John Hurt had such a wonderful, and highly individual, style, both as a vocalist and as a guitar player, that it almost doesn't matter whether or not his melodies were "original" ~ HE was an absolute original, which is what's most important.

One of my favorite MJH songs is "Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me," which shares a melody with Jimmie Rodgers' "Waitin' For a Train." Despite the essentially-identical melodies, however, the two songs are both pretty unique.

Those two guys were both Mississippians, and they made their first recordings at about the same time. Without looking up their respective birth dates, I think it would be fair to say they were contemporaries. Jimmie was widely successful much earlier than John, of course, and he died young, many years before John's "rediscovery" and second career.

Did one of these great original artists "copy" the tune from the other? I doubt it ~ I prefer to believe that each adapted, or half-consicously stumbled upon, a pre-existing "folk" melody, and each used that melody as the setting for a different lyrical message...

By the way, Susan (& anyone), if you manage to get Randytab working, and can simply watch the screen while listening to the MIDI, you'll probably find it quite easy to learn how to understand and read tablature, even the non-enhanced, non-"Randy," plain ink-on-paper variety.