Rory Block’s acoustic blues guitar picking has reserved her a special page in blues history.  Since the 1960s, the Manhattan-raised prodigy has pursued delta blues styles with the passion of a pilgrim.  Since the mid-1970s she has built a body of work that demonstrates her deep understanding and mastery of acoustic blues.
Avalon, the fourth in Block’s “Mentor Series,” pays tribute to the great Mississippi John Hurt. Her earlier Mentor Series albums were dedicated to Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell and the Rev. Gary Davis, some of her other treasured influences. She also released a tribute to Robert Johnson – The Lady and Mr. Johnson – on Rykodisc in 2006 before switching to her current label, Stony Plain, and formally commencing her Mentor Series.
Mississippi John Hurt was one of the great bluesmen who, like Son House, was discovered by wide audiences in the early 1960s when revivalists began inviting the old masters to folk festivals. Born in 1893, he grew up in Avalon, Mississippi and spent most of his life as a farm worker, entertaining at parties and road houses and making a few obscure recordings but remaining essentially undiscovered by a mass audience. Then music scholar Tom Hoskins tracked Hurt down, in part using lyrics from Hurt’s own “Avalon Blues,” and helped introduce Hurt to a mass audience through a series of concerts including the Newport Folk Festival. His amazingly light-fingered picking style and unadorned singing style can be heard on The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt, which was released in 1967, a year after Hurt’s death.
On Avalon, Block recreates Hurt’s deft picking style and the unique spirit of his music with evident reverence.  The album opens with her own composition, “Everybody loves John,” which is a sort of biographical musical homage to Hurt. The rest of the album consists of Block’s covers of classic Hurt songs, such as “Avalon,” “Candy Man,” Richland Woman Blues,” “Spike Driver Blues,” and “Stagolee,” and two traditional songs that were part of Hurt’s repertoire –  “Frankie & Albert” and “Make Me Down a Pallet On Your Floor.”
The selections all come alive with Block’s playing, and many of Hurt’s compositions have been covered by so many other artists they are part of the nation’s musical fabric. Avalon is an excellent album by itself and, as any good tribute album should, it inspires the listener to revisit those songs played by the original master – in this case Mississippi John Hurt.
About the author: Bill Wilcox is a roots music enthusiast recently relocated from the Washington, DC area to Philadelphia, PA and back again.