Today! (Remastered 2025) Mississippi John Hurt

• 1 Pay Day (Remastered 2025) 04:23
• 2 I'm Satisfied (Remastered 2025) 02:54
• 3 Candy Man (Remastered 2025) 02:56
• 4 Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor (Remastered 2025) 04:33
• 5 Talking Casey (Remastered 2025) 05:09
• 6 Corrinna, Corrinna (Remastered 2025) 01:52
• 7 Coffee Blues (Remastered 2025) 03:47
• 8 Louis Collins (Remastered 2025) 04:09
• 9 Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight (Remastered 2025) 03:33
• 10 If You Don't Want Me Baby (Remastered 2025) 03:21
• 11 Spike Driver Blues (Remastered 2025) 03:25
• 12 Beulah Land (Remastered 2025) 03:45
• Total Runtime 43:47

Info for Today! (Remastered 2025)

This album was the first that Mississippi John Hurt recorded for Vanguard Records in the three years before his death from a heart attack in November 1966. It followed two other albums released on Piedmont Records in 1963 and 1964 that immediately followed his re-discovery by musicologist Tom Hoskins the former year. Hoskins had tracked him down to the small town of Avalon, Mississippi and, after assuring himself that he had actually found the right man, he tempted him back to performance and recording. John Hurt had recorded way back in the twenties for Okeh Records in Memphis and New York, but had then dropped out of the musical world, settling for a steady working life on farms in cotton fields and jobs on the river and the railroad. Still working the fields when found by Hoskins, John was a man who was satisfied with his lot, but was eventually persuaded to re-connect with the music industry with appearances at folk clubs, college campuses and even at the well-established Newport Folk Festival. Throughout it all his wife and family remained in Avalon while John's playing and singing were embraced by legions of new fans.

"Today is Mississippi John Hurt's first and finest studio release since his "rediscovery" on his Avalon farm by folklorist Tom Hoskins in 1963. Eclipsed possibly only by his earlier 1928 Sessions, this album shows a more mature Hurt picking his way through standards and originals after the Depression years and Hurt's fall into obscurity before the folk revival of the 1960s. It shows, however, that all that the great bluesman has lost is years; his voice retains its characteristic Buddha-esque warmth and it is still difficult to believe that there is just one man playing on the seemingly effortless guitar work. The music on the album comes from a variety of different influences, from the fun and poppy "Hot Time in Old Town Tonight" and "Coffee Blues," to the bluesy standards "Candy Man" (Hurt's most famous song) and "Spike Driver's Blues" to the soulful spirituals "Louis Collins" and "Beulah Land." Hurt's tranquil guitar work -- mixing country, Scottish folk, and Delta blues -- strings all of the songs along the same simple and elegant thread. Hurt himself never could explain his guitar playing, as he used to say, "I just make it sound like I think it ought to." Regardless, that sound, along with a mellow and heartfelt voice, wizened here by decades, combine to make Today an unforgettable whole. A truly essential album of the folk revival, unrivaled in its beauty and warmth." (David Freedlander, AMG)

Mississippi John Hurt, guitar, vocals

Digitally remastered

Please Note: we do not offer the 192 kHz version of this album, because there is no considerable or audible difference to the 96 kHz version!

Mississippi John Hurt
World-renowned master of the acoustic guitar John Hurt, an important figure in the 1960s folk blues revival, spent most of his life doing farm work around Avalon in Carroll County and performing for parties and local gatherings. Hurt (1893-1966) only began to earn a living from music after he left Mississippi in 1963 to play at folk festivals, colleges, and coffeehouses. His first recordings, 78 rpm discs released in 1928-29, are regarded as classics of the blues genre.

Mississippi John Hurt's delicate vocals, inventive fingerpicking on guitar, and warm personality endeared him to generations of music fans. Much of Hurt’s material predated the blues, and his gentle style provided a stark contrast to the typically harsh approaches of Delta musicians such as Son House and Charley Patton. According to a family bible, Hurt was born on July 3, 1893, in Teoc, several miles southwest of here. Other sources, including his tombstone at the St. James Cemetery in Avalon, have suggested dates ranging from 1892 to 1900. He began playing guitar around age nine. By twenty Hurt was performing at parties and square dances, sometimes with local white fiddler Willie Narmour, who had a contract with OKeh Records. Narmour recommended Hurt to OKeh, and in 1928 Hurt traveled to Memphis and New York to record. His OKeh songs included the murder ballads “Frankie,” “Stack O’Lee,” and “Louis Collins;” “Spike Driver Blues” (Hurt’s take on the John Henry legend); “Nobody’s Dirty Business” (a tune with roots in 19th century minstrelsy); religious songs; and Hurt’s own “Candy Man Blues” and “Got the Blues Can’t Be Satisfied.”

The recordings apparently had little effect on Hurt's lifestyle, and he continued to play regularly for locals at house parties, picnics, night spots, work sheds, hunting lodges, and at the Valley Store at this site. His older brother Junious also sometimes played harmonica here. For most of his life Hurt worked as a farmer, but he also worked in a factory in Jackson and at a local gravel pit, and was employed as a laborer for Illinois Central Railroad and the Works Progress Administration. One of Hurt’s 1928 songs, “Avalon Blues,” later provided record collector Tom Hoskins with a clue to his whereabouts, and in 1963 Hoskins located Hurt in Avalon and arranged for him to move to Washington, D.C., where he cut several albums and recorded for the Library of Congress. Hurt subsequently became a popular and beloved performer on the folk music circuit. His many admirers included the folk-rock band the Lovin’ Spoonful, whose name was inspired by a line from Hurt’s “Coffee Blues.” In 1965 he moved to Grenada, Mississippi, where he died on November 2, 1966.

Other blues performers from Carroll County include G.L. Crockett, Jim Lockhart, and Art Browning from Carrollton; Brewer Phillips and Ben Wiley Payton from Coila; and Po’ Bob Phillips from Black Hawk. Rockabilly artist Mack Allen Smith, a cousin to Narmour’s partner Shell Smith, often saw Hurt playing in North Carrollton while growing up, and later recorded many blues songs as well as a version of Narmour and Smith’s “Carroll County Blues.” (Source: Mississippi Blues Commission)

This album contains no booklet.