This is a guest post by Marcia Segal, a Processing Archivist at the American Folklife Center.
Legendary blues singer Mississippi John Hurt’s song “Avalon Blues” appears on numerous recordings in the Tom Hoskins collection:
“…Avalon, my hometown, always on my mind…”
Hurt first recorded the song in 1928. In 1963, musician and blues music fan Tom Hoskins went to Avalon, Mississippi, encouraged by musicologist Dick Spottswood and their shared hunger to answer the question: was Mississippi John Hurt still alive? The day he arrived, Hoskins had his answer: yes. The next day, when he sat down to record Hurt, the answer was: yes, very much so. While Hurt had not recorded since 1928, his skills and gifts were still in evidence (and not rusty, as some writers have claimed). Using a guitar borrowed from Hoskins, Hurt’s performance was still commanding and moving all at once. This recording is part of the collection, along with other recordings, photos, original letters, and other materials. Details are available in the collection finding aid, recently made available online.
While Hurt’s story has been written, documented, and discussed since the second phase of his professional life, the collection provides a look inside the mind and career of the man who drove all those miles to find him. Hoskins and Hurt developed and maintained their personal and professional association from the time of their meeting until Hurt’s death in 1966, and Hoskins stayed in contact with Hurt’s family after Hurt’s passing. The underlying goal of Hoskins’s activities seems to have been to make sure as many people had a chance to know about Hurt and hear his music as possible. From a publicity folder there are lists of articles that could be used for free to promote Hurt, plus logs of recordings, interview transcripts, and Hoskins’s address books, as well as other materials.
The collection includes handwritten letters from John and from his wife Jessie, and the music business side of Hoskins’s career, with stock certificates (issued and unissued) for Music Research, International (the company which originally had rights to promote Hurt and his recordings). Photographs taken in Avalon in 1963 and 1965 show John, Jessie, and other people, as well as buildings and other subjects. Concert images, in contact sheets and prints, document Hurt in performance during his brief resurgence; photos taken by Bob Campbell, Seth Beckerman, Jim Mahan, Paul S. Ulrich, and others. The only color photos in the collection are 21 Ektachrome 35 mm slides, showing Hurt during an undated concert performance. These images, plus the documents and recordings, shed further light on Hurt’s career, from Hoskins’s perspective.
The recordings made at the Library of Congress are also part of the collection (AFC 2011/026: SR059-SR064). On July 15 and July 23, 1963, Hurt recorded over 60 songs and stories in the Coolidge auditorium, and was interviewed by Joe Hickerson (later to become the Head of the Archive of Folk Culture). Another AFC collection includes the recordings: Mississippi John Hurt recordings collection (AFC 1964/003). Both sets of recordings provide a chance for listeners to hear the recordings without the commercial polish, but with all the improvements that recording in a concert-quality venue such as the Coolidge could (and still can) provide, not to mention a proper audio recording set-up both for Hurt and the guitar.
The Tom Hoskins collection takes its place at The American Folklife Center alongside other collections of folk revival-era recordings, including the University of Chicago Folk Festival, 1962 (AFC 1963/001), the Caffè Lena collection (AFC 2009/035), and other collections with live music that reflect the energy and spirit of the era.
Hurt’s “rediscovery” by Hoskins is not the only story the collection has to tell. Also in the collection are photos (most are black and white), taken by photographers who are sometimes identified. One such photographer was Bob Campbell, who photographed Hurt at The Gaslight, a club in Boston, circa 1964-1965. Hurt appears both on the stairs leading to the club, and onstage with other (unnamed) musicians.
The collection has four contact sheets of Campbell’s photos. Campbell himself has his own story: an important, though lesser-known photographer of jazz musicians and other subjects in the 1950s-1960s. Archivist Jessica Ferber “rediscovered” him, publishing Rebirth of the Cool in 2015 as a retrospective of Campbell’s work. In this book Hurt’s photo appears among many other artists of the era.
