From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Did You Hear John Hurt?

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mississippi John Hurt performing.

CD Review

The Best Of Mississippi Blues, various artists, Fuel Records, 2000

I remember my reaction the first time my old friend met in the summer of love, 1967, Peter Paul Markin asked me if I had heard John Hurt. It was simply. Who? Or my answer was simply but the two hour (maybe more but I am giving old Pee-Pee the benefit of the doubt) explanation about the basics of the blues, country version, was anything but simple. As so that night that, maybe late August, 1967, summer of love night I got “religion.” Got it big time as Pee-Pee (then going under the moniker of Be-Bop Benny, by the way) rolled out record after record, all scratchy from abuse, or probably over- playing of Mississippi John Hurt stuff like Creole Belle, Spoonful, Albert and Frankie, his version of Stag-o-lee and so on. I was hooked.

See growing up in Olde Saco, away from the Pee-Pee folk-drenched Cambridge folk revival minute that featured “discovery” of all these roots Mississippi country from hunger blues players, my thing was maybe some Beatles, some serious Stones, and some vanilla pop stuff that would make you weep, guys like Bobby Darren or gals like Brenda Lee (and you had better have known her stuff if you wanted any chance at that last dance school dance she you had been eyeing all night). Goof stuff when it came right down to it singing about how some Johnny or Janie got away in the love game and life was not going to be the same, boohoo.

Put that up against the lyrics theses blues guys from hunger sang about, hard days under sweating suns on some cotton fields plantation trying to put something over on the captain (the boss man), some two-timing woman who ran off with your used-to-be best friend who you will surely cut if she ever comes back, some hard-drinking, hard –loving Saturday juke joint nights sweating out before early Sunday morning and revival, church version, cutting up some guy because he looked twice, hell, maybe only once at your best gal, the usual bust-up prison time for some Podunk crime, and best of all making that deal with the devil to get out from under that harping woman, that damn boss, that demon rotgut whiskey, and that eyeball looking guy.

So the next time that somebody asks you did you hear John Hurt you will know where to point him or her.