[tenn_jim]

For you acoustic blues fans, the following site is a must-see! Free tabs, mp3 files, history on Mississippi John Hurt. Avalon Blues brought this artist to the forefront. Mississippi John Hurt wasn't really considered a blues man. He recorded a couple of songs in the 20s, then quietly retired to sharecropping in Avalon MS until the 60's. I believe it was Pete Seeger who found him. At any rate, he was brought back to the forefront and appeared at College Campus functions for three years until his death. Probably the words of his biggest hit, Avalon Blues tells it all:

"Avalon my home town, always on my mind,
Avalon my home town, always on my mind,
Pretty mama's in Avalon, want me there all the time"


John Hurt was an excellent fingerstyle guitarist. If you do nothing else on this link, check out that section. Keep in mind, John used open tunings.

http://www.msjohnhur....com/music.html

[dadfad]

Good, topic Jim. I myself would also call John Hurt more of a minstrel than a bluesman. His fingerstyle is perfectly executed, as clean as it gets. Most of his music is gentle and easy and as you mentioned he played in open-tunings as well as standard. I never met the man, but I wish I had. He sounds like he was a really nice guy as well as a fine guitarist. He and John Jackson were close friends. I think of him as maybe being a lot like John (J)... kind, wise, and a tremendous player. In my mind's eye when I think of John Hurt, I almost think of John Jackson wearing John Hurt's face with John Hurt's voice. Hard to explain. John (Jackson) also thought of himself as more of a minstrel than a "bluesman" because his repetoire and audiences was so variable. John used to like to tell the story of when he first met John Hurt.

They met playing the same Washington DC club in the early 60s folk revival. John (J) was playing on a Friday night and John (H) was going to play on Saturday. John (Jackson) said when John (Hurt) walked in and saw him for the first time, he (Jackson) was on stage doing "Candyman" which was one of John Hurt's old tunes. He (Jackson) said John (Hurt) walked up to him after the set, introduced himself, and said "When I walked in here I thought that was ME up there singin' Candyman" . And then John (Jackson) would always laugh after telling that story.

Many years ago I first went to try to find John Hurt's grave and pay my respects. Of course I started looking in Avalon. It was really hard to find, but I eventually found it (couple of stories in that particular "adventure" but I (for once!) won't get into it now). Once, a while back on my way to New Orleans, I happened to pay my respects to both John Hurt's and Robert Johnson's graves on the same day. John Hurt's resting place is on a quiet hillside in a piney-woods, shaded and peaceful, among his loved-ones. If you sit still at the foot of his grave, in the quietness of that secluded green place, sqirrels play and crickets chirp. Looking at his headstone, you see tarnished pennies and pocket change among the pine cones, left by those like me paying respects to a gentle minstrel. In stark contrast not many miles away is the grave of Robert Johnson, where the Mississippi sun beats down unmercifully on the burned dry earth of the barren graveyard, dust-devils blowing up from the road, as if to contrast the music put forth by two very different souls.

John Hurt was a master. His stuff, while simple, is still deceptively difficult to master because of the perfect (perfect) timing and flawless execution.

Good post, Jim.

[tenn_jim]

It was really hard to find, but I eventually found it (couple of stories in that particular "adventure" but I (for once!) won't get into it now).

Come on John, you know how much we enjoy your stories.

[dadfad]

Jim, you know it doesn't take a lot of arm-twisting to get me going! Okay...

