John Hurt's Guild guitar

Subject: BS: Mississippi John Hurt - Guild guitar
From: mississippi john
Date: 28 Jan 06 - 03:22 PM

Hi,

is there anyone out there who can help me?

I'm a great Mississippi John Hurt music lover and i am trying to
re-creat his sound for his songs.
I have a poster in my music room of John playing an old Guild acoustic guitar, can anyone tell me what model of Guild did John used to play?

bluesriff.

Subject: RE: BS: Guild guitar
From: Peace
Date: 28 Jan 06 - 03:26 PM

Possibly a Guild F-50 Jumbo.

Subject: RE: BS: Guild guitar
From: Peace
Date: 28 Jan 06 - 03:29 PM

or

"After his celebrated debut at the Newport Folk Festival, the Newport Folk Foundation wanted to buy Hurt a guitar and took him to Fretted Instruments in New York City, where he modestly chose a Guild F-30."

Subject: RE: BS: Guild guitar
From: Peace
Date: 28 Jan 06 - 03:38 PM

What He Played

By Jim Ohlschmidt

Until his rediscovery in 1963, John Hurt played nondescript, run-of-the-mill guitars like the first one his mother bought him. Beginning with his arrival in Washington, DC, friends and fans furnished Hurt with a number of different guitars that he used onstage and in the studio. According to acoustic-blues aficionado and Stella guitar collector Neil Harpe, Hurt was playing a Harmony-style Stella flattop before Tom Hoskins gave him a Gibson J-45, which had been refinished natural and had custom fingerboard inlays, and an Emory guitar, built around 1900, with a slotted headstock and a rectangular fingerboard inlay at the 12th fret that said "Emory."

After his celebrated debut at the Newport Folk Festival, the Newport Folk Foundation wanted to buy Hurt a guitar and took him to Fretted Instruments in New York City, where he modestly chose a Guild F-30. He played this guitar on the Vanguard album (Live!) recorded at Oberlin College and the live sets heard on Memorial Anthology.

Stefan Grossman was an avid student of Hurt's music, and he loaned Hurt a 1930 Martin OM-45 for the studio recordings he made for Vanguard (collected on The Complete Studio Recordings), many of which are his finest tracks. The guitar sounds fantastic on those records; sadly, Grossman no longer owns the instrument.

One of the last guitars Hurt owned was an unnamed, custom-built, auditorium-style flattop with inlaid wood binding and Hurt's name inscribed in a block marker at the 12th fret. This is the guitar he plays on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest TV show, and it's also seen in photographs of Hurt picking on the front porch of his Grenada, Mississippi house."

from

www.acousticguitar.com/ article/158/158,6794,FEATURE-1.asp

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: GUEST,khandu
Date: 29 Jan 06 - 12:02 PM

In 1975, Jesse Hurt, John's second wife, had one of John's guitars; perhaps it was the one described in the last paragraph above. Jesse was living in Grenada at the time. I visited her and she brought out the guitar. It was missing a few strings but still seemed to be in good shapeOf course, she would not consider selling it. I asked her it she would leave it to John's son, "Man" Hurt. She told me that "Man" could play just like his father but he would not get the guitar. She said she would leave it to the grandchildren.

Mary Hurt-Wright, who founded the Mississippi John Hurt Blues Foundation, opened his old house as a museum and presents a yearly MJH Blues Fest on the museum grounds, is the granddaughter of MJH through Gertrude Hoskins Hurt, John's first wife. She does not have the guitar.
I have no idea what became of it.


Ken

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: GUEST,cattail (no cookie)
Date: 29 Jan 06 - 01:32 PM

This site.

http://www.earlyblues.com/blues_singers.htm

lists him as having a Guild F-30 among other makes of guitars.

Cheers

Cattail !

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: GUEST,roger_beardsley
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 12:03 AM

I read in an older issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine ( in the 1990's?) an article about someone who picked up a Guild guitar and was told it was the one John Hurt picked up in NY.... I remember the model because it is the one I have... a Guild GF-30. It is a shallow jumbo, probably the same size as a J-30 but thinner. Not much ornamentation, but it has maple sides and back, and the braces appear to be shaved a bit. The back does not have braces, but it is formed a little to reinforce it, kind of like the forming on a Starfire electric. The neck is three piece; mostly maple with a mahogany stripe up the back.

