When I was 21, my dad owned and operated the L.O.D.I. (Lots of Deals Inside) Flea Market in Lodi, CA. He rented out the front half to vendors of various trades for something like $250 dollars a month. The back half he kept for himself; first filling it with the contents of our garage and eventually, as he refined his craft, with the contents of other garages, storage sheds, attics, larger flea markets etc.
I liked going home. I looked forward to hanging out with my dad and immersing myself in flea market culture: the dust in my nose, the stinging cold, and the fierce competition over first pickings on Saturday mornings all felt a lot like home.
But, above all, as always, was the music. There were endless rows of second-rate early-’90s R&B CDs (En Vogue, S.W.V., Exposé), piles and piles of New Miserable Experience cassettes, and enough weather beaten LPs to make any groove-head weep. Yet, among the vast plastic wreckage, there were also gems. One, $1.50 disc that could change your life.
My first such find, at a relatively spendy $3, was Mississippi John Hurt’s Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 Okeh Recordings. It was the first Delta Blues recording I ever heard and it was a DOOZY! So much, in fact, that when the dust settles I’m pretty certain it will hold up as THE collection of songs that really started it all for me…
From the opening guitar ring of “Frankie”:
to the bone chilling lyric, “Some of these mornings gonna wake up crazy/ Gonna grab my gun/ Gonna kill my baby”, of “Nobody’s Dirty Business”:
to his rendition of the mega-classic, “Stack O Lee”:
I was changed in a profound way. This 13 song record turned my dial from fanatic to frantic. I was desperate for what I never realized could be… something out of time and place forever… a sound that never belonged on earth, but somehow made it here. Here to rural 1928 America.
Mississippi John Hurt became, for a time in 2002, my Jesus. He was the once-earthly form connecting me to everything else. Pretty impressive for a humble ol’ man from Mississippi…
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We are getting a cab . . . are you coming with us?
If only this kind of music were on the jukebox at Zeitgeist; we could clear out some of the bike messengers.
yeah, mississippi john hurt is a great guitarist