Rating: NNN
Assembled by Peter Case, Avalon Blues rounds up the usual tribute album suspects who’ll admit to a folk/blues inspiration — namely Beck, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, John Hiatt, Ben Harper, Gillian Welch, Alvin Youngblood Hart, etc. — to sing their favourite Mississippi John Hurt tunes. But the simple sweetness of Hurt’s rural blues music owed so much to the way he sang and played it, there isn’t a lot to be gained by revisiting his understated guitar-vocal arrangements. Avalon Blues winds up being little more than a quaint hootenanny. You’re better off with a copy of Vanguard’s Rediscovered collection.TP
