Week 49: Avalon Blues



Mississippi John Hurt

The Man

Mississippi John Hurt is a legendary bluesman who was rediscovered in the blues revival of the 1960s. John’s music was very different from other bluesmen of his time, but remains one of the most popular and influential blues music of all time. His guitar technique and soothing vocal style have made him an immortal of the blues.

He was born as John Smith Hurt on either March 8, 1892 or July 3, 1893 in the very small Mississippi Delta community of Teoc in Carroll County. His parents were Mae Jane Smith and Paul Hurt, slaves freed by emancipation. John was the 8th of 10 children and when he was a toddler the family moved to the nearby small village of Avalon, population fewer than 100.

In Avalon John attended school until the fourth grade, learning to read and write, then he started working as a farm hand for a neighbour, Felix Healey, sitting on the back of a mule and ploughing fields. When he was 9 a guitar player by the name of William Henry Carson began dating his school teacher and would stay overnight in the Hurt household. John was infatuated with Carson’s guitar: “I wasn’t allowed to bother Mr. Carson’s guitar. I would wait until he feel asleep at my house, then I would slip his guitar into my room and try to play”. He secretly taught himself ragtimey songs like ‘Hop Joint’. His mother heard him and mistook his playing for Carson’s. When she realised that he had a natural ear for music, she scraped together the grand total of $1.50 and bought him his own guitar – a black coloured acoustic that he named “Black Annie”.

Avalon was a neighbourly small community of white and coloured folk and was largely free from the racial issues that plagued the southern towns and cities in the years after slavery. John learnt music in this environment, playing for small parties, fish fries and at church. He was entirely self-taught, and unlike most other players from the delta area, he developed an intricate finger picking style and sang in a quiet, conversational style formed by playing to small groups in intimate settings. He was comfortable in life and safe where he was living – he didn’t holler or stomp or cry the blues, nor did he feel the need to get on the road to seek a better life.

His father passed away when John was in his early teens, and John hired himself to Avalon’s farming community as a field hand raising cotton, potatoes and corn. In 1915 he left Avalon for the first time to work on the Illinois Central railroad. He was in a work gang, and they sang work songs as they laboured. He learnt classics like ‘John Henry’ and Casey Jones’ and picked up harmonic ideas. After 5 months he was back in Avalon, helping his mother. In 1916 he married Gertrude Hoskins and had two children over the next 5 years. Around this time a travelling minstrel show asked him to go on tour with them “but I said no because I just never wanted to get away from home”. He and Gertrude separated not long after, and John later married Jessie Lee Cole in 1927, who fathered him another child.

Carroll County had a few other notable musicians, including the white fiddle and guitar duo of Willie Narmour and Shellie Smith who would tour the country playing ragtime and old style country music. Willie Narmour lived in Avalon was good friends with John and in 1923 (illustrating the lack of racial tensions in Avalon) John began to accompany Narmour when Smith was unavailable, playing square dance music. In 1928 Willie Narmour won a fiddling contest where the first prize was a recording session with Okeh records. Okeh producer T.J. Rockwell came to Avalon to take Narmour to the mobile recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee, and asked about any other local musicians worth hearing.

Narmour took Rockwell to John’s shack, and John played a rendition of ‘Monday Morning Blues’. This impromptu performance impressed Rockwell so much that he invited John to record with Okeh. On February 14, 1928, John travelled to Memphis and recorded 8 tracks, of which just 2 were released – “Frankie” with “Nobody’s Dirty Business” as the B side. Rockwell added “Mississippi” to the front of John’s name as a marketing gimmick. The record wasn’t a huge success, but it did sell enough to ensure a second recording session in December of the same year.

That session was recorded in New York City over the Christmas period, John was 35 or 36 and it was his third trip outside of Avalon. He met the famous Lonnie Johnson and jammed with him a few time, and he also briefly met the legendary Bessie Smith. He recorded on the 21st and the 28th of December, 1928, and the tracks include the definitive version of “Stack-O-Lee Blues”, “Candy Man Blues”, “Spike Driver Blues” (learned from his rail road days), the ode to his home “Avalon Blues” and murder Ballads like “Louis Collins”- He recorded 12 tracks, and 10 were released on five 78s. Unfortunately, the singles were not successful – it has been speculated that John’s softer, conversational style of singing wasn’t as popular as the raw, dirtier blues coming out of other areas of the Mississippi Delta, and Okeh only promoted the discs as race records, limiting the potential audience.

The Great Depression started to be felt soon after, and opportunities were scarce for musicians. After his week in New York, John went back to Avalon and back to share cropping. He was looking after the two children from his first marriage and the third from his second, and worked hard to provide for them. In addition to his field labour, he worked for the Works Progress Administration, part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, felling trees, building dams and levelling gravel roads, he also had a brief stint in a factory in Jacksonville, an hour away from Avalon. Just after the Second World War, John and his family moved into a three bedroom house on a farmer’s land in Avalon, tending the farmer’s cows in addition to his usual work.

