In keeping with many masters of delta blues, Mississippi John Hurt did not receive much recognition until later in his life, though he is revered as a master of the style to this day. Pay Day comes off his 1966 Vanguard release Today!, released the same year (1996) as Skip James Today!. Like Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt was a self-taught fingerpicker from (you guessed it) Mississippi whose recordings for Okeh records in 1928 met with little success. His music career seemingly over before it started, he spent the next forty years sharecropping and playing local shows and bars and dance halls. Inclusion on the Smithsonian’s Anthology of American Folk Music revived interest in his work and the man himself, who was located in part because one of his few early singles contained lyrics suggesting his hometown was Avalon, MS.

Riding a renewed wave of interest in American roots music throughout the 1960s, Hurt recorded a number of albums first for the Smithsonian and then for Vanguard, Piedmont, and Gryphon. John Fahey memorialized him in the first track from his Requia release, Requiem for John Hurt, which was released following Hurt’s death in 1966. You can see Hurt perform Lonesome Valley here on an episode from Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest, a short lived television show hosted by Seeger devoted to folk music. For more info on Hurt’s life and music career, check out this website run by his nephew.