Mississippi John Hurt

The simple, honest and unassuming life that emerges from the personal story of Mississippi John Hurt (1892-1966) unfolds for the most part in the remote countryside along the Mississippi River, in the US state of the same name. He's rightly counted among the greats of country blues, an artist whose music inspired, among others, Bob Dylan, yet who was at the same time a sharecropper for almost his entire life. The plain, humble kindness and unaffected gentleness that come through in the face and manner of this esteemed guitarist have also coexisted with a vast following of fans, built up both in the years leading up to his death and in those following it.

Self-taught on acoustic guitar, which he played with a splendid fingerpicking technique, he developed a wholly original style from adolescence onward, precisely because it grew out of a relative isolation that was as much geographic as musical and cultural. Like many bluesmen of the 1920s, he started out playing at country dances and cheap roadhouses, before being noticed by the right person and thus gaining access to studios first in Memphis and then in New York.

The year is 1928, and from the thirteen seminal tracks recorded that year came a handful of singles that failed to make any significant commercial impact. The arrival of the Great Depression in 1929 swept away John Hurt's last ambitions, and he went back to working the fields in Mississippi. Thirty-five years of hard labor followed, ending in 1963, when he was rediscovered amid the folk and blues revival taking hold in the United States and England. Barely three more years of important recordings led him to a peaceful death, free of regret, coming right after the arrival of public recognition he had richly earned.

In this review we'll be looking at the thirteen tracks Hurt put to vinyl in 1928 (circulated from the early 1970s onward in various vinyl and CD editions), though we also strongly recommend listening to the material he recorded between 1963 and '66 following his rediscovery.

"1928 Sessions" is an album with rather good sound quality for something recorded roughly a hundred years ago, made up of all the compositions the bluesman recorded during the first phase of his professional career, which took place, precisely, in the months of February and December 1928. Most of them were released at the time as 78 rpm singles, while one ("Big Leg Blues") sat unused in the archives. Besides the thirteen tracks presented here, the musician recorded a few other tracks during that year's two sessions which have unfortunately been lost over the decades.

Mississippi John Hurt's guitar style stands as an anomaly compared to that of the other Delta bluesmen, leaning instead toward the more nimble, melodic forms that characterize East Coast blues (also known as Piedmont blues). What gives substance to this exception is the influence ragtime exerted on Hurt's acoustic guitar playing — a lively piano-based entertainment music, hugely important from a musical-historical standpoint and enormously popular in the United States between the late 1800s and early 1900s.

This genre's influence on Hurt's blues can be traced in two elements: the syncopated rhythm often taken on by his guitar accompaniments, and the recurring thumb strikes on the last two strings (the lowest-pitched ones) to mark the beat of the songs (just as the left hand does on piano in ragtime).

In addition to ragtime, John Hurt's intricate guitar lines are also marked by echoes of the old folk tunes that spread through the American South between the second half of the 1800s and the early 1900s. From this traditional music (played on fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar, etc.) Hurt draws the liveliness of its rhythmic-melodic figures and the dynamic use of the first two strings of his instrument (the highest-pitched ones).

Hurt's songs thus take shape as an extremely original blues, technically very advanced and light of touch, comparable in certain respects to that of Mance Lipscomb.

Hurt's singing, too, is an essential part of his art, one that sets him clearly apart from other bluesmen, both his contemporaries and those of later generations. His vocal timbre is thin and soft, gifted with an expressiveness that's hard to match, at once moving and serene. Hurt's voice also creates a deep intimacy with the listener, touching the heart with its melancholy sweetness.

Slightly nasal, suffused with an eloquent, passionate sensitivity and tinged with a faintly wistful note, Hurt's singing combines with his skillful fingerpicking to produce a country blues shot through with traditional folk.

"Stack O' Lee Blues", "Spike Driver Blues", "Frankie And Johnny" and "Candy Man" are perfect examples of this, their verses carried along by distant melodies, flowing and captivating, resolving into refrains where the blues becomes recognizable again as a poetic allusion. Here we're in the realm of folk blues, where an atmosphere at once intense and delicate prevails, built on delightful melodies and fine acoustic guitar work, in contrast to the darker, sharper tones typical of country blues. Hurt, moreover, should be regarded as one of the greatest exponents in the history of the crossover between folk and blues, alongside, among others, Mance Lipscomb, Leadbelly and Henry Thomas.

The beautiful, poignant “Louis Collins,” along with “Nobody’s Dirty Business,” make the influence of traditional folk on Mississippi John Hurt's songwriting even more apparent. Two tracks that reveal musical structures rooted in the folk memory of the storytellers active in the American South at the start of the 20th century, in which the blues is only hinted at in the background, never explicitly revealed.

Beyond the tracks just mentioned, the collection also includes five blues numbers with a classic structure, but delivered with imaginative and thoroughly personal touches. “Avalon Blues,” “Big Leg Blues,” “I Got The Blues” and “Blue Harvest Blues” (in order of quality) are gripping, heartfelt country blues, even though Hurt paints them in soft, gentle tones.

Throughout these songs, the compelling, syncopated rhythm of the guitar strings grabs the listener's attention, laying down short, elegant melodic phrases with a flavor unusual for Mississippi blues. They underpin the bluesman's evocative voice, gently reflective as it reworks — softening with taste and feeling — the dense, resolute singing style usually associated with delta blues.

Special mention goes to “Ain’t No Telling” (which draws on the traditional “Make Me A Pallet On The Floor”), the fifth blues track on the record and the standout episode of these recordings. In it, Hurt inserts an exquisite melodic variation at the end of the verse (for instance, from 0:15 to 0:20, though it recurs often), a mark of this great Mississippi bluesman's superb compositional skill.

Rounding out the thirteen tracks are two gospel numbers (“Blessed Be The Name” and “Praying On The Old Camp Ground”), songs that reflected Hurt's sincere religiosity and were meant to draw in an audience beyond blues listeners. The practice of making room for a gospel number or two in a live or studio repertoire was not uncommon among bluesmen of the 1920s, and here we get two simple examples that are almost identical to each other. Both drawing on Christian hymns that predate gospel itself, they lean on the palpable feeling and touching emotion that come through in the voice. Even so, they don't feel entirely convincing, especially when compared to similar performances by other country blues artists of the era.

The lyrics of the thirteen tracks deal mainly with jealousy, romantic betrayal and carnal passion, murder and poverty, alongside portraits of colorful figures such as famous criminals and miners. Words that vividly evoke the social context of African Americans in the American South in the early 1900s. Brief vignettes of tradition, told spontaneously through an effective, direct vernacular.

The only track that departs from this category is “Avalon Blues,” written in New York during the second round of recording sessions in 1928, born out of Hurt's homesickness at being far from home at the time (located, indeed, near the town of Avalon, Mississippi). These lyrics became famous because they made it possible to track down the bluesman more than thirty years later, and consequently enabled his artistic rediscovery.

The thirteen songs recorded in 1928 by Mississippi John Hurt (all around three minutes long) remain an immensely important musical legacy, as significant for the development of folk blues as, later on, for contemporary singer-songwriting. A moving collection that carries considerable weight both as an unusual and wonderful testament to American traditional music in general and blues in particular, and as a highly useful tool for understanding the development of modern music in the 20th century.

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24/03/2026