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Researching the Music of Mississippi John Hurt |
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By Frank Delaney Producer, “The Backwater Blues Show” KPBX FM 91.1 Spokane Public Radio http://www.kpbx.org/ National Public Radio Network Click here
to Email Me Questions I was stationed
in Pensacola, Florida in 1963/64 at the U.S. Naval Communications Center
Training Base. I was in the Base
Marching Band and we played local parades and went to 2 Mardi Gras in New
Orleans. Around this time many young white blues researchers, including the
guitarist John Fahey and friends,
had been searching for the old country Bluesmen who had recorded in
the 1920’s; before the Depression wiped out the record industry.
Amazingly, many of them were rediscovered, including the Memphis bluesman Furry
Lewis, Skip James, Delta blues players Bukka White and Son House, and
Mississippi John Hurt. I heard other southern guys in our band talking about
these old players, but they were all new to me, having been born in New York
City and raised on listening to early rock&roll music on the radio, and being
one of millions of teenagers who came home from school and watched the Dick
Clark Show on television. My limited idea of the blues was seeing Lloyd Price
singing his 1959 hit “Stagolee”. My time
spent in the American South introduced me to acoustic folk music and blues,
where I learned to love the music, and I have been playing and researching it
ever since. There
were two very
interesting discoveries of the old players. I interviewed John
Fahey back in the mid 1980’s, and he told me how he had tried to find
Bukka White by sending a post card from his college dorm to “Bukka
White, Old Blues Singer, Aberdeen, MS” based on one of Bukka’s
songs. It turned out that a relative of Bukka worked at the post office and
forwarded the card to Bukka, who was living in Memphis. Bukka then contacted
John, who then drove with a college friend to Memphis to meet and do a field
recording of him, and then headed back to college life. I have a copy of a
railroad ticket that John gave me when he paid for Bukka’s first trip
to perform in California. Mississippi
John Hurt was rediscovered by the lyrics to his song “Avalon
Blues”, specifically his famous lyrics “Avalon’s my home
town, always on my mind”, and I have heard different versions of this
story. The most romantic version is that a young college student, Tom Hoskins, was sitting
in his dorm room listening to Avalon Blues, and logically put together
“Mississippi” John Hurt and the line “Avalon’s my
home town, always on my mind”, and decided to drive down to Avalon,
Mississippi to try to find this old famous but long forgotten bluesman, and
did exactly that. But the
version I would most believe was from an associate of his, Dick Spottswood, who had
received a tape copy of John’s “Avalon Blues” from a blues fan in Australia , and
heard the line “Avalon’s my home town, always on my mind”.
Spottswood knew Hoskins, and knew that he and had a couple students were
going to drive down to the Mardi Gras that year..
Spottswood suggested that they might go a little out of their way and try to
find the tiny hamlet of Avalon, and if they could, they just might find
someone who had known John Hurt. And lo and behold, they rediscovered
Mississippi John Hurt from his suggestion. While producing
The Backwater Blues Show for KPBX
Spokane Public Radio in the 1980’s, I did a radio series entitled
“The Early Bluesmen”, and I featured dozens of the country
bluesmen. I would interview professional
folk and blues players as they passed through town, and I interviewed John Fahey ( who lived in Oregon at
the time) Dave Van Ronk – a New York City based folk/blues performer,
and Elizabeth Cotten (Freight Train) who had all actually known John Hurt.
They all spoke very highly of him and his guitar style, and told me many
interesting tales of times together with him. I also met other musicians who
knew him; a friend who lived in Idaho who had been a cook at a Greenwich
Village Café in the 1960’s where John played, and a Californian
named Eric Park, who had transcribed all of John’s songs way back in
the 70’s, with intentions to release a guitar instruction book. I decided
that I wanted to do a NPR special on John Hurt’s Music. By that time I had
all of his record albums, and I had been playing guitar in his 3 finger style
for many years, having taught myself that unique style, as most of the other
local musicians here in the Northwest were Bluegrass flatpickers. John Fahey
had given me a list of names of people who I might contact regarding doing a
special, and I called many of them. This was well before the evolution of the
World Wide Web, or the internet as we know and use it today. I called
several of them and got more material for my special, and learned that John
had recorded his entire repertoire of songs for the Library of Congress, when
he was first rediscovered. What interested me most about this was that he
supposedly had recorded two spoken folk tales, and one was a story about panthers
in Mississippi. I have always been interested in the lives of the bluesmen,
and when you listen to their recordings you get their music, but not much of
the person. Even when you watch them on the many videos that are now
available, they are usually playing for young white college audiences, and
don’t say much between songs. So I was
particularly interested in hearing John tell these stories, which I felt
would truly capture a more human side of him. I also followed John
Fahey’s Bukka White story and I sent a letter to “Mississippi
John Hurt, Old Blues Singer, C/O General Delivery, Avalon, MS “ but got
no replies to my letter. I
contacted the Library of Congress, Folk Music Division, and was told that I
would have to obtain the written permission of a Hurt family member to have
these recordings released to me.
My primary contact was a fellow who had actually been at John’s original recordings,
and who had become sort of an archivist there. I replied immediately that I
would try to do that, but somehow my letter was misfiled there and it was
over a year before I received another letter from him apologizing for the
delay, and he had included a list of addresses of known family members. One that leaped out at me was an Ella
Mae Green who lived in Tacoma,
Washington. I have lived in Washington state since the 1960’s, the
far Northwestern corner of the country and about as far away from Mississippi
as you can get – and here’s his grand daughter living in my
state! I then spent 2 days in Tacoma searching for her, but never found her.
Later another relative gave me his permission but by that time I was involved
in other projects and it fell by the wayside. Then in
2004, almost 20 years later, I was emailed by a young fellow
interested in doing a statue of John at his gravesite, and somehow he had
found the blues pages on my website and saw that I was a John Hurt fan http://www.mtamicro.com/bluepage.html
. In our
correspondence he said that he was in contact with the Hurt family and that
when he mentioned my name to them, his Grand daughter Mary Hurt-Wright had
remembered me writing the letter to the Hurt family requesting their
permission to get the LOC recordings, and that she wanted to talk to me. We
started an email correspondence, and as a result I volunteered to do this
website for the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation. I am extremely proud to work on this
project as John Hurt was my favorite of all the country bluesmen. However,
I am also extremely disturbed to learn that of all the monies being created
by the worldwide sale of Mississippi John Hurt records, cd’s,
dvd’s, photographs and videos today – little of these monies
are going to his legitimate heirs, and specifically none to the Mississippi
John Hurt Foundation, which was created to accomplish the Foundation
objectives which are listed on the main page of this website. There’s
an old Mississippi Blues Expression – “The more things change,
the more they stay the same”. It seems that there are still a lot of
music industry people who pay lip service to the old bluesman; saying how
important they were and what a contribution they made to American music,
while at the same time continuing to rip them off – just as the record companies of the
1920’s did that exploited them - and pocketing the profits from sale of
their music. Update 2007 In July
2006 I traveled to Avalon, Mississippi to play at the Mississippi John Hurt
Gospel and Blues Festival, and to do research for a Special on John that I am
producing for National Public Radio, and for an E-book that I plan on
donating to the Hurt Foundation, which will be illustrated by English Artist
Jonny Beech.. I was able
to do interviews with family members and friends, and to take pictures and
videos of the area. Most importantly I was able to visit John’s grave
and pay my respects for his wonderful music that he gave the world. I would
recommend that anyone in the Avalon area make arrangements with Art Browning,
the curator, to visit the museum and see the history associated with
John’s musical legacy. Click here
to Email Me Questions |
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