Bill Morrissey – Songs Of Mississippi John Hurt

Tunneling backward and forward through his career, Bill Morrissey has reimagined his most formative influence, reinvestigating just what got him here in the first place. He has never recorded a John Hurt song before, though the music of the Avalon, Mississippi, master runs throughout the New Englander’s vignettes (Morrissey says he got “all of his right hand” from Hurt). These new recordings have served as a respite from novel writing and as an inspirational well as he begins to map out a forthcoming album of original material.

It’s a surprising, and likely for some listeners, perplexing approach. The arrangements, on the surface, share little with Hurt’s best-known solo performances, but their tone is true. Hurt was never a soul-searching, hell-pursuing bluesman. A songster who celebrated sex, food, coffee, faith, and finally, musical joy, Hurt was always at home in parlors and at parties, and Morrissey, through his ear for understatement, captures what made him central and idiosyncratic in country blues.

Harmonica and melodic bass dominate the arrangements; tasteful horns, piano and vocal harmony blend with Morrissey’s own charming, scuffed-up vocal delivery. In the dancing fingerstyle patterns and wry, contemplative mood, a kind of comedic resignation, the album finds that peculiar trance of pleasure Hurt himself always found. And rather than a stroll through his greatest hits, the album concentrates on Hurt’s love of play. The forlorn lyricism of “Avalon Blues” and the gospel elegy of “Louis Collins”, however, ensure that the darker mysteries of the blues are never too far away.