mississippi john hurt
You may or may not have noticed a big flash piece on our homepage today announcing the 80th anniversary of Mississippi John Hurt’s ridiculously amazing OKEH sessions, collected on eMusic here. Those original Hurt recordings have long been precious to me, and I still rate them among the best music I have ever heard. My dad first turned me onto them — I know for a fact that he got a kick out of teaching me the ribald “Candyman” on guitar when I was 12 — and more than anything else he played me outside of Doc Watson, these songs have stuck with me.
Hurt was a helluva guitar player — no denying it. His finger picking is swift and lithe, but there’s way more to it than dexterity or chops: he had such an immaculate feel for the guitar, he could make it flutter like a beautiful woman’s eyelids, make it halt in its tracks as if confronted with a ghost. And Hurt’s voice, always so playful and sneering, thoroughly modern in its stresses and cracks, owning an incredible recording like “Frankie” without even trying, the little hums and foreboding smirks ingrained in how he developed as a performer. Though the OKEH sessions are, of course, blues recordings, they surpass the blues’ form and structure, moving straight into the realm of folklore and miracles. It’s that good.
An amazing “Candyman” performance from the Newport Folk Festival:
The video is really interesting when it shifts directly from John Hurt to Bob Dylan. I don’t think I can explain it, but it just hit me in a weird way. From Hurt’s pureness — and near innocence (just knowing his history) — straight over to Dylan in his shades and all he represented at that time. Just… a weird dichotomy.
I love this stuff. Reminds me of home and summers spent in the Mississippi Delta
I’ve been meaning to download this disc. This month, I passed it up in favor of two discs from similar genres/time periods: American Primitive, Vol. I — Raw Pre-War Gospel (1926 — 1936) and Angola Prison Spirituals (both of which are great; n.1). But I’m grabbing the John Hurt disc as soon as my downloads refresh.
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(n.1) Indeed, assessing the cream of the crop from those related genres (old time-y music (terrible term), Appalachian music, Delta blues) would make for a dynamite 17 Dots post.
Daniel –
if you were interested and liked the Angola Prison Spirituals, check out this album. i stumbled across it about 10 years ago, and i love it. so spiritual. plus, most of it was recorded in my home state’s penitentiary (way back a long time ago)
http://www.emusic.com/album/Recorded-Live-By-Alan-Lomax-Negro-Prison-Blues-And-Songs-MP3-Download/10915959.html
doesn’t get much more pure than this.
I’ll check it out. Thanks, John.