[gfirob]

I actually used to know John Hurt when I was a teenager. My older brother worked for a blues record company (he was Skip James road manager) at the time the blues revival was going on, and so we had the chance to hang around with these guys (John Hurt, Skip James, Bukka White, Rev. Robert Wilkins) and listen to them play. White suburban kids listening to old black men.

John Hurt was by far the most accessible of them, very generous, kind and patient. Hurt has a kind of swing in his picking that is kind of hard to replicate. A lot of players end up sounding kind of mechanical when they learn
Hurt's tunes because they get the notes right, but not that swing. I think Scott Ainslie gets it closest to right.

Skip James always resented Hurt's greater success because he (James) thought he was a better player, and he was. But James was much more of a blues guy and less of a songster like Hurt, so Hurt ended up being the second most popular traditional performer (in terms of record sales) after Doc Watson. Bukka White was a fabulous player and more careful about his copyright ownership and the business end of things. Robert Wilkins really was a minister and transposed all his blues songs into Gospel songs (the Rolling Stones covered his "Prodigal Son") and he was a very sweet man too.

In the end, I really think John Hurt's wide popularity had to do with his accessible style (songs rather than blues) that made him so popular with white audiences at the time. Not meaning to demean his playing, which was great, but I think he was much more of an easy-listening guitar player compared to somebody whose music was much darker, like Skip James or even Bukka White.