Maybe thirty-five or so years ago, I'm driving down a two-lane between Grenada and Greenwood. I pass a little sign on the road that just says "Avalon" on it so I drive about another five miles and don't see a town yet so I stop at a feed-store on the side of the road and ask. The man says "You passed it. It ain't exactly what I'd call a town. Just a place on the road. There's a tractor-parts yard and a filling-station and that's about it." So back I go and I find it. Just a dirt cross-road. Now a few days earlier my "connection" back in Memphis told me he was pretty sure John was buried in Avalon, so I ask at the gas-station there if there was a church in Avalon (as usually church-yard cemeteries were often used). He say's no but there's an old colored cemetery up that road (nodding off toward a dirt road that U's off from the dirt-road crossing the blacktop road, heading up a hillside). "It's no more than five miles up there. It's just off the road. You probably can't see it unless you get out and look. I think it's on the down-hill side." he says. So I start off up that U-fork. Now this is the Spring rainey-season. Waaaaay up the hill is a lumber company (i saw a little sign when I started up the road.). Their trucks use that road. This road is at least six inches deep in red-mud (reminded me of Woodstock ) and there are ruts in the road six or eight deep on top of that. So I start up in my Chevy. Slooooowwwwly. (Very slowly!) Looking at my odometer, I figure there's no reason to even start looking for at least three miles. At the three mile mark, I get out and look around. On both sides of the road, just to be sure even though the guy said he thought it was on the down-hill side. Nope. So about every hundred yards I get out and look around. I can't pull off the road. There's nowhere to "pull off" too, and the ruts are so deep I couldn't if I wanted to. Just straight ahead is my only option. So I keep on going, stopping and getting out every little bit to look around. I'm red-mud up to my knees by now. My floor's a mess, my ass is red from a "slip" I took... I finally get to the six mile mark and give up. Now what? I can't turn around. No way to break out of the ruts and not enough room to turn around if I could (the narrow road is kind of worn down between two banks on the side about a foot or so high). So I start to back down the road those six miles. I'm already "bottomed out" in those ruts and the mud has been rubbing my underside most of the way up. At about -2 miles my exhaust system starts to go screacmmmrrchhhh... I back down a little further, and then walk back up the road a few feet and grab my muffler and throw it in the trunk. And then keep backing down the road.

Another four miles of "screacmmmrrchhhh"'s later, I get to where the U meets the regular dirt road. It's starting to get dark a little. I get out to look at the under-side of my car to see what's done and what's left. The rest of the exhaust system is bent back the wrong way (facing forward) and dragging, the manifold seems to be okay. I figure I'll let it cool down a few minutes and then try to climb under and tear the pipe loose. While I'm standing there, an old pick-up truck pulls up. A guy inside, looks about thirty-five-ish (older than me then) asks if he can help me. I ask if he knows where there's an old colored-cemetery nearby. He says "You lookin' for John Hurt's grave?" And I say "Yeah" He says "We get a few up here every once in awhile lookin' for it. Mostly hippies or musicians. (I believe that I probably in his opinion would qualify as one or both.) "It's about five or six miles up that road (I'd just come back down). Hop in, I'll show you exactly where it is." So I hopped in.

It didn't make me feel especially comfortable to see he had a .45 laying on his front seat. The movie "Easy Rider" was still a new release. About a year before I'd been picked up and given a "Yazoo County Hair-cut" and courtesy-lodgings for a couple of days by Yazoo's finest for "bein' up ta no good on the colored side of the tracks" (translation: visiting bluesman Jack Owens). But he seemed friendly enough and besides, now I was already "committed." So he heads off up that same road which is no problem in his truck. It's near dark now and I'm looking at that .45 on the seat and the sun almost gone ("...sun goin' down, black dark gonna catch me here..." ) in the middle of truly "nowhere" thinking this has the potential for a helluva... situation. He finally stops. About fifty yards past my last stop. He says "Right over there, off the road. Get out and go take a look." So I do, walking away from the truck behind me, wondering if it's possible to hit the ground faster than a travelling bullet after the sound of the shot. But there's no shot. Just a few feet off of the road I stumble into a little clearing and I can (by now in the dark) just make out the silhouettes of a few headstones. It's too dark to read them, so I go back to the truck and get in. He says "Find it?" and I say yes, thanks, and he says "If you come back up here yourself, there's a little turnaround and pass cut into the side of the road about another quarter mile up." which he has just reached and is turning around and heads back down the road. He starts to talk. "My grand-daddy owned most of the land around here. He was a school-teacher back when the Depression hit. He didn't have or make much money as a teacher, but after the Depression started he still had his job and that gave him more money than most around these parts. As a lot of folks land got taken for taxes they owed, he had enough money to buy it for the back-taxes and wound up buyin' a lot of property. He let the same folks as had it still live there and share-crop for him. And he was better than a lotta owners. He just charged 'em what it cost him until things got better. The Hurts were one of his families. Real nice family too. Honest and hard-workin'. Most of 'em are gone now. Miss Lucille, John's sister-in-law, still lives here 'bouts." We're down at the U-fork now, and he say's "I'll give you a real quick tour of Avalon, what there is of it!" and drives up the opposite leg of the U. A few hundred yards up he says "This here's my house" (a relatively modern modest country home) "Down this road's John's old place" and a minute later stops in front of an old beat-up abandoned shot-gun house facing the road and turns his spotlight on the place. He stops and I get out (so does he) and we walk up to it and look at it for a minute. It's almost falling down. The wooden steps are about gone. I pick up a little scrap of wood that has fallen off the front (now presently part of "The Dadfad Musical Rubble and Debris Collection" ) and stick it in my pocket. We get back in and he takes off again. He drives the small circle of the area with several homes around it. At the end, he points "This here's Miss Lucille's place. ("L. Hurt" on the mailbox in front) She's awful old. My grandaddy asked us that we keep lookin' after her before he died. She's a kind old soul. She still walks around every morning with a rock in her hand, knockin' on fence-posts to keep 'em straight. She wants to "earn her keep" and so we let her think she does, and pay her a little. Grand-daddy left us a little money to provide for her with as long as she lives. If you want, come back tomorrow. I'll take you up and introduce you to her. She'd like it. She's met a couple of Yankees like you (oops! Sorry... haha...) who'd come down to find Mister John's grave. She enjoys it."

