Mississippi John Hurt was reportedly born in Carroll County, Mississippi on July 3, 1893. But some sources, including his gravestone, say his date of birth is March 8, 1892.
Born in the nineteenth century less than thirty years after the end of the Civil War, Hurt lived to see the start of the Civil Rights movement, giving us some fantastic music along the way.
Hurt first recorded in the late 1920s, but his music found no audience. And then the record company went out of business during The Great Depression. So, Hurt returned to work as a sharecropper in Avalon, Mississippi.
But new fans discovered Hurt when his recordings of “Frankie” and “Spike Driver Blues” appeared in Harry Smith’s collection The Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952. And in 1963, music collector Tom Hoskins found Hurt based on Hurt’s song “Avalon,” which referred to his hometown.
Hoskins convinced Hurt to return to performing. Hurt’s performance at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival helped re-launch his career. He performed across the country, appeared on television, and recorded new albums.
Hurt’s musical style crossed different genres, including blues and folk. He played his guitar with a unique syncopated fingerpicking style that he taught himself.
Below is a fantastic 1965 recording of Mississippi John Hurt singing “Lonesome Valley” on folksinger Pete Seeger’s TV program, Rainbow Quest.
Hurt got to enjoy his new success for a handful of years, dying in November 2, 1966. But, man, we are lucky he found his way back from obscurity.
The New York Timesrecently reported that an internal Marine Corps investigation concluded that for more than 70 years it had wrongly identified one of the men in one of the most famous American photos. The Marines found that a private first class, Harold Schultz, was one of the six men in the iconic photo of the flag being raised over Iwo Jima during World War II.
Joe Rosenthal took the Pulitzer-Prize winning photo on February 23, 1945. For years it was thought that one of the men in the photo was a Navy hospital corpsman named John Bradley. But the recent inquiry, which included careful study of the uniforms in the photo, concluded that Schultz was in the photo, not Bradley. (Below is a brief video showing the famous raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.)
The Marines opened the investigation in response to questions raised by producers working on the documentary, The Unknown Flag Raisers of Iwo Jima. The production company, Lucky 8 TV took their evidence to the chief historian of the Marines, Charles Neimeyer, leading to the appointment of a panel to investigate the issue. The film is being shown on the Smithsonian Channel.
Harold Schultz
There is something sad about the news that connects together Bradley and Schultz. As for Harold Schultz, he did not live to see the news, having died in 1995 at age 70.
The day after the photo was taken, Schultz was wounded and sent home. He lived in Los Angeles as a mail sorter, marrying for the first time at the age of 60. He married a neighbor, although they never moved in together and he rarely discussed his time in the military.
Schultz, however, did know he was in the photo. He just did not talk about it. His stepdaughter Dezreen MacDowell said that one night during dinner, he did mention that he was one of the flag raisers. When she told him he was a hero, he responded, “No, I was a Marine.”
MacDowell said he never talked about it again. She explained, “He was a very self-effacing Midwestern person.” She was happy to hear he would finally be getting the recognition: “He was a kind and gentle man.”
Schultz’s story seems both happy and sad. He finally got the recognition, but he did not live to see it. Then again, it appears he did not seek any recognition for his part in the photo.
John Bradley
John Bradley’s story, and how it affects his child, has a tragic quality too. Along with Ron Powers, Bradley’s son James Bradley wrote a best-selling book, Flags of Our Fathers(2000). The book told the story of the men who raised the Iwo Jima flag, including Bradley’s father.
After the battle, John Bradley participated in war bond drives with other survivors who raised the flag, Ira Hayes and Rene Gagnon. Bradley also played himself in the 1949 movie Sands of Iwo Jima, which starred John Wayne.
John died in 1994, but his son James Bradley learned about the investigation while it was going on. And he came to conclude that his father had participated in an earlier flag-raising and mistakenly thought he was in the famous photo.
John Bradley never heard that he was not in the photo. But I feel bad for his son, who invested so much into believing his father was in the photo. He seemed accepting of the new discovery, although he did not participate in the documentary or the New York Times story.
Flags of Our Fathers
Clint Eastwood directed the movie version of Bradley’s book, Flags of Our Fathers (2006). Below is the trailer.
My favorite scene in the movie involves John “Doc” Bradley (played by Ryan Phillippe) near the end of the film. On his deathbed, John tells his son James about how he and other Marines went swimming after the battle and the famous photo.
The movie then shows the Marines on the beach. They are laughing and jumping in the water. They were humans.
It is a beautiful scene, humanizing the soldiers we so often think of as something like superheroes. And the scene may remind one of how our parents and grandparents were once young men and women. No matter what they accomplished, they once were young and like their children, just having some fun on the beach.
Two Different Kinds of Heroes
I hope James Bradley is not too disappointed upon learning his father was not in the photo as portrayed in his book and in the film. All of the soldiers at Iwo Jima were doing something special for their country, for their families, and for their buddies.
As for Schultz, he stands in stark contrast to our current fame-seeking fads. Here was a man who was part of something pretty cool. And he not only never Tweeted or or put it in Facebook, he barely mentioned it to those he loved. And so a man in one of the most famous photographs of all time was someone who would never have taken a selfie. Leave your two cents in the comments. Stamp photo via public domain.
