Mississippi John Hurt was raised under the wings of his parents in Teoc, Mississippi, United States. His parents are Isom Hurt his father and Mary Jane McCain his mother. In 1963, guitarist and blues music fan Tom Hoskins came to Avalon to seek out Hurt and his music. Hoskins had heard Hurt’s music in the Anthology of American Folk Music and his reaching out to find Hurt rekindled Hurt’s music career in the early 1960s.
Hurt moved to D.C. in 1963 and began playing music in the local area including folk festivals, universities, and local eateries. He recorded three albums on the Vanguard Records label.
Who did Mississippi John Hurt influence?
Hurt has had a wide influence on a great variety of people, from hard-core ethnic music purists to pseudo-folk flower persons to serious students of the guitar and they are Virginia blues man John Jackson, Minnesota folk singer Robert Zimmerman and New York guitar wizard Stephan Grossman. The great North Carolina guitar virtuoso Doc Watson and his late son Merle almost always included a Mississippi John Hurt song or two in their concerts.
And they never failed to express their gratitude for his gifts. Upon his death, the New York Times eulogized, “Of all the fine old singers uncovered in the folk-music revival of the nineteen-sixties, few had as much influence on young audiences as Mississippi John Hurt.”
