Mississippi John Hurt

This is Mississippi John Hurt, and he was far from the devilish sort; there probably never was a more lovable bluesman. Soft-spoken, mild-mannered John Hurt was born in Teoc, Mississippi, in 1893, and lived most of his life in neighboring Avalon. He recorded 13 songs for the OKeh label in 1928, including Avalon Blues, Frankie, Ain't No Tellin', Stack O' Lee Blues, Candy Man Blues, and Spike Driver Blues -- a ballad he learned during a brief stint as a railroad worker in 1916. Hurt fell into obscurity until his rediscovery in the early 1960s, when he began to play the coffeehouse and folk-festival circuit, including the 1963 through 1965 Newport Folk Festivals. John Hurt died in Grenada, Mississippi, in 1966.
John Hurt preceded Bessie Smith in this world by less than a year. Born in a Chattanooga, Tennessee, slum in 1894, Bessie was orphaned in her early teens and was forced to eke out a living singing and dancing on Chattanooga street corners. She was soon befriended by the legendary Ma Rainey, and her career began to flourish in the early 1920s. In the following decade, she recorded such blues classics as Taint Nobody's Bizness If I Do, Poor Man's Blues, St. Louis Blues, and Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out. Bessie Smith was killed in an auto accident near Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1937. Some have suggested that Smith died after being refused treatment at a whites-only hospital. This is now considered to be untrue.

The King of the Delta Blues, this is from the The Blues Highway:
Robert Johnson went down to the crossroad . . .
. . . where they say he struck a deal with the Devil. Fellow bluesman Tommy Johnson (no relation) said, "If you want to learn how to play anything you want to play and learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where a road crosses that way, where a crossroad is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little 'fore 12:00 that night so you'll know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself. . . . A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar, and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want." (As told by LeDell Johnson to David Evans and quoted from Peter Guralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson, copyright © 1982, 1989.)
In 1936 and 1937, Robert Johnson recorded such immortal blues classics as I Believe I'll Dust My Broom, Sweet Home Chicago, Come On In My Kitchen, Cross Road Blues, Traveling Riverside Blues, Love In Vain, Hellhound On My Trail, and Me And The Devil Blues. Johnson was born in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, in 1911 and died under still-mysterious circumstances near Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1938.
PLEASE NOTE: These pages once contained 10- to 12-second music clips of the blues legends featured here. Rather than pay a $250 annual fee to the "performing rights organization" BMI, I have regretfully removed those music clips. Should you like to express your opinion of this situation to BMI, please e-mail Mr. Scott H. Andrews, Senior Director, Internet Licensing at
sandrews@bmi.com, phone (615) 401-2907, or fax (615) 401-2104.