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Originally Posted by Timo)))
Only really got into folk about a week ago when I watched the BBC documentary called Folk America (highly recommend you watch it)
After that I downloaded some compilation albums of some of the artists that sounded good to me.
Henry Thomas and Blind Lemon Jefferson are great, also downloaded the Anthology Of American Folk, which is a 4+ hour long compilation of old 20's and 30's folk songs.
Also downloaded the albums Today! and The Immortal by Mississippi John Hurt, which is my favourite out of the bunch.
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For about five years, I listened to nothing but pre-World War II, American folk & blues. At the time I was a bit of a purist... but if the music was recorded after 1940, I wasn't interested in it.
Mississippi John Hurt was also a favorite of mine. The first song I learned on guitar was Hurt's
My Creole Belle. John Hurt could play and sing in about any style, be it popular ballads, ragtime, or delta blues. He was also a prolific songwriter who left a huge legacy of original songs.
Hurt spent most of his life doing back breaking labor after his musical career failed in the late 1920s. He would have died in obscurity had he not been discovered in Avalon Mississippi by a blues historian in 1963. Subsequently, Mississippi John Hurt embarked upon a wildly successful music career at age 70.
All Music writes:
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A series of concerts were arranged, including an appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, where he was greeted as a living legend. This opened up a new world to Hurt, who was grateful to find thousands, or even tens of thousands of people too young to have even been born when he made his only records up to that time, eager to listen to anything he had to sing or say. A tour of American universities followed as did a series of recordings: in a relatively informal, non-commercial setting intended to capture him in his most comfortable and natural surrounding.
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Hurt died three years after his rediscovery but in that short period he recorded dozens of songs for Vanguard Records and the Library of Congress.
Embedded below is a rare video of a live television appearance by Mississippi John Hurt in 1963.