Mississippi John Hurt
John Hurt was born in 1893 in Teoc, Mississippi, and raised in the small hill-country hamlet of Avalon, teaching himself guitar at nine by secretly practicing on a boarder's instrument. He worked as a farmhand and played parties and square dances locally, absorbing blues, rags, spirituals, and the songster repertoire rather than any single style, until a 1928 Okeh session (steered his way after a fiddling contest) produced a handful of singles that sold modestly and then vanished. Rediscovered in 1963 after a musicologist traced 'Avalon Blues' back to his hometown, Hurt spent his last three years playing festivals and coffeehouses for the folk revival, his gentle, unhurried fingerpicking becoming a foundational text for a new generation of acoustic guitarists.
we haven’t charted Mississippi John Hurt yet
this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.