1966, enjoying with the simplicity of one who had always lived in poverty the money he earned in that short but intense period of fame. His immortal musical genuineness (and otherwise) influenced many musical domains, from bluegrass, to country, but especially the folk songwriting of artists like Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton (the latter paid him more than one homage). Emblematic is the image of when Mississippi John Hurt participated in the Newport Folk Festival, where the then emerging Bob Dylan was also playing: a passing of the baton that gives a precise idea of his musical importance.

This "Best Of", recorded for Vanguard in 1966, gathers all his main pieces, from "Candy Man" to "Coffee Blues", and testifies to his innate ability to transform songs of the black tradition into calm ballads, such as "Stagolee". One of the musics, a perfect marriage of calm blues, folk, country, and "old-time" music, most intense of all time. Mississippi John Hurt was a phenomenal storyteller, one of those who did not need baroque arrangements or unnecessary technicalities to reach peaks of expressiveness touched only a few times by the blues. A music that would not fully convey on record; I would invite the ghost of Mississippi John Hurt to come back down here and once again pick up his rudimentary acoustic guitar: I would beg him to play and drink a glass of Four Roses with me at sunset, in a quiet corner of the most pristine countryside, and then, once the wheat stalks are out of his teeth, to lie down and watch the stars on the lush green grass with his back damp from the dew before returning up there, to delight his lucky neighbors in Paradise.

This is, in my opinion, the most appropriate circumstance for listening to his ballads: do you think that old kindhearted God would stamp his permit for a day?