I've been thinking about John Hurt, on and off, for at least forty years. Lately, I've been thinking about how and why his playing style should be so different from the usual "Delta Blues" indiginous to northwestern Mississippi, and so similar to the "Piedmont" style of Virginia and the Carolinas.

One historical fact that might be part of the explanation: Mississippi was, in very early times, the "frontier" or "wild west" of the slaveholding south. By the time the propertied class began to move west from the Eastern Seaboard to begin developing cotton plantations along the Mississippi River, many if not most of the slaves available for purchase were native-born ~ NOT straight off the slave-ship from Africa. In French-speaking Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast, significant numbers of slaves were imported from the Carribean, but as you moved further north, a greater and greater proportion of the newly available slaves came from points east, including the Piedmont (i.e., Appalachin foothills) and nearby areas.

The east-coast plantations were downsizing as tobacco had echausted the fertility of the soil and indigo became less profitable to produce, and at the same time, cotton was emerging as the cash-crop of choice just as very fertile land was opening up to the west.

It is hard to imagine that the slave population purchased and moved en masse into Mississippi from points east would not have included a number of guitar players conversant with the popular "Piedmont" style, and/or with other variations on the "parlor-guitar" approach.

It is hardly necessary to postulate that John Smith Hurt or any member of his immediate family was a displaced guitar player dragged in chains into Mississippi directly from the Piedmont region. All that is necessary is that one recognize that it is very likely that he encountered one or more such players, or someone who had enjoyed and learned from such an encounter years earlier.

Even the harder and more modern "Delta" style undoubtedly evolved from "Piedmont"-style or parlor-style picking ~ the regular bass line played with the thumb (whether alternating or monotonic) which underlies the melodic, or at least more-complex treble line played with one or more other fingers, is a common characteristic of both schools.

While a large number of players in the thickly-populated Delta region influenced each other while they trasveled the same roads and played the same circuit of juke joints, it's easy to see how they would gradually develop a new style suited to a hard-partying atmosphere. John Hurt lived a quieter and more private life in a less-populateed and less-traveled area on the edge of the Delta region, and it's pretty obvious that all the innovations and advancements he made to whatever older style of guitar playing he first learned were personal and unique, coming from his own mind and hands and not so much from collaboration with other musicianers.