Friday, December 08, 2006

Mississippi John Hurt/Library of Congress Sessions

I recently picked up Mississippi John Hurt's album D.C. Blues Vol 2. It's an amazing set recorded for the library of congress soon after John was rediscovered. Apparently he went in and recorded every song he could remember.
Download - Mississippi John Hurt - Chicken Song The booklet for the discs is really interesting, it basically runs down the story of John's rediscovery. Everyone thought he was dead because after recording a few sides in 1928 he just disappeared. 35 years later a group of folk blues enthusiast noticed that on the song Avalon Blues he sang "Avalon's my hometown". After consulting a map they discovered that there was an Avalon Mississippi. One of the group was headed to New Orleans and decided to stop in Avalon to check things out and within 10 minutes had found John. The next three and a half years saw the reemergence of Mississippi John Hurt.
Download - Mississippi John Hurt - Avalon Blues
Download - Mississippi John Hurt - Stackolee(alternative)

3 comments:

OKRyan said...

you forgot to mention that with out MJH we wouldn't have Ben Harper

Flatlander said...

Does the disc include the studio recording of "Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor"?

I had a MJH album when I was in college and I loved that tune. However, I lost the album and have never been able to find the same one again. Then whenever I bought a disc of his with that song on it, it would be a live version and the live versions never had the same warmth as the studio version.

Flatlander said...

Nevermind. Posting that comment spurred me to check out iTunes for it and I found it among the different versions there.