Mississippi John Hurt – Last Sessions

I was talking about this with my missus today; how strange it is to feel that you’ve learned so much from someone—so much that has impacted your life, and has shaped who you are—when it’s someone you’ve never met.

Many, many, many musicians have influenced me, but I think I can only name a few that have truly TAUGHT me—I feel that Mississippi John Hurt genuinely taught me. Which is impossible of course, because he passed on a few years before I was born.

All the same, I have learned so much from him.

I find these final sessions so poignant, perhaps for this very reason. Knowing this was the end of his music, somehow it feels like a final statement, a final lesson, a final truth.

Yes, Goodnight Irene, but more than that, Goodnight John.