{"id":4481,"date":"2021-11-06T09:05:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-06T13:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=4481"},"modified":"2021-11-06T12:17:50","modified_gmt":"2021-11-06T16:17:50","slug":"coffee-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/coffee-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Blues (Mississippi John Hurt)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Coffee Blues (Mississippi John Hurt)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/q4NB_ZYhntM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Mississippi John Hurt always explained that this song was about coffee; specifically Maxwell House, because it was &#8220;good to the last drop, just like it says on the can.&#8221; He&#8217;d say just one spoonful of Maxwell House coffee was as good as two or three cups of any other <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4486\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Maxwell-House-can.jpg?resize=238%2C235&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"238\" height=\"235\" \/>brand. Then he&#8217;d tell how he used to know a woman who made him that good Maxwell House coffee every morning, but one day she went away &#8212; some said to Memphis, some said to Leland &#8212; and he wrote this song about her. That&#8217;s what he was thinking about when he sang that he wanted her &#8220;loving spoonful.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Later on, a rock band named themselves after this song, presumably because they were coffee fanciers.<\/p>\n<p>In an earlier post I sang and wrote about another song called &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bout-a-spoonful\/\">\u2019Bout a Spoonful<\/a>,&#8221; which was probably related to this one. I learned that song from Dave Van Ronk, Gary Davis, and Mance Lipscomb, and in my post I kind of hinted that it was about something other than coffee. I apologize for that; John Hurt would not have lied to us.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-4489 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/best-of-John-Hurt-LP-1.jpg?resize=272%2C272&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"272\" height=\"272\" \/>When I started to play fingerpicking guitar, John Hurt pretty much defined that style &#8212; after Elizabeth Cotten&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/freight-train\/\">Freight Train<\/a>,&#8221; we all learned his version of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/my-creole-belle\/\">Creole Belle<\/a>&#8220;; the first song I learned from tablature was probably his version of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/stagolee\/\">Stagolee<\/a>&#8220;; the first song Dave Van Ronk taught to new students was his &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/spike-drivers-blues\/\">Spike Driver Blues<\/a>&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t remember when or how I learned &#8220;Coffee Blues,&#8221; and for at least forty years I played it pretty much the way Hurt did. Then, a few months ago, it occurred to me that I could play breaks using his fifth-position riffs from &#8220;Monday Morning Blues.&#8221; Seemed obvious once I thought of it, and fell neatly under my fingers.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve previously posted at least another half dozen songs I learned from Hurt&#8217;s records, and that well is far from dry. His guitar arrangements are disarmingly simple and endlessly complex, and his songs have a quiet charm and humor that give me endless pleasure, whether I&#8217;m listening or playing. Someone recently asked which of his songs was my favorite, and the only possible answer was that I&#8217;m glad I don&#8217;t have to choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mississippi John Hurt always explained that this song was about coffee; specifically Maxwell House, because it was &#8220;good to the last drop, just like it says on the can.&#8221; He&#8217;d say just one spoonful of Maxwell House coffee was as good as two or three cups of any other brand. Then he&#8217;d tell how he &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/coffee-blues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Coffee Blues (Mississippi John Hurt)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Coffee Blues (Mississippi John Hurt) - 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That was one of the defining albums for me, the first place I heard Dave Van Ronk, John Hammond, John Lee Hooker...\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Blues-at-Newport-LP-295x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4495,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/monday-morning\/","url_meta":{"origin":4481,"position":2},"title":"Monday Morning Blues (Mississippi John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Monday Morning Blues\" was a late arrival in my John Hurt repertoire. I always loved and played his music, but only began to study it carefully after I got back from Africa in the 1990s. 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