Mississippi John HURT - Last Sessions 1972

Mississippi John HURT - Last Sessions 1972
Manhattan Towers Hotel, NY (02/1966-07/1966);
Vanguard's 23rd Street Recording Studio, NY (02/1966-07/1966)

Blues

On these final 17 recordings of Mississippi John Hurt's remarkable career, the septuagenarian songster evinces all the warmth, humor, and mastery that mark the entirety of his recorded work. A gifted fingerpicker, singer, and songwriter, Hurt spent most of his life in obscurity. The folk boom of the '60s revived the music career he had abandoned during the Depression. Before his death in 1966, Hurt completed four wonderful albums for Vanguard Records.
**
LAST SESSIONS includes Hurt's takes on others' blues classics ("Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home," "Goodnight, Irene") as well as a number of great originals ("Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me," "Trouble, I've Had it All My Days"). Throughout, Hurt deftly mixes the serious ("You Got to Die") with the bawdy ("Funky Butt") and whimsical ("Spider, Spider"). Like all available Hurt recordings, LAST is a great album from one of the '60s' greatest artists.Including Patrick Sky on Guitars.
**
Music criticism is basically a myth-making game. It's all over the place, really. It's the process by which Lady Gaga becomes one who knows that the one-hit wonders are weirder and cooler than the well-paid musicians who stretch their careers over seven years on the stage and twenty more behind it, or how Wavves was once something of a left-field mystery. It's how music critics aim to make broad, sweeping, persuasive points about the artists they're talking about. Music criticism is a mythopoeic act, and the beautiful part of RYM is that it allows you to become your own historian, lay down your own law. And this site is overrun with that kind of myth-making. I'm a part of it. That's kind of a bummer, and part of the reason why I'm becoming exponentially more interested with personal reactions to music than pseudo-professional (or just plain professional) ones.

But I've been reticent to file either reaction in with blues, as have a lot of people, as evidenced by the relative paucity of reviews for Mississippi John Hurt (and others). Beyond the sneaking cynical suspicion that blues became a bourgeois talking-point when the Rolling Stones were covering Muddy Waters, there's also some degree of research to be done. I haven't tracked Mississippi John Hurt from a pithy Pitchfork review circa 1999, so I don't feel entitled to etch dramatic essays into stone for everybody.

Here's the very glib, likely innaccurate, history behind Last Sessions: Mississippi John Hurt learned to play guitar in Avalon, Mississippi and cut some records for Okeh, who did race recordings (lotta country, lotta blues) in the American South, in the 1920s. Once blues became a big deal in the 1960s, artists like Son House, Rev. Gary Davis, and Mississippi John Hurt became a big deal again. Mississippi John Hurt records Last Sessions in 1966 and dies of cancer shortly thereafter.

I hope I'm not making a myth when I say that Last Sessions has a fatalistic aura. Hurt's voice is faint and scratchy and his guitar-playing is softly finger-picked, unlike Rev. Gary Davis' hair-raising sermons and Son House's dirgy confessionals. It sounds personal and probably closer to folk in that respect. On a purely aesthetic note, I feel like Devendra Banhart and M. Ward have copped a lot from this album, but I have no basis for that comparison and it's a snotty thing to point out, because:

Content-wise, if Hurt is approaching death, he's not the least bit bitter about it. He's meek and forgiving: "Joe Turner Blues" bemoans a horrible person in major key; "Nobody Cares for Me" is woefully alone in the same manner; "First Shot Missed Him" ("first shot missed him, so they say/ last shot got him from a mile away") feels intrinsically linked to prison yards and Jim Crow Laws even if they are not borne from them; and "Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me" says, "throw my body out in the sea/ let the mermaids flirt with me" without a hint of dejectedness. You could probably throw words like minimalism and Rorschach at "Good Morning, Carrie" or "You've Got to Die," two songs with a few lines repeated over and over with great emotional effect. Hurt covers Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" and rides out into the sunset as if it was Hurt's own. Among these, "Funky Butt" stands out as a short, catchy ditty about a fart.

That meekness makes this a somber but ultimately uplifting affair. About 40 minutes of listening to a man who sounds self-actualized in facing death. Sounding contented and wise with few significant regrets, maybe a little lonely, but empathetic and happy nonetheless (e.g. the motherly "Boys, You're Welcome").

