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What gives Hurt his uniqueness is the particular gentle and understated tone of his music, the peculiar blend of intricate guitar picking and quiet but insistent singing. Nor are the songs of John Hurt invested with the flavor of the medicine shows which one finds in the recordings of many of the older singers like Blind Blake, Jim Jackson, Frank Stokes, Furry Lewis. He does not seem to display the versatility or variety which characterizes the music of Mance Lipscomb or John Jackson, whose songs are infrequently their own, whose repertoire extends from hillbilly to jigs, reels, and blues, whose music ranges a whole gamut of moods, rhythms, and stylistic accompaniments.
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While Hurt sings a variety of songs (popular songs like “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” religious ballads, and traditional pieces) there is a uniformity of tone and accompaniment throughout. Yet neither is he strictly a songster, a member like Mance Lipscomb of a pre-blues generation. He is not, as has been frequently pointed out, strictly a blues singer.
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It’s difficult to know how to characterize the music of Mississippi John Hurt. The Hurt album is well recorded, its choice of songs a fair one, the effect pleasant if unexciting. Each has made use of his new audience to shape what seems to me a still-living career. Each has made a successful transition in responding to the circumstances of today. In both cases a great part, if not all, of their early talent has been retained. James Today! and Mississippi John Hurt Today! James and Hurt represent the best of the revival as it has been. Vanguard has done a great service by issuing its two rediscovery albums, Skip Whatever the drawbacks of this situation, we at last have a substantial body of work, and, what has been much more exciting, the opportunity to see men whom we have made our heroes. Reissues of their original recordings have multiplied beyond all expectation. Race music has been reversed, and old, frequently infirm Negroes-who would once have never ventured outside their black world, dependent on their music for a place within it-now perform for young, white, middle-class audiences exclusively. Since 1960, Estes, Bukka White, Son House, and Skip James have all been rediscovered and have appeared extensively. But for the public at large there were a couple of Blind Lemon Jefferson records, a side of Blind Willie Johnson, Charters’ collection The Country Blues-and then the folksingers. Clearly there were many collectors and individuals better informed as to the nature and history of the blues. When the Robert Johnson LP came out in 1961, the reviewer of The New Yorker compared Johnson unfavorably to Big Bill, whose professionalism was so much more evident, who possessed a greater sureness of pitch and smoothness of delivery. Lightnin’ Hopkins had one or two LPs out Big Bill Broonzy was a giant Leadbelly was unquestioned king. When l first started hearing blues, Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry were considered authentic purveyors of a tradition from which Josh White had only slightly lapsed. The blues was a period piece, a study of finite proportions no longer evolutionary in nature. Muddy Waters was decadent Howling Wolf was not “sincere” like the great country bluesmen. So far as we were told there was no blues today. Sleepy John Estes, Charley Patton, Bukka White, Blind Willie McTell, Peg Leg Howell-these were merely bizarre names from a distant past. There was no Skip James or Mississippi John Hurt. Yet when I discovered the blues, through a friend and through Samuel Charters’ book The Country Blues, Robert Johnson was for me just quoted lyrics and a name. “The blues is a lowdown shaking chill.” It meant a great deal to me personally and seemed to suggest multitudes of meaning.
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I have never known a more searing expression of emotion. The blues captured me initially by its directness of impact.
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This article originally appeared in Issue 7 of Crawdaddy in December, 1966.īlues fell, mama child, tore me all upside down