Avalon Blues

For his second recording session, Okeh Records brought Mississippi John Hurt all the way to a studio in freezing New York City just days before Christmas in 1928. Hurt recorded "Avalon Blues," a gentle tribute to his tiny Mississippi hometown. He sang about how New York was alright, but Avalon was his home, accompanied by his effortlessly complex, cascading fingerpicking. Decades later, it was the specific mention of "Avalon" in this very song that allowed musicologist Tom Hoskins to locate Hurt in 1963, pulling him out of obscurity and onto the Newport Folk Festival stage.