Yes, uplifting as fuck. As a young adult, I'm full of the kinds of rashness and erroneousness you'd expect from a young adult, but I've taken to listening to Last Sessions in my downcast moments rather than those of the bizarro screamo or furious noise ilk. There's an authenticity to bluesmen that isn't anywhere else - this raspy, wise grandfatherly tone that speaks to experiences I can only fathom. And part of that is the mythos I feel like I've created for Hurt and the bluesmen, this self-sustained portent of long-dead gods strumming from the clouds. In Hurt's case, he's singing about the injustices we rage against, crafting songs not explicitly tied to any particular injustice so that only emotion sustains, to which he lacquers the bliss of knowing that everything will be okay: we've all been a long way from home.
**
A1. Poor Boy, Long Way From Home  2:12
A2. Boys, You're Welcome  3:00
A3. Joe Turner Blues  3:30
A4. First Shot Missed Him  1:40
A5. Farther Along  3:43
A6. Funky Butt  1:55
A7. Spider, Spider  1:25
A8. Waiting for You  3:28
A9. Shortnin' Bread  2:13
B1. Trouble, I've Had It All My Days  3:02
B2. Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me  3:20
B3. Good Morning, Carrie  1:58
B4. Nobody Cares for Me  3:42
B5. All Night Long  2:44
B6. Hey, Honey, Right Away  1:58
B7. You've Got to Die  3:28
B8. Goodnight, Irene  2:26
**
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Mississippi John HURT - Rediscovered 1998

Mississippi John HURT - Rediscovered 1998

Blues

John Hurt's playful country blues was first heard in the late 1920s, when he recorded a handful of poorly selling sides for Okeh Records. It wasn't until his rediscovery during the 1960s folk revival that his remarkable talent was fully appreciated. Hurt's rediscovery only lasted a few years--he died in 1966--but his legacy, preserved on several albums recorded for Vanguard during that period, is indeed daunting. Hurt's intricate fingerpicking style, evidenced here on popular pieces like "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor," "Richland Women Blues," "Salty Dog Blues," and "Candy Man" went on to influence a generation of urban folk and blues artists. His music remains a sweet reminder of the pre-depression-era ragtime blues of which he was a humble and subtle master.
By Billy Altman.
**
Although usually classified as a blues musician, Mississippi John Hurt shares little musical common ground with the Mississippi Delta bluesmen that were his contemporaries. Hurt's gentle approach to guitar (which he finger-picks expertly), his ...    Full Descriptionvocals, and his highly melodic repertoire fall more easily into the folk category. Indeed, Hurt's music inspired a generation of '60s folkies. REDISCOVERED collects many of the recordings that folk musicians value so dearly, anthologizing the four LPs Hurt made for Vanguard Records in the '60s.

Although well on in years when he made these recordings, Hurt plays and sings magnificently-no mean feat considering the challenges presented by his elaborate guitar style. Many of Hurt's signature tunes are here: "Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor," "Stagolee," and "Candy Man" all appear, although the omission of a few classics ("Louis Collins" and "Casey Jones," to name two) prevents REDISCOVERED from being the definitive single-disc compilation of Hurt's later recordings. Still, with 24 bona fide classics, REDISCOVERED isn't a bad place to start your Hurt collection. On the other hand, since Hurt's Vanguard albums are all classics, you might want to skip this disc and head straight for the original releases.
CD Universe.
**
01. Coffee Blues 3:46
02. I'm Satisfied 2:54
03. Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor 4:33
04. Monday Morning Blues 3:57
05. Since I've Laid My Burden Down 2:46
06. Stocktime (Buck Dance) 2:04
07. Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight 3:32
08. Richland Women Blues 4:03
09. Keep On Knocking 2:07
10. Stagolee 5:37
11. Hop Joint 2:09
12. Funky Butt 1:56
13. It Ain't Nobody's Business 2:34
14. Salty Dog Blues 3:04
15. Candy Man 2:56
16. You Are My Sunshine 2:05
17. I've Got the Blues and I Can't Be Satisfied 2:49
18. Nearer My God to Thee 3:30
19. Shortnin' Bread 2:15
20. Avalon, My Home Town 3:42
21. First Shot Missed Him 1:44
22. Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me 3:21
23. Talking Casey 5:07
24. Goodnight Irene 2:24
**
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Mississipi John HURT - Coffee Blues 1996

