There is no question as to the exceptional quality of this biography of a major African American songster. Mississippi John Hurt has been memorialized in the conversion of his Avalon house to a museum, in the memorial tablet marking his Mississippi grave, and in the publication of Philip Ratcliffe's invaluable study.–Paul Oliver, author of numerous books on the blues, most recently Yonder Come the Blues: The Evolution of a Genre; Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recording and the Early Traditions of the Blues; and Broadcasting the Blues: Black Blues in the Segregation Era