Miississippi John Hurt unquestionably did not write this - it was rearranged by A.P. Carter with new lyrics from an original hymn by Ada Habershon, published in 1907. This track is from his Library of Congress recordings in 1963. The song has been recorded many hundreds of times in countless styles, mainly country, gospel and blues, and even in a reggae vein by the Dynamic Ken Parker (which I h...
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Mississippi John Hurt (c. 1892-1966) was one of a fairly small number of musicians born in the nineteenth century still active in the 1960s. This, as far as I can discern, is one of his later recordings when he was aged close to sixty. The song itself is perhaps even older - if the contest between man of immense strength and steam drill did take place, it was during the era of railroad expansio...
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"The Blues is the first music that was here. It was born with Eve and Adam in the Garden. It is the one that tells the story."-- John Lee HookerMississippi John HurtBorn July 3, 1893, Teoc (Carroll County) MSDied November 2, 1966, Grenada, MSJohn's father was Isom Hurt and his mother was Mary Jan McCain. John was one of 3 children. He and his wife, Jessie, had 14 children. (Source: Blues Who's ...
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According to the latest census, Carroll County, Mississippi is home to about ten thousand residents, less than half of the number that inhabited the county a century ago. By the standards of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries, it was a remote place off of the beaten path. J. S. McCain had a sizable plantation spread there, near the town of Teoc. It was from there that McCain'...
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Smithsonian Folkways, a label known for preserving obscure recordings of many of the heroes of traditional music, has released a beautiful (inside and out) box-set of music recorded by Friends of Old Time Music from 1961 to 1965 (with Doc Watson's first public concert and performances by Mother Maybelle Carter, The Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys, Mississippi John Hurt and...
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