I can imagine that the guitar stood out to him in the shop because mine has excellent balance from string to string, the neck plays easy, and the sound does not boom like most other jumbos. I wouldn't trade it for any other guitar I've played. I don't know if it sounds as good on stage, but in my living room at home it sounds just right. I have played a lot of ordinary Guild guitars, but this one is extraordinary.

I have also seen and played an Epiphone acoustic from the early 50s (pre Gibson, I don't recall the model) that was essentially identical in appearance and construction, but it didn't play or sound anywhere as good as that Guild GF-30. It had some pretty cool construction details though.

RB

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 02:35 AM

Surely this should be above the ine?

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 24 Sep 08 - 07:42 AM

I agree.

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 22 Apr 09 - 04:21 PM

See the New Yorker, August 4, 1980, Talk of the Town, page 24. The guitar in question is, I believe, a Gibson LG2. Though the story was factchecked by the NYer's renowned staff, and the unnamed friend would have been in a position to have owned such a guitar, I have never seen a photo of MJH playing a small Gibson.

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jan 10 - 06:26 PM

The pic I saw was clearly a Guild because the head stock was prominent to say the least and anyone who can read would see it says "Guild". John no doubt played a number of different guitars at different times.

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: dwditty
Date: 08 Jan 10 - 06:50 PM

I am afraid it was John's clever fingers that had much more impact on his sound than the make/model of guitar he was playing.

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: Leadfingers
Date: 08 Jan 10 - 07:31 PM

One of the things that amused about the UK Blues scene in the later sixties and seventies ,was the lads who were playing 'Authentic' Delta blues on Fancy Martins and Gibsons and wondering why they couldnt get the same 'sound' as Sleepy John and all those other guys who were playing Home Made guitars on the early records !

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: DonMeixner
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 02:05 AM

The Guild F-30 that John Hurt played was a short scale guitar. I have the same model from 1963. It has a boomy sound for so small a guitar and it is the best sounding guitar I have ever played with two notable exceptions. One of them being another Guild.

And while John Hurts fingers could make anything sound good I think he chose well when he picked up the F 30.

Don

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: stellaguy
Date: 09 Jan 10 - 07:21 AM

Tom Hoskins (known to those of us who were close to him as "Fang") had two guitars that Mississippi John Hurt played. But neither of them was "given" to John to keep. John owned the Guild F-30.

I believe Hurt played Fang's Emory at Newport. And he was photographed playing Fang's Gibson a number of times. One shot of him holding that Gibson was on the cover of John's first album on Piedmont. In the early 1990s Fang left the Emory with me for a couple of years for safe keeping. Unfortunately, by that time it was unplayable. But I remember playing the Emory back in the early sixties and it was an amazing sounding guitar!

When Fang came to collect the Emory from me, I asked him what ever became of the Gibson. Here's the story he told me. He said this all happened years after Hurt's death. He had been stopped by the police somewhere in the South and got busted because they discovered he had some grass in his car. (Knowing Fang, this is believable).

Long story short... When he was finally released, Fang was given his belongings and the Gibson, which had been in his car, was missing. Fang asked about the guitar, the cops replied..."What guitar? We did not see any guitar". Being glad to be out of the slammer, apparently Fang chalked it up to fate and simply moved on.

In addition to the two guitars that Fang owned, there are several photos that some of you may have seen with Hurt playing a resonator guitar. That guitar was a Gretsch that belonged to John's buddy, Washington D.C. bluesman Archie Edwards.

Neil Harpe

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 10:17 AM

does anyone have any info on the fang's family?

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 10 Sep 10 - 01:59 PM

"Sleepy John and all those guys playing home made guitars on early records"? This is news to me. Where did this information come from? Which early records are you referring too?

Hoot.

Subject: RE: John Hurt's Guild guitar
From: PHJim
Date: 05 Mar 17 - 10:44 PM

When John played in Toronto in 1964, he was playing a blonde Guild. Most of the photos I've seen of him with a Guild have him playing a sunburst guitar. Does anyone know about these two (or more) Guild guitars?