Mississippi John Hurt: Today! (Bluesville Acoustic Sounds series) [CRAFT]

Why you'll love it

This Bluesville Acoustic Sounds edition comes on 180g vinyl in a tip-on jacket with an obi strip. In 2009 the Library of Congress added Today! to the National Recording Registry, one of 25 recordings chosen that year.

This edition

• Bluesville Acoustic Sounds series
• 180g vinyl
• Tip-on jacket
• Obi strip
• Stereo mix

About the album

Few careers have a second act quite like this one. John Hurt cut a handful of sides for Okeh in 1928, went home to Avalon, Mississippi, and farmed for 35 years, until two young folk enthusiasts tracked him down in 1963 using the name of his hometown in one of his old songs. Within months he was playing Newport to a crowd that greeted him as a living legend, and by 1966 he had a contract with Vanguard.

Today! was his first record for the label, and it is just one man, one voice and a guitar that sounds like two. His own songs sit beside old folk tunes: "Candy Man" rolls along with a sly grin, "Louis Collins" is a gentle ballad of loss, "Make Me A Pallet On The Floor" and "Corinna, Corinna" are as warm as a kitchen at suppertime, and "Beulah Land" closes the set as a quiet spiritual. AllMusic called it an essential album of the folk revival.

A young New York band liked "Coffee Blues" so much they named themselves after a line in it and became The Lovin' Spoonful. Hurt, by all accounts, took the attention in his stride, which is more than can be said for us when a fresh box of these turns up.

Also at Kops: more Mississippi John Hurt on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Vanguard / Craft Recordings (cat# CR00837), a reissue of the 1966 album.