Mississippi John Smith Hurt (1893?-1966). Born in Teoc, Carroll County, Mississippi and moving to the town of Avalon as a boy, John Hurt began playing the guitar at 9 by playing his mother’s boyfriend’s guitar whenever he stayed with them. The boyfriend showed little if anything to Hurt. He was completely self-taught.
While he encountered a great many blues artists later in life, he knew of few when he started playing. One was a local man named Rufus Hanks who never recorded. Hanks played a 12-string and a harp. The only other guitarist songster Hurt had heard was Jimmie Rodgers—the Singing Brakeman. Hurt said he played the guitar the way he thought a guitar it was supposed sound. Consequently, John Hurt sounded like no one else. While usually included with the Delta bluesmen, Hurt was not really one of them
as he didn’t play low-down blues. His was a light mixture of country, blues, folk, ragtime, bluegrass and a bit of jazz. Later on, he incorporated helpings of rocknroll. In 1923, he partnered with a fiddler named Willie Narmour who won a fiddler contest in 1928 for which the prize was to record some sides for the OKeh label. Narmour requested Hurt as his accompanist and the producer brought him in after hearing him play. The sessions were held in Memphis and New York. The records didn’t go anywhere and OKeh, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy due to the Depression, did not sign Hurt or Narmour to a contract (OKeh went bust shortly after).
Hurt returned to Mississippi and lived as a sharecropper. He hung around with Skip James and played the jukes on weekends but otherwise his musical career was nondescript. For over 20 years, nobody had given John Hurt a thought when suddenly his “Frankie” and “Spike Driver Blues” were included on an anthology of American folk roots music. This spurred an Australian fan to search out other John Hurt songs and located “Avalon Blues,” a song Hurt wrote about his hometown. In 1963, Hurt was located still living in Avalon and was persuaded to embark to Washington D.C. and revive his career while the interest in first generation blues was riding a wave of popularity. Hurt performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival and garnered the notice and attention that had eluded him so many years earlier. He recorded three albums on Vangard and played an endless string of coffeehouses, auditoriums and college venues where kids flocked to see a bona fide Mississippi bluesman. He played The Tonight Show as well.
A hero to a new generation of folk and blues musicians, John Hurt returned to Mississippi as a local boy made good. He died of a heart attack at the age of 74 or 75 in Granada, Mississippi. John Fahey, Tom Paxton and Wizz Jones have all written tribute songs to Hurt and the Jim Kweskin Jug Band recorded his “Richland Woman” in 1967 with vocals by Maria Muldaur (although she was Maria D’Amato at that time) who covered the song again in a solo release in 2001. The town of Avalon erected a memorial to Mississippi John Hurt along Rural Route 2 where he grew up.
Below, Mississippi John Hurt in his later years. Age did nothing to diminish his guitar proficiency:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vphs2YYBSr0
I play this one at open mics but I'm not quite a proficient as the master. At least I have the key right--G.