Del.icio.usMississippi John Hurt
Fact Sheet
| Occupation | Singer, Guitarist |
| Musical genre: | Blues |
| Birthday | 3 July 1893 |
| Sign | Cancer |
| Birthplace | Mississippi, USA |
| Date of death | November 2, 1966 (age 73) |
Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, he learnt to play guitar at age 10, and spent much of his youth playing old time music for friends and dances. Earning a living as a farm hand, he continued in this vein until into the 1920s, when in 1923 he often partnered with the fiddle player Willie Narmour (Carroll County Blues) as a substitute for his regular partner Shell Smith. In 1928, Narmour won a fiddle contest, the first place prize was a chance to record for OKeh Records (which went out of business during the depresssion). Narmour recommended John Hurt to producer, Tommy Rockwell of [OKeh Records. After auditioning "Monday Morning Blues" at his home, he took part in two recording sessions, in Memphis and New York City (See Discography below). The "Mississippi" tag was added by OKeh as a sales gimmick. After the commercial failure of the resulting disc and the depression, Hurt returned to Avalon and obscurity working as a sharecropper and playing local parties and dances.
In 1963, however, a folk musicologist named Tom Hoskins, inspired by the recordings, was able to locate John Hurt near Avalon, Mississippi. With his guitar playing skills still intact, Hoskins encouraged Hurt to move to Washington, DC and begin performing on a wider stage. Whereas his first releases had coincided with the Great Depression, his new career could hardly have been better timed. A stellar performance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival saw his star rise amongst the new "folk revival" audience, and before his death in 1966 he played extensively in colleges, concert halls, coffee houses, the Johnny Carson Tonight Show as well as recording three further albums for Vanguard Records. John Hurt's influence spans several music genres including blues, country, bluegrass, folk and contemporary rock and roll. A soft-spoken man, his nature was reflected in the work, which remained a mellow mix of country, blues and old time music to the end.
Article licensed under the GNU FDL. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Mississippi John Hurt"