"Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me" - Mississippi John Hurt
Apple Music link: https://music.apple.com/us/album/let-the-mermaids-flirt-with-me/712021285?i=712021500
I have yet to find a musician whose music can radiate gentleness and humane warmth so organically like Mississippi John Hurt. Whether he was 35 years old or 73, he always performed as if he is a wise and content old man, having experienced the whole world and found inner peace within it. When you hear him sing and play, you somehow learn the very essence of life itself, but he doesn't teach you by rigid, moralistic lessons. He shows you by subtly healing chords, by stories of redemption from tragedy and cruelty, by tender love between people that seems to transcend all other worldly things. John Hurt's unique personality and approach to music, laying the foundation for nearly all modern folk music, was too modern for the musical world in the '20s, which is why it took all way until the '60s for him to gain the recognition he deserved. Even then, his deeply humanistic message is something that is both understandable to all people but takes a lifetime to process, just because there is so much depth and nuance to each note and breath of his that ever graced a microphone.
This song in particular, a big favorite of mine, was among the last he would record in his life. It was a part of the two final sessions in 1966 he held in a Manhattan hotel, released six years later in an LP titled Last Sessions. What's funny about this song and album in general is that he performs them pretty much in the same way he performed over his whole career. His voice weathered and his technical playing skills weakened, but he was clearly unfazed by his approaching mortality, his style feeling just as natural in old age as it was when he was much younger.
If you want to understand why, this song is a perfect place to start answering that question. Based on a familiar old folk melody that you can hear in songs like Jimmie Rodgers's "Waiting For A Train", the song both lyrically and musically is based on a deep longing for salvation from worldly troubles, finding no meaning in work, people, and life on Earth in general and dreaming of a paradise underneath the ocean. However, he doesn't sing the song as if he craves such a refuge: he just sings it as if that's simply the flow of life. When he speaks about those pains and sorrows, he speaks about them with melancholy, yes, but with a mindset of acceptance, that life's difficulties are to be endured without fighting or mourning them. At the same time, talking about entering the cool, blue sea and flirting with all of the mermaids brings him joy in a detached way: he does not yearn for any particular fate, happy to get such an afterlife but not afraid to accept whatever he gets. It's such a profoundly beautiful way to live, one that allows you to do what is necessary but find peace and contentment with whatever the unpredictable world brings you.
This is just one of the many jewels of his career where he succeeds in showing his way of life while soothing the soul, and it's no wonder Mississippi John Hurt struck a chord so deep in future listeners that they went on an expedition in 1963 to find the guy and get him recording again. That's ultimately why, among his many late-period recordings, this holds a place of honor: it's rare that an artist can capture something so deeply universalist, but it's even harder to find someone who can do it with such humility that it seems like a natural part of their being.
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