Hurt was born in Carroll County, Mississippi’s Teoc, and grew up in Avalon.
At the age of nine, he taught himself how to play the guitar by covertly practicing on William Henry Carson’s instrument.
William Henry Carson was a close friend of his mother Mary Jane and frequently stayed at the Hurt residence while pursuing a local woman.
He performed old-time music for friends and at dances when he was younger. Up to the 1920s, he was a farmhand and sharecropper.
What kind of guitar did Mississippi John Hurt play?
When Mississippi John Hurt started playing and recording again in 1963, he didn’t have a guitar.
In images from this time, he is seen playing a Tom Hoskins-loaned restored Gibson J-45 with a crescent moon inlay on the fingerboard.
Hurt’s slotted-headstock blonde guitar from his historic 1963 Newport Folk Festival performance has recently come to light.
It belonged to Hoskins and was produced by the Emory firm in the first decade of the 20th century.
