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Researching the Music of Mississippi John Hurt |
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By Frank Delaney Producer, “The Backwater Blues Show” KPBX FM 91.1 Spokane Public Radio http://www.kpbx.org/ National Public Radio Network I was stationed in Pensacola,
Florida in 1963/64
at the U.S. Naval Communications Center Training Base. I was in the Base Marching Band and we
played local parades and went to 2 Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Around this
time many young white blues researchers, including the guitarist John Fahey
and friends, had been searching
for the old country Bluesmen who had recorded in the 1920’s; before the
Depression wiped out the record industry. Amazingly, many of them were
rediscovered, including the Memphis bluesman Furry Lewis, Skip James, Delta
blues players Bukka White and Son House, and Mississippi John Hurt. I heard other
southern guys in our band talking about these old players, but they were all
new to me, having been born in New York City and raised on listening to early
rock&roll music on the radio, and being one of millions of
teenagers who came home from school and watched the Dick Clark Show on
television. My limited idea of the blues was seeing Lloyd Price singing his
1959 hit “Stagolee”. My time
spent in the American South introduced me to acoustic folk music and blues,
where I learned to love the music, and I have been playing and researching it
ever since. There were two very interesting discoveries of the
old players. I
interviewed John Fahey back in the mid 1980’s, and he told me how he
had tried to find Bukka White by sending a post card from his college dorm to
“Bukka White, Old Blues Singer, Aberdeen, MS” based on one of
Bukka’s songs. It turned out that a relative of Bukka worked at the
post office and forwarded the card to Bukka, who was living in Memphis. Bukka
then contacted John, who then drove with a college friend to Memphis to meet
and do a field recording of him, and then headed back to college life. I have
a copy of a railroad ticket that John gave me when he paid for Bukka’s
first trip to perform in California. Mississippi John Hurt was
rediscovered by the lyrics to his song “Avalon Blues”, specifically his famous
lyrics “Avalon’s my home town, always on my mind”, and I
have heard different versions of this story. The most romantic version is
that a young college student was sitting in his dorm room listening to Avalon
Blues, and logically put together “Mississippi” John Hurt and the
line “Avalon’s my home town, always on my mind”, and
decided to drive down to Avalon, Mississipp to try
to find this old famous but long forgotten bluesman, and did exactly that. But the
version I would most believe was from an associate of his who said he had
been teaching a class on Folk Music, and had a couple students who were going
to drive down to a Mardi Gras. He suggested that they might go a little out
of their way and try to find the tiny hamlet of Avalon, and if they could,
they just might find someone who had known John Hurt. And lo and behold, they
rediscovered Mississippi John Hurt from his suggestion. While
producing The Backwater Blues Show for
KPBX Spokane Public Radio in the 1980’s, I did a radio series entitled
“The Early Bluesmen”, and I featured dozens of the country
bluesmen. I would interview
professional folk and blues players as they passed through town, and I
interviewed John Fahey ( who lived in Oregon at the time) Dave Van Ronk
– a New York City based folk/blues performer, and Elizabeth Cotten (Freight Train) who
had all actually known John Hurt. They all spoke very highly of him and his
guitar style, and told me many interesting tales of times together with him.