Mississipi John HURT - Coffee Blues 1996
Label: Iris

Blues

The warm, amiable sound of Mississippi John Hurt is one of the earliest and most powerful influences in country blues. The organic ease of his singing belied an innovative level of craft along with an astounding fingerpicking guitar technique. Born in 1893, Hurt began performing in the early 1900s, and made some seminal recordings for Okeh in 1928. Subsequently, he traded in the musician's life for farm work until his rediscovery in the early '60s, whereupon he made a series of excellent new recordings and achieved great renown for his rural folk/country style.
**
No blues singer ever presented a more gentle, genial image than Mississippi John Hurt. A guitarist with an extraordinarily lyrical and refined fingerpicking style, he also sang with a warmth unique in the field of blues, and the gospel influence in his music gave it a depth and reflective quality unusual in the field. Coupled with the sheer gratitude and amazement that he felt over having found a mass audience so late in life, and playing concerts in front of thousands of people -- for fees that seemed astronomical to a man who had always made music a sideline to his life as a farm laborer -- these qualities make Hurt's recordings into a very special listening experience.

John Hurt grew up in the Mississippi hill country town of Avalon, population under 100, north of Greenwood, near Grenada. He began playing guitar in 1903, and within a few years was performing at parties, doing ragtime repertory rather than blues. As a farm hand, he lived in relative isolation, and it was only in 1916, when he went to work briefly for the railroad, that he got to broaden his horizons and his repertory beyond Avalon. In the early '20s, he teamed up with white fiddle player Willie Narmour, playing square dances.

Hurt was spotted by a scout for Okeh Records who passed through Avalon in 1927, who was supposed to record Narmour, and was signed to record after a quick audition. Of the eight sides that Hurt recorded in Memphis in February of 1928, only two were ever released, but he was still asked to record in New York late in 1928.

Hurt's dexterity as a guitarist, coupled with his plain-spoken nature, were his apparent undoing, at least as a popular blues artist, at the time. His playing was too soft and articulate, and his voice too plain to be taken up in a mass setting, such as a dance; rather, his music was best heard in small, intimate gatherings. In that sense, he was one of the earliest blues musicians to rely completely on the medium of recorded music as a vehicle for mass success; where the records of Furry Lewis or Blind Blake were mere distillations of music that they (presumably) did much better on-stage, in John Hurt's case the records were good representations of what he did best. Additionally, Hurt never regarded himself as a blues singer, preferring to let his relatively weak voice speak for itself with none of the gimmicks that he might've used, especially in the studio, to compensate. And he had no real signature tune with which he could be identified, in the way that Furry Lewis had "Kassie Jones" or "John Henry."

Not that Hurt didn't have some great numbers in his song bag: "Frankie," "Louis Collins," "Avalon Blues," "Candy Man Blues," "Big Leg Blues," and "Stack O' Lee Blues," were all brilliant and unusual as blues, in their own way, and highly influential on subsequent generations of musicians. They didn't sell in large numbers at the time, however, and as Hurt never set much store on a musical career, he was content to make his living as a hired hand in Avalon, living on a farm and playing for friends whenever the occasion arose.

Mississippi John Hurt might've lived and died in obscurity, if it hadn't been for the folk music revival of the late '50s and early '60s. A new generation of listeners and scholars suddenly expressed a deep interest in the music of America's hinterlands, not only in listening to it but finding and preserving it. A scholar named Tom Hoskins discovered that Mississippi John Hurt, who hadn't been heard from musically in over 35 years, was alive and living in Avalon, MS, and sought him out, following the trail laid down in Hurt's song "Avalon Blues." Their meeting was a fateful one; Hurt was in his 70s, and weary from a lifetime of backbreaking labor for pitifully small amounts of money, but his musical ability was intact, and he bore no ill-will against anyone who wanted to hear his music.

A series of concerts were arranged, including an appearance at the

-Newport Folk Festival, where he was greeted as a living legend. This opened up a new world to Hurt, who was grateful to find thousands, or even tens of thousands of people too young to have even been born when he made his only records up to that time, eager to listen to anything he had to sing or say. A tour of American universities followed as did a series of recordings: first in a relatively informal, non-commercial setting intended to capture him in his most comfortable and natural surroundings, and later under the auspices of Vanguard Records, with folk singer Patrick Sky producing.

