[gfirob]

I knew John Hurt when I was a teenager working for the record company that recorded him when he first came up north after his rediscovery, and we used to try to copy the way that he played after sitting in a room with him and watching him pick. It was not easy. John Hurt has swing and a mistake a lot of us made was to treat it as a kind of mechanical syncopated fingerpicking when actually he was much looser than that, more improvisational and fluid. To play like that you have to be loose and feel the swing in it. He was really a masterful player and a very kind and generous man, happy to show a kid how to pick and share his songs.