Little Eva got a big break as a result of a babysitting job, leading to her hit recording of “The Loco-Motion.”
Eva Narcissus Boyd, who became known as Little Eva, was born on June 29, 1943. Although she is best known for her recording of “The Loco-Motion,” she recorded several other songs such as “Keep Your Hands Off My Baby,” “Let’s Turkey Trot,” and “Old Smokey Loco-Motion.”
“Loco-Motion” and a Big Break
Little Eva had her big break as a teenager when she was babysitting for singer Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin. King and Goffin wrote the song “The Loco-Motion” and asked Little Eva to sing the demo.
King and Goffin loved the demo. So, they released Little Eva’s version of the song, which became a No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1962.
Not many videos exist of Little Eva performing. The above video for “The Loco-Motion” seems to cobble together different scenes so it appears she performs the entire song. But reportedly the only existing video of her singing “The Loco-Motion” is a short clip from the show Shindig!
Below, however, is Little Eva singing “Let’s Turkey Trot,” another dance song. She performed the song on a March 3, 1965 episode of Shindig!
After “The Loco-Motion”
After “The Loco-Motion,” Little Eva worked with King and Goffin but she never saw the success of “The Loco-Motion” again. Little Eva recorded a demo for another King and Goffin classic, “One Fine Day.” But The Chiffons instead recorded the official release, scoring a hit with it.
Instead of getting “One Fine Day,” Little Eva recorded “Old Smokey Locomotion.” The song was a re-hash of “The Loco-Motion,” combining it with “On Top of Old Smokey.” The odd combination is kind of fun nonetheless.
King and Goffin wrote another song inspired by Little Eva: “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss).” But the inspiration was unfortunate. The songwriters based the song on conversations with Little Eva, who told them her abusive boyfriend loved her.
Little Eva did not get to record the song. Instead, the Crystals recorded “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss),” which was produced by Phil Spector. King later said she regretted writing the song about domestic violence.
After her early success, Little Eva lived much of her life in obscurity in North Carolina. She never received much money from her music. And she retired from recording in 1971 and worked as a nanny. Still, she returned to doing some recording and touring on oldie circuits after Kylie Minogue had a 1988 hit with her version of “The Loco-Motion.”
Singing With the Angels
Little Eva performed until diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2001. She passed away April 10, 2003.
In 2008, a local TV station found out her grave in Belhaven, North Carolina needed some work. The city restored the cemetery area and marked Little Eva’s grave with gravestone featuring a steam locomotive and the words “Singing with the Angels.”
What is your favorite Little Eva song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
St. Paul & the Broken Bones are releasing their second album, Sea of Noise. The songs on the new album, including their first single “All I Ever Wonder,” address a variety of themes.
The Birmingham, Alabama band gave us some throwback soul music with their 2014 debut, Half the City. And the new single maintains much of the sound of the first album. But while the songs on Half the City mostly focused on love and heartbreak, the band with lead singer Paul Janeway are going for broader issues with the new album.
Janeway recently explained to Entertainment Weekly that he did not want to just focus on heartbreak songs because “I’m a happily married man. I wanted new sounds and ideas.” So, the new album brings that great St. Paul & the Broken Bones sound to address some modern societal issues.
The first single from the album, “All I Ever Wonder,” is a call to action of sorts. Janeway explains how it is easy to be apathetic, but, “You’ve got to stand for something.”
I can’t tell what side I’m on; I can’t tell what’s right or wrong; We can’t ever just sing one song; Love goes hate goes now I’m left all alone.
Check out “All I Ever Wonder,” complete with the band’s brass instruments and a touch of the band’s throwback Otis Redding sound.
Sea of Noise hits stores and the Internet on September 9, 2016.
What is your favorite song by St. Paul & the Broken Bones? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Although Sturgill Simpson’s voice is most often compared to Waylon Jennings, his choice in music often connects him to a wide variety of artists. So it was pretty cool recently to see he had performed “You Don’t Miss Your Water” live.
“You Don’t Miss Your Water” was written by William Bell, who released his own version of the song on Stax Records in 1961. Most people, however, may be familiar with Otis Redding‘s version that appeared on his 1965 album Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul.
Sturgill Simpson, however, is not the first person to take the soul song into country territory. The Byrds covered the song on Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968), with Roger McGuinn doing lead vocal work on the official release even though Gram Parsons had originally recorded the lead.
With such a rich history, a lot of people still do not know the song. So, it was great to see that Simpson performed “You Don’t Miss Your Water” at First Avenue in Minneapolis on Sunday, June 5, 2016. Check it out.
“You Don’t Miss Your Water” is a heartbreak song. The singer explains how how he took his lover for granted, but then he only realized what he had when the lover left: “You don’t miss your water/’Till your well runs dry.” It is a perfect song for both soul and country artists.
Mississippi John Hurt was reportedly born in Carroll County, Mississippi on July 3, 1893. But some sources, including his gravestone, say his date of birth is March 8, 1892.
(2000). The book told the story of the men who raised the Iwo Jima flag, including Bradley’s father.
hits stores and the Internet on September 9, 2016.
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(2016).
