Mississippi John did not play/sing the Jimmie Rodgers classic "Waitin' for a Train." However, one of his own compositions is set to the same melody: "Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me." Hurt plays it in C; I've seen sheet music showing "Waiting for a Train" in the key of F.

If you learn the John Hurt guitar part, you could easily sing the lyrics to either song along with it. (Just add an extra C-G(7)-C at the end of the verse to accommodate the yodel part for "Train.")

Last year, I wrote out tabs for "Mermaids" in Randytab format and contributed it to the MJH Museum website, where it is posted along with tabs for many other John Hurt songs. A large number are the work of Ken Whitfield, aka Mudcatter Khandu, plus a bunch from webmaster Frank Delaney and another two or three from me. (The site also provides a free download of the Randytab software, without which you can't open the files.)

For those who can't or won't deal with the Randy software, maybe someone else can provide a more conventional and more easily accessed version of tab for this song.

I learned many MJH songs from tablature over the years, from a number of different books (Stephan Grossman, Oak Publications) but never did run across this particular song.

(Only after learning a number of other songs in the key of C was I able to figure out "Mermaids" for myself.)

Oops ~ almost forgot the link!

http://www.msjohnhurtmuseum.com/tablature.html

Scoll about halfway down the page; "Mermaids" is directly across from a photo of Mr Hurt.