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.
The floating-verse lineage for this recording (who else recorded it, where the melody or lyric traveled, and how it was adapted) is still being mapped. This section will trace the song's DNA across the archive.
Contributions welcome at OlMrRead@ccblues.com.