The Songs of Michael Hurley

For over 60 years, Hurley wrote and recorded original songs that parse through bluegrass, freak-folk, and blues with an ear for eccentric ideas and stripped-back moments. Though his music and album artwork was playful—a wolf devours whoopie pies at a diner on the cover of 1994’s Wolfways—Hurley found a way to tap into the serious parts of life simultaneously, using minute details and sweeping reflections to encourage listeners to take a step back and admirer the bigger picture of life before them.

Born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, several days before Christmas in 1941, Michael Hurley started playing music and writing his own songs as a preteen. Summers were spent listening to Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton, and making up simple songs during roadtrips with his family. He dropped out of high school to design fanzines, play music, and hitchhike with a guitar slung over his back. It was on one of those wandering routes that he was picked up by Fred Ramsey, a folklorist who lived up the road and ended up producing his debut. After recovering from a years-long struggle with mononucleosis, a 22-year-old Hurley finally recorded his debut album, the aptly titled First Songs, in 1963 for Folkways, the famed label home to Woody Guthrie and Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.

You may also like the following events from Broadside Hacks:

• Next month, 12th July, 07:00 pm, Bonnie Dobson and The Hanging Stars in London

Also check out other Music events in London, Entertainment events in London.