Another “find” in the collection is a recording of Hurt’s first wife, Gertrude Conley, singing on the March 3, 1963 recording. This recording has not been released commercially:
In subsequent years there would be legal contentions regarding royalties, involving Hurt’s families, Hoskins, and others involved in business dealings related to Hurt’s career. And yet, here was Hurt and members of his families, in the same room, unaware of the rush of events to come, when John would move to D.C., take on the touring life, and back to Mississippi again. From the same recording comes the final selection, a duet with Hurt and Jessie:
Come to AFC and hear the recordings, read the documents, see the photos, and appreciate the lives of both Hurt and Hoskins.
Comments (20)
I had no idea that there was a Tom Hoskins collection in the Library. I knew Tom (“Fang”) from the local folk music scene. I was attending George Washington University in 1963 and had a jazz show on the campus radio station WRGW. I wanted to do the folk music show, but someone else, Lee Talbot, beat me to it. Lee’s show followed mine, and one evening, Lee came into the station early and suggested that I stick around to hear some Mississippi John Hurt.
I figured he was going to be playing some of Hurt’s records, but a few minutes later, in comes Fang with this little old black guy with a guitar – Mississippi John Hurt in person. I knew that Hoskins made several record collecting trips down south, but I didn’t know that he had found John alive and well. We set up a microphone and broadcast about a half hour performance. I know there was a recorder running, so that recording may have ended up in the Hoskins collection.
Hurt had many friends in the DC area during his stay here, and he was always warm and friendly, and always willing to show someone how he played a song. His presence brought other “Piedmont blues” musicians living in the DC area out of the woodwork here, and locals John Jackson, John Cephas, Archie Edwards, and Libba Cotten blossomed and continued performing many years after Hurt returned to his home in Mississippi.
Tom Hoskins was quite a character, too, who left us too early.
Thanks for reading, Mike, and thanks for adding to the story! It’s always nice to hear how our collections intersect with our readers’ lives.
While an Undergraduate at GWU, I became involved in the folk scene which was evolving at the school. An energetic bunch met regularly at Woodhull House to make music.
When Mississippi John Hurt was rediscovered, I produced his first concert in the area at the Red Cross building auditorium. He did not want to appear on stage alone so invited several of us to sit on the stage with him. I was one of those who was privileged to do so.
I have one or two photos of him taken at that time by Mike Cogan, I believe which I would be happy to make copies. I do not have negatives of them however.
Sheila- Thanks for reading, and for sharing your memory. What a great opportunity!
Wonderful news and wonderful blog! Our two recording sessions at LC in July 1963 included Bob Carneal and John Howell as recordists, and myself and Dick Spottswood are interviewers. I had been at LC/FOLK for barely a month, and this event was a great initiation to the acquisitions activities there!
Thanks for adding to the story, Joe. It’s always wonderful to get the perspective of those who were there!
Correction. The Gaslight was a well-known venue in Greenwich Village, NYC, not Boston.
Thanks for the input. We’ll be sure to correct the post.
Great story and comments (except remarking that the Gaslight was in Boston 🙂
So great to read and listen. Thank you!
I too had a local college radio show at the University of Virginia in 1963, and played John’s Piedmont recording to the dismay of many Charlottesville residents. Being a guitarist, I picked some of the tunes off the record. I couldn’t resist hitchhiking up to D.C. to hear John play at the Ontario Place Coffee house. During a break I asked him if I could play his tune, “Candy Man” for him. He took me into the kitchen, put his guitar on my lap, and smiled. “Go ahead!” he said. I did, and at the end was smiling and nodding his head in approval. From then on we would have conversations whenever our paths crossed. My other connection with John was thirty years later, through my very close late friend Jerry Ricks who was as family with John when he was based in Philadelphia in the 60’s. Jerry regaled me with stories about the older bluesman. He was such a special man and artist, perhaps the most beloved of all the bluesmen rediscovered in that era.
Larry- Thanks for reading, and for sharing your own story about John Hurt.
