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The lonesome songster from Avalon
The songs on this album were released in numerous editions since 1971 under various titles like "The Original 1928 Recordings" (1971), "Mississippi John Hurt 1928 : Stack O' Lee Blues" and "1928 - His First Recordings" (1972), "The 1928 Sessions" (1979, 1988), "Avalon Blues : The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings" (1996), "Candy Man Blues : The Complete 1928 Sessions" (2004), "The Best of Mississippi John Hurt : Columbia Original Masters" (2008), "Blessed Be The Name : The Complete OKeh Recordings" (2010), "Spike Driver Blues - The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings" (2016), "American Epic : The Best of Mississippi John Hurt" (2017) and "The Rough Guide To Mississippi John Hurt" (2019).
Needless to say that Delta blues amateurs almost know these great classics inside out. But this 2008 edition, "The Man From Avalon", stands out : it makes them sound almost like you never heard them before.
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Andrew Rose
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Actually this miracle was made possible by Andrew Rose's Pristine Audio specialized in high quality digital audio restoration. Andrew Rose, a former senior sound engineer at the BBC who developed the innovative XR remastering process, a unique technique that allows to restore almost completely the original sound of old recordings, founded Pristine in 2002 in London, and relocated the company in France in 2004. The Pristine technology manages to reach a sound quality even better than heard from original old 78-rpm discs !I've had the opportunity to compare the 1996 Columbia-Legacy-OKeh release with this one by Pristine : the difference is incredible ! The sound of the 1996 release is flatly metallic and completely lacks deepness, while the 2008 Pristine one gives the impression of being in the studio in front of Hurt !
What a real pleasure to rediscover the great "Mississippi" John Hurt (1893-1966) early songs and to hear clearly the fast, syncopated but refined finger picking style that he had developed by himself and his unique warm husky gospel-influenced voice.
A sharecropping farmer during most of his life, Hurt was living in the small community of Avalon (nothing to do with the Arthurian legend) counting less than a hundred residents, more a gathering of houses and farms scattered around a crossroad along Mississippi Highway 7, on the west edge of the Mississippi Hill country, north of Greenwood, south-west of Grenada, than a small town. A humble, hard-working and candid man who never sought fame or fortune from his music, even after his 1928 recording experience, he lived an ordinary life with his family. But his secret garden was all but ordinary, one of a pure musician developing his guitar skills and singing style to please nobody but himself.
Contrary to many other Delta bluesmen, like his contemporary Robert Johnson for example, who traveled from town to town playing in juke-joints, picnics and sometimes at street corners, Hurt lived a reclusive life in his remote Avalon meeting almost no other musicians, except for an elderly, unrecorded blues singer neighbor named Rufus Hanks who played twelve-string guitar and harmonica. This seclusion makes his musical style all the more miraculous : he "invented" his style as an autodidact, without any outside models to guide or influence him.
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A humble grave for a humble man
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After three intense years of performing and recording, Hurt went back to his Mississippi home and died from a heart attack on November 2, 1966 in Grenada, not very far from Avalon were he was buried in a grave as humble as his life had been. A great loss indeed.To go back to these 1928 recordings, they were made after OKeh Records boss Tom Rockwell was recommended Hurt by fiddle player Willie Narmour who had played some time with him. On the fist session in Memphis in February 1928, Hurt recorded eight sides (some say twenty, of which twelve were lost) but only two were released at the time : "Frankie" and "Nobody's Dirty Business", later featured in myriads of country blues and folk anthologies. The six unissued titles are : "Monday Morning Blues", "Shiverlie Blues", "Casey Jones", "Blessed Be The Name", "Meeting On The Old Camp Ground" and "Sliding Delta".
Hurt later described this 1928 first recording session : "...a great big hall with only the three of us in it : me, the man [Rockwell], and the engineer. It was really something. I sat on a chair, and they pushed the microphone right up to my mouth and told me that I couldn't move after they had found the right position. I had to keep my head absolutely still. Oh, I was nervous, and my neck was sore for days after".
The others tracks of this album were cut or re-cut ("Blessed Be The Name", "Meeting On The Old Camp Ground") in December of the same year in New York City.