And so I said I probably would. I told him my muffler system was gone and asked where was the closest place I could get a room. He said if I wanted to sleep in my car I could pull it up in his property. I said how close is the nearest cheap place to stay with a garage nearby because I was gonna need some work on my car anyway and might as well get an early start on it. He said I'd best head towards Grenada (north), several places to stay on the way with service-stations nearby, and besides the Greenwood (south) police were bad about cars with plates from up-north, especially loud ones. And so I thanked him again. Headed north, found a cheap motel right next to a gas station just before Grenada. The next morning at the gas station they "hooked me up" cheap with metal flexible-tubing and a bunch of clamps and got my car quiet again (better than it was before). I went back to Avalon. I drove perfectly up that hill-side. My bottom still rubbed a little but not as bad as before since everything was now clamped up tight. I got out with my guitar and went exactly to the right place (barely getting muddy at all). I found his grave easily and sat in the shade at the foot of it and played a couple of his tunes ("Let the Mermaids Play With Me" was one of them, I don't remember the other) and tossed the change from my pocket on his headstone... the honor one gives to a dead minstrel... and left. I found the turnaround up the road a little farther and got back down the hillside just fine. I decided to take him up on that introduction to Miss Lucille. I found his house easily (the only fairly modern one on the little circular road). I had a cup of coffee and some biscuits and gravy with him and his wife and then followed him with my car in his truck to her house. We went up to the door and he tipped his hat when she answered. He introduced me as "another admirer of your brother-in-law come to visit" and I thanked him again as he left. She invited me inside her tiny little house (if you stood in the middle of it you could almost touch either wall if you stretched out your arms straight). There was another older Black man there sitting there on an old couch. She introduced him to me as a neighbor from across the road. She insisted I let her make me a fresh pot of coffee. (It was chicory, as she probably couldn't afford real coffee. My first "experience" with chicory having been a year or so earlier with my breakfast-grits at my "courtesy lodging" provided by the Yazoo police.) We talked... about John, the weather, what a turd Nixon was, things in general. When I was leaving I tried to diplomatically leave her a little money. I didn't have much, but it looked like she had a lot less. I asked if she'd mind if I left a few dollars with her to maybe pay for a few flowers for her to put on John's and her husband's grave from time to time as a token of my respect for his music. She wouldn't hear of it, she took care of them with wild-flowers and flowers from her garden. I asked if it might be possible to maybe send her a little gift that my wife might put together around Christmas for her (actually it was my live-in girl-friend, but this being that day and time and place, I didn't wanna press the "new morality" too much! ) And so she said that would be fine. She wrote her name on a piece of paper. It took her several minutes to do it, but her hand-writing was beautiful (again, now part of the "Dadfad Collection"). Almost like caligraphy. (My great-grandmother's handwriting was the same way.) That Chrismas I sent her a package full of things that I thought might be considered a "luxury" to someone on a very limited income. Coffee, tea, canned fruits and meats, candies, a knitted comforter... things like that. I recieved a thank you note in return. I visited her and John's grave once a few years later. I sent Christmas packages for a couple of more years until one came back marked "Deceased" above the name. I have since then visted John's grave several times. Hers is now in the same tiny cemetery.