In 1952 Folkways records included two of John’s 1928 recordings in their Anthology of American Folk Music series. Another track was released on an anthology of Mississippi Blues in 1963. This lead to a new audience for John’s music, a mainly white and educated audience seeking out the roots of folk and blues music performed by assumed to be long dead black artists. Two of these new fans were Dick Spottswood and his friend Tom Hoskins. They were captivated by John’s music, and researched as much as they could about him, which wasn’t very much. BY pure chance Dick found a tiny town named “Avalon” in an atlas published in 1878, and on a whim, and taking a cue from the lyrics on the 1928 recording of “Avalon Blues” where John sings “Avalon, my hometown, always on my mind”, Tom drove from New York to rural Mississippi to see what he could find about John’s life.

Arriving in the tiny town of Avalon in early 1963, 35 years after the songs were recorded, Tom asked men sitting outside the general store if anyone knew anything about John Hurt’s life. They told him to drive up the road about a mile, and stop at the third post box on the left. Tom did so, and found Mississippi John Hurt on the back of a tractor, ploughing the fields just as he had on the back of that mule 50 years earlier. Tom had a guitar with him and with a little encouragement, John showed that he still had the guitar skills and voice that had captivated a new audience.

Dick and Tom took John to Washington DC in March 1963, were he recorded 39 tracks, mainly new versions of his 1928 recordings, but including new songs like “Richland Woman Blues”. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his pocket knife to use as a slide on some of them. The record was titled “Mississippi John Hurt Folk Songs and Blues” and was an immediate success spearheading the Blues Revival. In July that year, aged 71, he played his first concert in over 30 years in front of 18,000 people at the Newport Folk Festival. He was a massive success, anD after the show he went straight back to Avalon to pick cotton for around $5 a day.

More concert appearances followed that year and the next, and another solo album was released in 1964 and he was included in albums recorded at the Newport Folk Festival. John was suddenly a massive commercial success, playing a residency in a coffee house for $200 a week, and earning more money he’d seen in his life through royalties. He bought a big house in Grenada, just 17 miles from Avalon. Another album followed in 1966 and was another success, and in February that year he recorded his final session in New York.

He returned to his house in Granada, and died peacefully in his sleep on November 2nd, 1966. Mississippi John Hurt was a gentle, peaceful man who accepted what came his way with calmness. He is unlike most other bluesmen of his time, preferring a simple life at home rather than the rough and tumble life out on the road. When asked about his rediscovery and if he knew how good his music was, he replied “Yeah… I know it… and I been knowin’ it, but I never dreamed things would’ve turned out like they have…never dreamed it.” Mississippi John Hurt is buried just a few miles outside of Avalon.



The Song

Avalon Blues is John Hurt’s ode to his home town, reportedly written the first morning he set foot in New York in December 1928, and recorded the next day. It is a great example of John’s intricate finger picking arrangements.

It is played in the key of E, in standard tuning. It is based on a 12 bar blues, but John is very liberal with his bars, so it works out to be closer to 20 or 22 bars – and varies with every repetition.

The feature of the tune is the rollicking main “riff” of the piece, an extended arppregiation of an E chord, which adds one extra note to the chord. It’s simple to play on paper, but extremely difficult to play in time at the break neck speed Johns build up to by the end of the song. He plays it for what seems as twice as long as he needs, and he adds two beats (which I’ve tabbed out as a half bar) to set up the riff in the verse. Over the song he adds more drive to the alternating thumb beats, picking single strings in the intro to hammered on double stops in the verses that add great drive to the song – the classic boom – *chick* of the piedmont style of finger picking. John was a two finger man, using his index and middle fingers only to pick – this may be easier than the usually 3 finger style. He also anchored both his ring and little finger on the fret board – a reminder that a perfect technique has very little to do with the quality of music that can be produced.

When he sings of the E he moves to a different voicing of the E chords and plays very quietly, to suit his soft voice. The A and B sections seem shorter than they should be due to the extended E riff, and John plays them with quite a bit of delicacy – a slight calm before the storm of the main riff hits again. Over the B chord he slides up into a C7, and the A is played as a 7th on the 5th fret, a voicing Robert Johnson would later use to great effect.

John plays two solos and an outro that are all very similar. Interestingly he uses an A bass note at the start of the solos, and E in the outro. Practice the song slowly and build up speed as you get comfortable with it. Like with any John Hurt song, the guy is so good that after you learn the song you have to learn to play it with the life that he could give it.



The Lyrics

E Got to New York this mornin', just about half-past nine A7 E Got to New York this mornin', just about half-past nine B C7 E Hollerin' one mornin' in Avalon, couldn't hardly keep from cryin' Avalon, my hometown, always on my mind Avalon, my hometown, always on my mind Pretty mama's in Avalon, want me there all the time When the train left Avalon, throwin' kisses and wavin' at me When the train left Avalon, throwin' kisses and wavin' at me Says, "Come back, daddy, stay right here with me" Avalon's a small town, have no great big range Avalon's a small town, have no great big range Pretty mama's in Avalon, they sure will spend your change New York's a good town but it's not for mine New York's a good town but it's not for mine Goin' back to Avalon, near where I have a pretty mama all the time

The Intro



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The Progression



Verse 1

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The First Solo



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The Second Solo



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The Outro



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