Coffee Blues

Decades after his 1928 sessions for OKeh, Hurt was rediscovered in Avalon, Mississippi, and brought north. This session was recorded by Tom Hoskins, the man who found him. A tribute to Maxwell House coffee, it's a brilliant example of the Piedmont blues style: characterized by a steady, alternating thumb bass and a syncopated fingerpicked melody. Even though Hurt's gentle voice and ragtime structures sounded completely different from the aggressive Delta blues of his peers, his complex fingerstyle syncopation remains a foundational pillar of acoustic blues guitar.