And that's my story, Jim. And quite a long-winded one I'm afraid. Sorry! (But you asked for it!)

And now, back to work (I actually do a little bit around here from time to time! I figure that post cost my company a couple of hundred dollars! Haha!) (The original owner's kid makes enough money anyway!) (More than he deserves! )

Later.

[tenn_jim]

John,

I got chill bumps reading that story. You have described that part of Mississippi to a "T". Having grown up during those days of sharecropping, I can relate to how they took care of those loyal sharecroppers. My Granddaddy was the same way. I remember one late autumn afternoon in 1945 when this family drove up in an old beat up car. The oldest man shuffled up to my Granddaddy who was sitting on the porch, never raising his eyes from the ground, and ask if his family could move into an old shotgun shack that was down behind the barn. Granddaddy said, of course you can, and I'll let you sharecrop the 40 acre field behind the house...50/50. That family of 8 lived in that 3 room shack until my Granddaddy died twenty years later. I spent many cold day around the wood stove in the middle of that house. The family may have been poor but they worked and made a living sharecropping.

My late father-in-law worked for the Illinois Central during the depression. He built the tracks along the levee from Memphis (actually Walls MS) to Greenwood. He remembered an old "darkie" who was on the tie gang and who would play his guitar every night. He said the other people called him John. He said John wouldn't drink with the others. He was a kind of stand-offish man as my Father-In-Law remembered. Actually, they got paid a pretty good wage for those days. I understand John left the Illinois Central after one summer to go back and take care of his family in Avalon.

Anyway, thanks for that great story. I know that unless you've beenup to the running boards in that red Mississippi Clay, you can't really appreciate the depth of that story.

This post has been edited by tenn_jim: 07 December 2006 - 10:36 AM

[dadfad]

Jim, it was a very different time and place back then. I caught the very tail-end of it before things started changing rapidly. And like every time and place, it had it's bad as well as its good. You make it through the bad and look back fondly on the good. It's good to have a guy here old enough to remember and understand some of those times.

And it sounds like your father-in-law likely heard a live performance of a "Spike Driver's Blues."

[tenn_jim]

And it sounds like your father-in-law likely heard a live performance of a "Spike Driver's Blues."

He probably did.

Again thanks for the story.

[The_buffalo]

Actually, John Hurt was "found" in 1963 by Tom Hoskins, using the line "Avalon's my home town...", and convinced John to go back with him & do some recording. John had no desire to give up sharecropping for a career in music, but was afraid that if he refused, Hoskins (who he thought was working for the government) would make him go anyway.

By the way, John, are you sure you don't want to write a book?

[Crawdaddy]

First up to both Jim and John, the stories you guys relate are priceless. Its such an education reading of the experiences you've had and hats off to you guys for passing it on. I've always had an affinity with acoustic blues but growing up and living on the other side of the world I couldn't claim any good fortune from learning about how to play it from anybody who had the depth of understanding and feeling of it that you guys have learned from. I guess its one of those things - you had to be there at the time. I only recently got turned on to John Hurt in a small way because I managed to get a hold of a copy of some film from a program called American Folk Blues Festival, I think its from the mid sixties - round about the time i was born. Anyway amoungst others playing is John Hurt and I have to agree with you John that his timing and clean picking were spot on.
Thanks for the pointer in the direction of the website Jim, every little avenue of learning thats opened up is much appreciated.

[guitarguy33]

Hurt has a song, Frankie, the first time I heard it I got chills