Hurt's very unique music is influenced by gospel ("Blessed Be The Name", "Praying On The Old Camp Ground") and sometimes closer to rural folk ("Nobody's Dirty Business", "Louis Collins") than to classic Delta blues. Hurt himself didn't have a real name to describe his music. Folk or blues, he didn't bother to make the difference : it was his music, he was playing it and it was good enough like that.On the thirteen tracks of this exceptional remastering, Hurt's finger-picking guitar unveils its sophistication although he was actually playing with only three fingers : the thumb on the top lower strings, the forefinger and the middle one on the three or four bottom higher strings. His basic style was roughly based on ragtime but he adapted it with elements of his own borrowed from gospel he heard at church, and music he heard mainly on the radio : country (he confessed he really liked country music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers who was also from Mississippi), traditional folk, rural blues and to a lesser extent bluegrass…
Always wearing the same kind of hat, at least on the pictures that went public, Hurt's face was constantly brightened by a smile full of humility and understanding which reveals a man at peace with himself. A man probably extremely surprised by the unexpected veneration he aroused among the young (and white) generation in the very last years of his life, as if he thought he didn't deserve such acclaim. Respect ! ■
The recording dates
01 - Frankie : recorded in Memphis, Feb. 14, 1928. 02 - Nobody's Dirty Business : recorded in Memphis, Feb. 14, 1928.
03 - Stack O' Lee Blues : recorded in New York, Dec. 28, 1928.
04 - Candy Man Blues : recorded in New York, Dec. 28, 1928.
05 - Blessed Be The Name : recorded in New York, Dec. 28, 1928.
06 - Praying On The Old Camp Ground : recorded in New York, Dec. 28, 1928.
07 - Blue Harvest Blues : recorded in New York, Dec. 28, 1928.
08 - Spike Driver Blues : recorded in New York, Dec. 28, 1928.
09 - Louis Collins : recorded in New York, Dec. 21, 1928.
10 - Got The Blues Can't Be Satisfied : recorded in New York, Dec. 28, 1928.
11 - Ain't No Tellin' : recorded in New York, Dec. 21, 1928.
12 - Avalon Blues : recorded in New York, Dec. 21, 1928.
13 - Big Leg Blues : recorded in New York, Dec. 21, 1928.
Discography
Documentaries
● Author Philip R. Ratcliffe about his biography "An inside look at Mississippi John Hurt : his life, his times, his blues", the first published bio on blues revival's most influential musician : https://youtu.be/zSuH9PBRpO4
Audio docs
[Track list 0:06 Lonesome Blues 3:49 Richland Woman Blues 8:06 Trouble I Had All My Days 12:09 Chicken 13:00 Coffee Blues 16:29 Monday Morning Blues 21:15 Frankie and Albert 25:32 Talking (Crying) Casey Jones 28:50 Here Am I, Oh Lord, Send Me 32:33 Candy Man 35:45 My Creole Belle 38:02 Make Me A Pallet 41:40 Shake That Thing 43:48 Satisfied Blues 45:41 Salty Dog 49:08 No Body's Business But Mine 52:55 Louis Collins 58:00 Casey Jones]
[01. C.C. Rider 02. Avalon Blues 03. Nobody's Dirty Business 04. Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor 05. Stack O'Lee Blues]
[01. Gene's intro 02. JH talks 03. Nearer My God To Thee 04. Baby What's Wrong With You 05. Coffee Blues 06. It Ain't Nobody's Business 07. Candy Man 08. Intro to Stagolee 09. Stack O'Lee 10. Monday Morning Blues 11. Gene's Outro]
[01: Do Lord Intro 02: Do Lord Remember Me 03: Lay My Burden Down 04: CC Rider 05: Casey Jones 06: Nobody's Dirty Buisness 07: Richland Women Blues Intro 08: Richland Women Blues 09: Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me 10: Spike Driver's Blues 11: Stack O'Lee Blues 12: Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor 13: Coffee Blues Intro 14: Coffee Blues 15: My Creole Belle 16: Frankie and Albert 17: Talkin' Casey (fade)]
[Bye And Bye I Will See Jesus / I Shall Not Be Moved / Ballad Of Casey Jones / My Creole Belle / Louis Collins / Salty Dog]
Live videos
[Between 2 :02 and 3 :22, during the Newport Folk Festival 1963 or 1964, you can hear Bob Dylan singing in the background while MJH is interviewed.]
● Scott Ainslie lessons on Mississippi John Hurt's music :
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