Did You Hear John Hurt-With Mississippi John Hurt In Mind

By Seth Garth  

Jason Taylor, Fritz’s son, his eldest son, the first son in the family to go to college in his generation wondered once he got to Cambridge what it would have been like if he had landed in Harvard Square in 1963 rather than 2013 and had been able to hear a guy named Mississippi John Hurt that his father kept playing on his CD player (and later on his MP3 player hooked to the house sound system). Or Skip James, or Bukka White, or Son House, or Fred McDowell or a million other blues, country blues guys from down in places like the Mississippi Delta and stayed to distinguish that crowd from Chicago and Detroit electric blue guys who were from down in the deep South too but created a whole new jammed-up sound with the amps up. Those latter guys headed north following the Mississippi to Memphis and then sweet home Chicago. Or so they thought. Wondered why his father had spent so much time trying to teach him about the blues, about why it was important to keep the tradition going even if only for those like him who had listened to the old timers back in the day. (Jason was amazed how much his father’s “instruction” had stayed with him as he landed in the Square when he started thinking about that blues-etched influence that he must have grabbed in his DNA.).

Fritz, when he would get his son alone, when he was in high school Jason thought, and out of earshot of his mother, Betsy, would tell him about all the times he went to places like the Club 47, the Club Blue, and the Café Nana with dates or looking for dates. (Fritz had met Betsy, wife number two, from upstate New York around Albany but out in farm country in Harvard Square but that was when he was in his outlaw cowboy music minute in the early 1980s so she was not a folkie as such). The idea was cheap dates since he was a poor boy from Utica, a half generation out of the farms and so had a hard time going to college and affording dates. And none was cheaper than going to the folk clubs in Cambridge and Boston and except when serious acts like Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton and the like came to play and you could for the price of a couple of cups of coffee, maybe a pastry between you, and a couple of bucks to show you were a patron of the arts for the “bucket” which sustained the night’s performer you had your date, and who knows what else if she was a folkie too. That is why Fritz and his friends hung around the coffeehouses in the Square looking for those folkie girls to share coffee and pastry with, and who knows what else. If times were tough and there was no money then you were reduced to hanging around the Hayes-Bickford listening to all kinds of talk and noise but the coffee was cheaper. And surprisingly there were girls there too who you could pick up and hang with for the night without expense. Wasn’t that a time.     

Jason, while he suffered under his father’s “instruction” about the genesis of folk and blues, would occasionally, again out of earshot of his mother since she would see red on the subject, get the story of how he saw the legendary Mississippi John Hurt down in the Village when he first came north after being “discovered” by some folk enthusiast who found him in a tiny shack down in the Delta. The seeing red part by Betsy was because that was where Fritz had met Louise, his first wife who not only took him for a ride when they got divorced but took a long time for Fritz to get out of his system. Jason would know the Louise story was coming because he father would get all wistful and he was not sure whether it was from being in the presence of a blues legend or the wiles of Louise Golden. Normally Fritz was the antithesis of wistful so Jason knew he was in for a fifteen minute journey to the past.

Somehow Fritz and his two roommates at Boston University were able to hitchhike themselves down to the Village in the days when you could do that without risking your life (and Fritz when Jason suggested that he and a girlfriend were going to hitchhike to Washington to save some money went nuts for that very reason). One of the roommates, Lenny, lived in the city, had grown up in Stuyvesant Town, so they had a place to stay that weekend. Mississippi John was playing at the Gaslight two shows a night, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The trio needed to see the show either Friday or Saturday since they had to hitch back on Sunday for classes on Monday. They were shut out of both Friday shows because they had gotten into the long line too late. Had not gotten there the mandatory two hours early to insure that they would get in. So late Saturday afternoon they headed down to the Village on the subway to wait their two hours. As they lined up Fritz saw a striking young woman with jet black hair, nice shape and nice legs, a big thing for him then in the match-up contest in line just in front of them. Waiting just like them to make the first show from the look of their placement in line.

Fritz not known then, or ever as an aggressive man around the women he was interested in decided to “hit” on this beauty. He started with the classic line among folkies at that time about when they first heard their first folk music, stuff that they recognized as such. Rather than brushing Fritz off this woman, this Louise Golden, astounded Fritz with her arcane knowledge, knowledge far greater than his, about the roots of folk music and the roots of the blues. Apparently her parents some refugees to New York City from out in Topeka during the red scare 1940s when to be any kind of odd was the death knell were avid folk music collectors and so they had imparted their knowledge onto a willing Louise. During that almost two hour wait they must have run through every folk and blues fact they knew aided by interjections from Fritz’s roomies. The long and short of it was that Fritz and Louise agreed without much ceremony to sit at the same table (the roommates and Louise’s companion sat at the next table and were dismissed out of hand by the pair for the rest of the evening until John’s performance was over).           

Of course the by then ancient John Hurt small with a beaten down hat on his head that he must have worn for his whole long life amazed the crowd with his playing, with his clear picking even at his age. Sang beautiful simple blues like Beulah Land, Creole Belle, Frankie and Albert, the salacious Candy Man and the like. A great performance that Fritz could spin out the play list of for Jason even forty years later. Here’s the kicker though. No, not that they would meet after that performance the reader already knows that they would eventually marry. That night Louise who whatever the difficulties her parents had faced out in Topeka must have made some money in coming east because she paid for two cups of coffee for each of them and for each to have their own pastry. Yes, a match made in heaven, for a while.    

One night a fitful Jason decided to go into Harvard Square and check out whatever there was to check out as the kids these days expressed things. He decided to go to the Café Andre, the nearest thing to a coffeehouse still left in the Square and see who was playing for the “basket” that night (somethings never change). It turned out to be Eric Loftus an up and coming new age folkie who had a small following around Cambridge. As Jason entered, a little on the early side so he was not sure if she was there for a late snack or for the show he saw this willowy slender young woman with black hair and nice legs, something he noticed when looking for young women (yes, some things never do change)  sitting at a table by herself. He, like his father, was not aggressive around women but he decided he would “hit” on her. Asked her if he could buy her a cup of coffee, maybe a pastry if she was staying for the show. That started an affair which would find them many nights hanging around the café having coffee and a shared pastry.            

Yes, Jason Taylor was his father’s son alright, and the old man was right wasn’t that a time.