VIA PRESS RELEASE | One of the most influential figures of the 1960s folk revival, Mississippi John Hurt (1893–1966) offered his own brand of the blues, thanks to his gentle vocals and unique syncopated fingerpicking style.
Yet, he didn’t find success until the final years of his life. Born to sharecroppers in rural Mississippi, Hurt was a self-taught guitarist and farmhand, who honed his craft during his downtime. In the early 1920s, he began to gig regularly with fiddle player Willie Narmour, who, in turn, recommended his friend to OKeh Records.
Hurt recorded a handful of tracks for the label in 1928, including “Frankie,” “Candy Man Blues,” and “Stack O’ Lee Blues.” While his quiet, laid-back nature set Hurt apart from other bluesmen of the era, it didn’t connect with audiences at the time, who were accustomed to the tougher, more assertive styles of artists like Son House and Charlie Patton. Hurt, who never considered himself to be a professional musician, was just as content to return to his life on the farm.
More than 30 years later, however, Hurt would find a new audience that embraced his music. Amid the folk revival, scholars “rediscovered” his recordings and, in 1963, encouraged the 70-year-old bluesman to return to the stage. Relocating to Washington DC, Hurt spent the final three years of his life recording for the Library of Congress, performing at festivals, coffeehouses and colleges, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and making several albums for Vanguard Records.
The first of these LPs, released in 1966, was Today!. Considered his definitive work, Today! found Hurt performing a range of styles—from upbeat originals (“Candy Man,” “Coffee Blues”) to traditional and country blues songs (“Make Me a Pallet on the Floor,” “Corrinna, Corrinna”) and African American spirituals (“Louis Collins,” “Beulah Land”). The album introduced Hurt to a broader audience and, over the years, would inspire younger generations of artists, including John Fahey, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Beck, and Gillian Welch. In 2009, Today! was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.
“John Hurt’s music is seductive,” notes Billington. “He was a Mississippi blues outlier whose rolling finger-picked guitar and easy-going melodies made him a darling of the 1960s folk music scene, and his influence has endured. It has been almost a century since the release of his first 78 RPM records, and almost sixty years since the release of Today!, but John Hurt sounds as fresh and distinctive as ever.”
AllMusic hails, “It is still difficult to believe that there is just one man playing on the seemingly effortless guitar work… A truly essential album of the folk revival, unrivaled in its beauty and warmth.”
