Vinyl Release

After a brief career in the 1920s, the master storyteller returned four decades later to record this blues/folk masterpiece. Steve Sutherland hears the 180g reissue

It might well be Jesus. Or perhaps the devil. Or maybe even Father Christmas. But try as I might, I can’t discover any reliable resource which reveals who, in the whole history of popular music, has had the most songs written about them.

With that in mind, and lacking any definitive evidence to the contrary, John Luther Jones is a viable claimant to the crown. A swift count on Wikipedia totals in excess of 40 ditties composed in his honour, the first written in about 1909. You’ll know John Luther better by his nickname, Casey. He was the brave railroad engineer who, in April 1900, perished trying to make up time driving the late-running locomotive Number 382. This ten-wheeler, known as the Cannonball, was on its way from Memphis to Canton, Mississippi when it crashed into other vehicles parked on the line. Jones was killed unsuccessfully attempting to halt the train, but did slow it down enough in the process to save the lives of all the passengers on board.

Drill music

Then again, jostling with Casey for the title of the king of song folklore is John Henry, an African American – and former slave – celebrated multiple times in rhythm, verse and rhyme. According to legend, in the mid-1800s Henry had got a job hammering a steel drill into rocks as part of the construction of Virginian railroad tunnels. The story goes that the company he worked for introduced a steam-powered drill and Henry, proud of his ability and not wishing to see himself or his fellow workers replaced, challenged the new machine to a drilling contest. The challenge was fought out, non-stop, lasting more than a day. Henry won but overexerted himself and his heart gave out from the strain.

Above: Side One label of the Today! 1968 LP on Vanguard

Both of these heroes appear on Today!, immortalised by the superb storytelling skills of John Smith Hurt, aka Mississippi John. Born in 1893, the son of slaves liberated by the Civil War, Hurt grew up to be a plantation sharecropper by day and a dancehall musician by night, his reputation as a dextrous acoustic guitar player spreading far and wide from his home in Avalon in northern Mississippi.

In 1928, encouraged by an offer from the OKeh Records label, Hurt travelled to Memphis. He recorded 20 songs while sitting on a chair in a hotel room. The 78s subsequently sold reasonably well but when the label went bust in the Great Depression, Hurt returned home to once more work the land and syncopate the surrounding knees-ups.

Forgotten man

There he remained in all-but-local obscurity until musicologist Harry Smith included a couple of Hurt’s early recordings on his The Anthology Of American Folk Music compilation, which inspired new-found fans to try to locate the forgotten blues player. Eventually a man called John Hoskins tracked him down and, after persuading him to move to Washington D.C., recorded him for The Library Of Congress.

Above: Rear sleeve of the album

Now, at the age of 70, Hurt began a belated career on the folk and blues revival circuit. A stand-out performance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival led to a deal with the Vanguard label, and the recording of a solo album produced by scenester folkie Patrick Sky. Today! was released to widespread and richly deserved plaudits in 1966, and its appeal, if anything, has been heightened by the passing of the years.

What it sounds like today is the album Nick Cave’s been seeking to make all his life. Not stylistically, you understand – Hurt exhibits none of Cave’s inclination towards over-the-top Southern Gothic – but in tone and subject matter. Hurt, an entertainer at heart, plays to the gallery. His ‘Talkin’ Casey’ is not only rich with quirky lyrical detail of the aforementioned tragic railwayman – children crying, sheep on the track! – but also a masterful showcase of musical prowess, as Hurt introduces then delivers sounds from his guitar to match the song’s shifting narrative.

Sweet sounds

Then there’s ‘Candyman’, a slinky, in-and-out-the-back-door libidinous boast that’s easily the match of Muddy Waters’ 1955 ‘Mannish Boy’, with ladies hankering after his ‘stick of candy that’s nine inch long’. Equally sly is ‘Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor’, wherein our protagonist risks the wrath of his missus (and worse from a cuckold) for a naughty frolic on the side.

Swapping roles, Hurt becomes the aggrieved victim of love in ‘Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight’. Here he’s on the hunt through the backstreets for the paramour of an unfaithful lass, steadfastly determined with murder on his mind: ‘I’m going down with razor, yes, in my hand/ I’m going down looking for that man’.

And talking of murder, ‘Louis Collins’ is a sombre tale of a wayward teen who ends up shot to death in a fight on a riverboat. This is mostly told from the point of view of his grieving mother (‘Angels laid him away’) and is another piece patched together from true events. John Henry’s fate, meanwhile, is recounted in ‘Spike Driver Blues’, where Hurt’s vocal is dark, deep and confidently conversational, as sure and strong as cask-fermented moonshine.

Above: Mississippi John Hurt photographed in 1965 in New York City after his ‘rediscovery’

Hurt’s singing – knowing, wry and cheeky as befits a man in his 70s who’s heard and seen it all – is matched by his guitar playing. And his guitar playing is so matchlessly fluid it defies belief that this is just one man playing rhythm and lead simultaneously. It’s a subtle, jaunty style adopted but never quite emulated by later disciples such as Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead and champion of primitive folk-picking, John Fahey.

The last word

The album concludes, logically enough, with a sanguine look at the afterlife in the shape of ‘Beulah Land’, a traditional gospel number which wouldn’t have felt out of place on the soundtrack to The Coen Brothers’ Mississippi-set satire O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Rich in the promise that the singer can look forward to a reunion with all his deceased loved ones when God calls him home, we earnestly hope this very fate awaited John Hurt as he died of a heart attack in the same year that Today! was released. It’s a fitting testimonial, an LP that has the lot – hell, sorrow and sex on earth; eternal salvation once our race is run. All human life – and death – is here.

It’s nothing short of a masterpiece.

Re-release Verdict

Issued on Craft Recordings’ recently established Bluesville Records imprint, this re-release of Today! [CR00837] is pressed on 180g vinyl at Quality Record Pressings (QRP) and based upon new mastering from the original analogue tapes by Matthew Lutthans of the Mastering Lab. The tip-on jacket replicates the original 1966 portrait and liner notes by music historian Nat Hentoff, while the obi strip features new writing from producer/blues musician Scott Billington. HFN