I also met other musicians who knew him; a friend who lived in Idaho who had
been a cook at a Greenwich Village Café in the 1960’s where John
played, and a Californian named Eric
Park, who had transcribed all of John’s songs way back in the
70’s, with intentions to release a guitar instruction book. I decided that I wanted to do a
NPR special on John Hurt’s Music. By that time I had all of his record albums, and I had
been playing guitar in his 3 finger style for many years, having taught
myself that unique style, as most of the other local musicians here in the
Northwest were Bluegrass flat pickers. John Fahey had given me a list of
names of people who I might contact regarding doing a special, and I called
many of them. This was well before the evolution of the World Wide Web, or
the internet as we know and use it today. I called
several of them and got more material for my special, and learned that John
had recorded his entire repertoire of songs for the Library of Congress, when
he was first rediscovered. What interested me most about this was that he
supposedly had recorded two spoken folk tales, and one was a story about
panthers in Mississippi. I have always been interested in the lives of the
bluesmen, and when you listen to their recordings you get their music, but
not much of the person. Even when you watch them on the many videos that are
now available, they are usually playing for young white college audiences,
and don’t say much between songs. So I was particularly interested in
hearing John tell these stories, which I felt would truly capture a more
human side of him. I
contacted the Library of Congress, Folk Music Division, and was told that I
would have to obtain the written permission of a Hurt family member to have these
recordings released to me. My
primary contact was a fellow who had actually been at John’s original recordings,
and who had become sort of an archivist there. I replied
immediately that I would try to do that, but somehow my letter was misfiled
there and it was over a year before I
received another letter from him apologizing for the delay, and he had included a list of addresses of known
family members, and one that leaped out at me was an Ella
Mae Green who lived in Tacoma, Washington. I have lived in Washington
state since the 1960’s, the far Northwestern corner of the country and
about as far away from Mississippi as you can get – and here’s
his grand daughter living in my state! I then
spent 2 days in Tacoma searching for her, but never found her. Later another
relative gave me his permission but by that time I was involved in other
projects – like starting my own business in 1987 - and it fell by the wayside. Then in
2004, almost 20 years later, I was emailed by a young fellow
interested in doing a statue of John at his gravesite, and somehow he had
found the blues pages on my website and saw that I was a John Hurt fan http://www.mtamicro.com/bluepage.html
. In our
correspondence he said that he was in contact with the Hurt family and that
when he mentioned my name to them, his
Grand daughter Mary Hurt-Wright had remembered me writing the letter to the
Hurt family requesting their permission to get the LOC recordings, and that
she wanted to talk to me. We started an email correspondence, and as a
result I volunteered to do this website for the Mississippi John Hurt
Foundation. I am extremely proud to work on this project as John Hurt was my
favorite of all the country bluesmen. In 2006 I decided to travel to
Avalon, Mississippi, the home of Mississippi John
Hurt, to see what
I had been dreaming about for over 40 years. I flew into Atlanta, Georgia and
met my old friend James Kraft, who lived here in the Northwest years ago and
we played blues around our area. James and I traveled to Mississippi, staying
in Greenwood, 12 miles South of Avalon. We
attended and played at the MJH Blues and Gospel Festivals, and shot video,
pictures, and conducted interviews with relatives and friends of John’s,
including his grand-daughter and the pastor of his church, and the curator of
his museum. We also drove to Greenville to see the Mississippi River, and
traveled the Blues Triangle via Highway 61. I was looking to see the people, places,
and things John mentioned in his songs.
I was searching for the ghost of Louis Collins ... As a
result of that trip and my research I’ve done on John’s music
over the past 40 years, I will be producing a special on him for National
Public Radio, through KPBX Spokane Public Radio, where I have been a music
producer since the early 1980’s. This special should air sometime this
year on your local NPR stations. I am also writing a book on John and his
music, and am being aided by many people I have met through the John Hurt
official website – www.msjohnhurtmuseum.com
. However,
I am also extremely disturbed to learn that of all the monies being created
by the worldwide sale of Mississippi John Hurt records, cd’s,
dvd’s, photographs and videos today – virtually
none of these
monies are going to his legitimate heirs, and specifically none to the
Mississippi John Hurt Foundation, which was created to accomplish the
Foundation objectives which are listed on the main page of this website. There’s
an old Mississippi Blues Expression – “The more things change,
the more they stay the same”. It seems that there are still a lot of
music industry people who pay lip service to the old bluesman; saying how
important they were and what a contribution they made to American music,
while at the same time continuing to rip them off – just as the record companies of the
1920’s did that exploited them - and pocketing the profits from sale of
their music. To Be Continued .... |
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