Mississippi John Hurt - Live FLAC

My favorite John Hurt recording. His reputation as the "introverted bluesman" must have come from his old singles, which sound as whispery and mythic and lost to time as the rest of Harry Smith's selected tracks, and his bittersweet later albums, on which death is always lurking in the background. On "The Best of Mississippi John Hurt" his crowd interactions are brief and on point and he sounds like he had more fun at the Oberlin cafeteria than he did working on any of the four studio albums. This is his party record: he's well-oiled, delighted by his undiminished guitar skills and the voice he's aged into, and ready to play the syncopated, tasty songs he wrote and arranged as a young man in Mississippi. In the words of John Fahey: "John Hurt was a farmer and a family man. And a religious man. And a gentleman." We can only pray we get to go out like this.