I met John Hurt through Mike Seger in Newport in '63. His agent, Tom Hopkins said we could sit and talk. Of course it was a festival and I was sitting backstage with him and a few people. A month or so later he was playing at the Philadelphia folk festival. I saw him approaching me and I started walking briskly to him to ask if he remembered me, I was in my early 20s, and when I got near enough, he said 'Hey Man! Do you remember me!?' hehe! That explains Mississippi John Hurt! Instead of me asking, he did! - Jerry Ricks, http://www.blueschat.com/tscripts/bc062198.htm
Every so often, I resolve to find something new or, at least, previously unheard. The below-linked version is just such an example. Has anyone heard it, or anything else from the performer?
Thanks, all. And thanks for bringing that recording from Libba Cotton. She gets as close as I've heard to a slack key feel on the song.
A body could get lost in all the versions. The Milum Kent recording comes from this "Ozark Folksongs" collection: https://home.lyon.edu/wolfcollection/. Alan Lomax is mentioned in there, as is Gus Cannon, H.L. Menken(!) and other familiar folks. It also has a few recordings of Bukka White talking in their folklore class about a bit of his own history.
Thanks; that's close to Worrall's arrangement, with some personal flairs, by my rusty reading along with the sheet music. The performer (Dallas-based Perry Brooks Nichols, who appears to have some Carlos Castaneda-based influence) apparently teaches flamenco, paints and mashes up a variety of styles into sonic psychedelia to express and/or lead listeners into separate realities.
Nichols interpreted Spanish Fandango for Juneteenth 2022 to honor guitarist/composer/arranger/civil rights activist/Martin endorser Justin Holland, whose Reconstruction-era guitar method books became widely popular.