Video: Mississippi John Hurt | Spike Driver’s Blues

Running time: 5 minutes

Mississippi John Hurt (1893-1966) was an American country blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist born in Mississippi. His parents had both been slaves and as was common after the Civil War, they continued working on the same plantation, now as sharecroppers, for the same master. John taught himself to play guitar at the age of nine. To earn extra money, his mother took in boarders. One of them, William Henry Carson, who played a guitar and was a friend of John’s mother, often stayed at the Hurt home while courting a woman who lived nearby. When no one was around, John would play Carson’s guitar. As a youth, he played old-time music for friends and at dances or at the local general store. His syncopated playing style was ideal for dancing. He worked as a farmhand and sharecropper, sometimes working for the railroad into the 1920s. On occasion, a medicine show came through the area. Hurt recalled that one wanted to hire him: “One of them wanted me, but I said no because I just never wanted to get away from home.”

In 1952, musicologist Harry Smith included John’s version of “Frankie and Johnny” and “Spike Driver Blues” in his seminal collection The Anthology of American Folk Music. When a copy of his “Avalon Blues” was discovered in 1963, it led musicologist Dick Spottswood to locate Avalon, Mississippi on a map and ask his friend, Tom Hoskins, who was traveling that way, to enquire after Hurt.

Early in 1963 Hurt recorded an album, Folk Songs and Blues, that was released in August 1963 through Piedmont Records. For three years, Hurt performed extensively at colleges, concert halls, and coffeehouses, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, on Pete Seeger’s public tv show, Rainbow Quest alongside Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Hedy West and had a write up in Time magazine. Much of his repertoire was also recorded for the Library of Congress. His fans particularly liked the blues ballad “Spike Driver Blues” which was a variant of “John Henry”. Hurt’s influence spanned several music genres including blues, spirituals, country, bluegrass, folk, and rock and roll. A soft-spoken man, his nature reflected his work which was a mellow mix of country, blues, and old-time music. They’ve been covered by Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Jerry Garcia, Beck, Doc Watson, John McCutcheon, Taj Mahal, and The Be Good Tanyas among others.

Mississippi John Hurt used a syncopated finger picking style of guitar playing that he taught himself. According to the music critic Robert Christgau, “No one else has talked the blues with such delicacy or restraint.” [adapted from Wiki]