Last summer, I broke out an old 6 cassette tape instructional guitar course from the Stefan Grossman Guitar Workshop on the guitar of Mississippi John Hurt. It had been given to me by my friend Don who passed away in August 2018. Anyway, I started going through it, learned 2 or 3 songs and it started getting fun to me, ya know? I honestly didn't know much about Mississippi John Hurt other than his recordings from 1929 and that he had been "rediscovered" in 1963 and played Newport and a bunch of places, got some acclaim towards the end of his life, which didn't happen for the old guard a lot. I started reading up on him on his Wikipedia page. in the external links, there was a link for a website for something called the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation. I went to their website menu and found contact and sent an email to the general info inbox saying "Hey, my name is such and such and I have recently been learning some Mississippi John Hurt songs and it's been fun". I didn't expect any kind of a response. 5 minutes later I got an email from his granddaughter Mary Frances Hurt that said "[Jack], thank you so much for reaching out to me, it's people like you that keep me motivated". Wow. So, I sent her some audio clips of me running through some of her grandfather's songs. She invited me to come down and play at the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation Homecoming this past October 7 & 8 in his old hometown of Avalon, Mississippi. The museum was a 3 room shotgun cabin that he had lived in for maybe 30 years before they found him again in 1963. His granddaughter Mary had gotten it in 1998 and moved it to some property she had in Avalon, about 2 or 3 miles down this narrow dirt road. The Homecoming was great and I met a lot of great acoustic guitarists that seemed to be all in a few hundred mile radius of Memphis. It was really neat. And it was very cool to play on his old front porch where I imagine he himself played many times. I became good friends with Mary and several of the other players that attended.

Then, yesterday, I got a text from my friend Craig who was there in October (because I don't do facebook) which said the museum had been burned that morning. Apparently someone took exception to it being placed on the national historical registry. 

Mary is beyond devastated and I am right there with her. I will always be eternally grateful that I got to experience what I did when I did. I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to return to Avalon to play on that front porch again, but I never imagined it would be because the place didn't exist anymore.

I know I am painting with a broad brush, but maybe both Phil Ochs and Nina Simone had a very valid point about the state of Mississippi...