You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley - Mississippi John Hurt - Live

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- John Smith Hurt (1893 – 1966), better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer & guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Miss., Hurt taught himself to play the guitar around the age of nine. He worked as a sharecropper & began playing at dances & parties, singing to a melodious fingerpicked accompaniment. His first recordings, made for Okeh Records in 1928, were commercial failures, & he continued to work as a farmer. Dick Spottswood & Tom Hoskins, a blues enthusiast, located Hurt in 1963 & persuaded him to move to Wash., D.C.

Hurt was recorded by the Library of Congress in 1964. This helped further the American folk music revival, which led to the rediscovery of many other bluesmen of Hurt's era. He performed on the university & coffeehouse concert circuit with other Delta blues musicians who were brought out of retirement. Hurt also recorded albums for Vanguard Records. He returned to Miss., where he died, in Grenada, in 1966, aged about 73.

Material recorded by him has been re-released by many record labels. Hurt's songs have been recorded by Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Jerry Garcia, Beck, Doc Watson, John McCutcheon, Taj Mahal, Bruce Cockburn, David Johansen, Bill Morrissey, Gillian Welch, Josh Ritter, Chris Smither, Guthrie Thomas, Parsonsfield, & Rory Block... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_John_Hurt



- Mississippi John Hurt Museum, in Avalon, Mississippi.