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Fire Destroys Museum Honoring Legendary Blues Musician Mississippi John Hurt

The three-room shack in the town of Avalon, Mississippi, was once the singer and guitarist's home

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office said that an electrical technician was called to the site, where he found the building ablaze, as the Clarion Ledger ’s Pam Dankins reports. “Classic” Delta blues music was “melodically complex, haunting and often discordant,” featuring lyrics that described violence, infidelity and poverty, as David Brown wrote for Smithsonian magazine in 2022. As jazz historian Nat Hentoff once wrote, “Hurt is not a raw, harsh chronicler of the human condition in the manner of many Mississippi-shaped blues storytellers.

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