Grim got me started listening to Jimmie Rodgers and I've been exploring the early 20th century for other musicians like him. Although the style's different, Mississippi John Hurt (1893-1966) is a very worthwhile listen. Of course, I loved the blues long before I loved country, but Hurt is country blues, so there's something for all of us in his music.
He grew up the son of ex-slaves sharecropping the land they had been slaves on. In the 1920s he got a deal to record some of his music, but it didn't sell very well and then the Great Depression hit. He went back to sharecropping. In the 1950s the folk music revival hit and musicologists discovered his recordings. Eventually, one of these musicologists found him on his farm and he started touring and recording again in the early 1960s. He's known for old-time, folk, blues, spirituals, and country, though it seems he most often gets labeled country blues.
Here's a good spiritual:
Here's some live blues:
4 comments:
Lovely.
Good stuff. I think this is how Blues should be- kind of buoyant while talking about your troubles to help float you through. If you like this, you might like another Mississippian, Ted Hawkins. I was lucky enough to have caught him performing opening for the Knitters (X's folk alter ego) at the Whiskey on Sunset Blvd just a couple years before he died. Just him, a milk crate to sit on, and a guitar, and you've never seen a man command a room more fully with less.
My favorite song from him is his cover of Biloxi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtxt4CK4Ry8&list=RDjtxt4CK4Ry8&start_radio=1
He's also got a song celebrating the Constitution!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpbBWj17SUs&list=RDPpbBWj17SUs&start_radio=1
I remember Mississippi John Hurt from the '60s folk music boom.
Gringo
Thanks, douglas. I'll check him out.
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