It was 1965, and Mississippi John Hurt had found a mass audience for his songs 35 years late. He took the opportunity, playing concerts and making new records of old songs as well as material he'd never before laid down; whether he eventually put down more than a portion of his true repertory will probably never be clear, but Hurt did leave a major legacy of his and other peoples' songs, in a style that barely skipped a beat from his late-'20s Okeh sides.

As with many people to whom success comes late in life, certain aspects of the success were hard for him to absorb in stride; the money was more than he'd ever hoped to see, even if it wasn't much by the standards of a major pop star; 1,000 dollar concert fees were something he'd never even pondered having to deal with. What he did most easily was sing and play; Vanguard got out a new album, Today, in 1966, from his first sessions for the label. Additionally, the tape of a concert that Hurt played at Oberlin College in April of 1965 was released under the title The Best of Mississippi John Hurt; the 21-song live album was just that, even if it wasn't made up of previously released work (more typical of a "best-of" album), a perfect record of a beautiful performance in which the man did old and new songs in the peak of his form. Hurt got in one more full album, The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt, released posthumously, but even better was the record assembled from his final sessions, Last Sessions, also issued after his death; these songs broke new lyrical ground, and showed Hurt's voice and guitar to be as strong as ever, just months before his death.

Mississippi John Hurt left behind a legacy unique in the annals of the blues, and not just in terms of music. A humble, hard-working man who never sought fame or fortune from his music, and who conducted his life in an honest and honorable manner, he also avoided the troubles that afflicted the lives of many of his more tragic fellow musicians. He was a pure musician, playing for himself and the smallest possible number of listeners, developing his guitar technique and singing style to please nobody but himself; and he suddenly found himself with a huge following, precisely because of his unique style. Unlike contemporaries such as Skip James, he felt no bitterness over his late-in-life mass success, and as a result continued to please and win over new listeners with his recordings until virtually the last weeks of his life. Nothing he ever recorded was less than inspired, and most of it was superb.
By Bruce Eder, All Music Guide.
**
01.  Frankie and Albert   4:08    
02.  Talkin Casey   3:12    
03.  Trouble i had all my day   3:59    
04.  Coffee Blues   3:22    
05.  Hard Time in old town tonight   3:13    
06.  Chicken Blues    0:47    
07.  Here i am, Oh lord send me    3:35    
08.  Skipe driver blues   2:45    
09.  Rich Woman blues   4:06    
10.  Monday Morning Blues    4:34
**
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Mississippi John HURT - The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt 1967

Mississippi John HURT - The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt 1967
Label: Vanguard
Audio CD (October 17, 1990)

Blues

One of the best albums of country blues ever recorded. The fingerpicking is delicate, the vocals mellow and sweet. Many tunes that remain associated with Hurt are included here in versions that rival his legendary recordings from the late '20s. "Richland Woman Blues," "Stagolee," "The Chicken," and "Since I've Laid My Burden Down" sound as fresh as ever in these '60s versions. This album leaves little doubt as to why Hurt was so beloved after his rediscovery.
By Brian Beatty, All Music Guide.
**
The music recorded on this CD is well beyond being just great blues music; beyond even being just great music. John Hurt's guitar playing and singing is a life-changing experience. I defy anyone to listen to this and not be moved.
You can hear the influence that Hurt had on legions of musicians, particularly in the 60's and 70's. His guitar playing style and vocal style resonate throughout all of popular music.
Mississippi John Hurt is a great "discovery" for me, make him a great discovery for yourself also.
By Dan Mc.
**
Of all the rediscovered bluesman of the folk revival, Hurt was the least diminished by age because he was so unassuming to begin with. Having first recorded at thirty-five in 1928, he was seventy-three when he cut this posthumously released collection, which showcases his intricately unflashy finger-picking, begins and ends with hymns, and reprises both his moral take on "Stagolee" and his own fashion-conscious "Richland Woman Blues".
By R. Christgau.
**
01.Since I've Laid My Burden Down 2:46
02.Moanin' the Blues 3:18
03.Stocktime (Buck Dance) 2:05
04.Lazy Blues 1:31
05.Richland Woman Blues 4:04
06.Wise and Foolish Virgins (Tender Virgins) 2:55
07.Hop Joint 2:09
08.Monday Morning Blues 3:59
09.I've Got the Blues and I Can't Be Satisfied 2:49
10.Keep on Knocking 2:08
11.The Chicken 1:08
12.Stagolee 5:37
13.Nearer My God to Thee 3:27
**
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