The late American country blues singer and guitarist John Smith Hurt who is better known as Mississippi John Hurt was born March 8, 1892, in Teoc, Mississippi, United States. Hurt had taught himself to play the guitar around the age of nine. His strings were made by the early 20th-century company Emory and also belonged to Hoskins. Additional footage from the festival shows Hurt playing “Casey Jones” on a Harmony Sovereign 12-string. He worked as a sharecropper and began playing at dances and parties, singing to a melodious fingerpicked accompaniment. His first recordings, made for Okeh Records in 1928, were commercial failures, and he continued to work as a farmer.
What tuning did Mississippi John Hurt use?
Records had it that, Hurt uses both standard and alternate tunings, like open G and D, and often added melodic-interest texture to a repeating tonic-and-fifth bass line by throwing in a third or even a sixth (as in “Spike Driver Blues”). He sometimes used a pedal tone—a single low note through consecutive chords, as an A on the A and D chords in “Monday Morning Blues,” “Coffee Blues” and “Casey Jones.”
Open G tuning which is also known as Spanish tuning, has been used by many blues players aside from the famous Mississippi John Hurt. Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones have often played using the same tune.
Spanish Tuning is a general name for all open tunings that emerge from tuning the guitar as if you were fretting an A major chord. The D string, the G string, and the B string are tuned two semitones higher.
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Source: celebfaqs.com