Hi John. I too was a friend of Toms. He and I traveled a bit and spent time driving around the country side of VA MD and would hang out at WHFS Radio Station with our friend Damein who was a DJ there. Tom Lived with us for a spell after his train trip across the U.S. We shared a LOT of things and I even spent a bit of time in three Maryland County Jails due to one of our adventures to a JUNK YARD up past MT. ARIY (sp). We were looking for parts for one of his NSU cars (he had like 5 or 6 of them….none were running. We were very close and Tom (FANG to many) his other nickname was DOC. I uasually called him Doc short for “THE DOCTOR” but that is a way longer story.
Tom also gave my wife her nickname “Pioneer Woman” and she would clean his house that he had on route 29 for a while before the IRS took it all away.
He and Spotswood had a falling out but his biggest regrets were with another gentleman named Lee Rosenthal over their record label dispute.
Not many know that Doc(Fang,Tom) went to Africa to search for the “ROOTS of black music in America before he died and he would contact us from there. He sent us a tape of what he called JACOMBA music that was old basic tribal stuff but real amazing. Doc was even in a David Hassellhoff MOVIE as an extra (played a CIA MAN) filmed in Africa partly.
I am sure you know he died in Flordia in a home and his ashes are in the Pond behind the house he lived in (for a bit) in Maryland.
I have many stories of he and I together and our small adventures if you are ever interested. Thank you for doing this. Feel free to contact if you want I am in my late 60’s now and was a young whipper snapper hanging with Doc and we were very close. Tom Hoskins was my FRIEND and I miss him to this day!
Chris
Chris- Thanks for reading. It’s always great to hear from folks who have something to add to the stories behind our collections.
I don’t know if this was a true story, but my husband Larry loved to tell me a story of stealing a guitar with his friend David, from a party, somewhere in Washington D.C., in 1963, because Tom needed a guitar for John Hurt to play. I’m sure that Tom didn’t ask him to steal one, that was just Larry’s way. 😉
In 1963 and 1964, I filled in occasionally as a waiter at the Ontario Place Coffee House in DC. The owner was a well-known local artist, John Gerakis. John Hurt played five nights a week, more or less, and his relief was Libba Cotten. They became good friends but I don’t recall them playing duets.
Tommy Hoskins was my uncle. He was a cool dude. It’s true, that’s his collection. There’s a crazy story how it ended up there.
Hey Chris, Thanks for sharing those stories about Tom. He was my uncle. I remember his NSU cars. The last time I saw him was in 1997 in Colorado we hung out for about a month. We had a blast! I’m glad I got to spend that time with him. He passed away a couple years after.
I decided to look up John Hurt after hearing his “I Shall Not be Moved” as the theme song for ” Mr. Mercedes” a mini series about a cop obsessed with capturing a serial killer, based on the book by Stephen King.
The song was hunting and became an “ear worm” for me. It is Beautiful with the pick guitar, which is what caught my attention.
I will visit the AFC. Will some of these recording also be made available for the Smithsonian Museum of African American history someday?
Thanks for reading the post, and we hope you are able to listen to more of John Hurt’s wonderful playing. Most of the recordings we have from his visit to the Library were released commercially in the early 2000s in a two volume CD set, and are available on YouTube in a properly licensed form. We have worked with Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, on a number of collaborative projects, and would certainly do so again if the opportunity arises! Since we do not hold the rights to these recordings, though, we would have to work through proper channels depending on the use case any collaboration would entail. Finally, we love having visitors, so please do come by our reading room when that’s possible once again!
As the story goes, Spottswood got a tape of “Avalon Blues” from collector Johnathan Edwards which let Hoskins pinpoint MJH’s hometown. Fang met a girl at American U. party and convinced her to drive ger car to New Orleans and find Avalon on the way, gets in trouble for violating Mann act.
Yes, she had failed to mention her age, or the fact that the car belonged to her father. Technically, by not asking her father’s permission, she had stolen the car and Tom was an accessory. He was also suspected of Mann act violations. But she admitted later that she had lied to him about her age, and they convinced her father not to press charges and convinced the police that it was a music collecting trip, which is not an “immoral purpose” under the Mann Act.