What's John Hurt playing in this video?

Can anyone ID it? It doesn't look like his F-30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85BvT5X6WSo

That's his appearance on Pete Seeger's "Rainbow Quest" show*, and it is indeed not any of the Guilds he was generally shown playing. There's a photo of John at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival** playing what looks like a Martin with a large 15th-fret marker (but is actually probably the Emory mentioned below), but the RQ guitar has a different inlay at the 12th and a non-Martin bridge--and the body doesn't look like any Martin or Guild model.

Here's part of a long, long thread about (among other things) John's instruments on the Unofficial Martin site. The poster is John's nephew:

Indeed, MJH played many guitars during his short career: Tom Hoskins' Emory slothead that he let MJH borrow, a "no name" guitar that was personally made for him by Jack Alderson who lived southwest of Philadelphia near Chester at the time he made it (that guitar was still in MJH's home when I last visited in 1968), Stefan Grossman's guitar, and many others that he borrowed at the coffeehouses where he worked, ack Aldersonincluding a 12 String.

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And later:

That very guitar that you see him playing on Rainbow Quest was in MJH's home, when I was there last in April of 1968. The strings were so rusty until I had to put on new strings to make it playable. The abrasion may not be noticeable, but it was there. I kid you not, my friend. Do you see that white rectangular spot on the bottom fret? That was an engraving of his name, "Mississippi John Hurt". Around 1964, MJH showed it to me, when he laid this guitar across my bed.

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https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/the...s-guitar-is-now-for-sale-see-t105216-s40.html


* Episode 36, also featuring Hedy West, available here: https://archive.org/details/RainbowQuest36

** http://www.cookephoto.com/images/63-4N-6.jpg

Thank you, sir.

Great sounding guitar. Interesting how Hurt anchors with two fingers and only plays the 3 note alternating bass here and there. Mostly he's alternating two strings.

Don't know what guitar it is. It has a truss rod cover at the headstock, so it is not a Martin, and as mentioned it has a different body size.





Ralf

jmascis said:

Interesting how Hurt anchors with two fingers and only plays the 3 note alternating bass here and there. Mostly he's alternating two strings.

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I noticed recently that it is the same way Mark Knopfler plays guitar by the way. Always the little finger/ring finger on the pickguard anchored. It's amazing what he can play with just thumb and two fingers!
Watch the video starting 1:59 as example, even if he lifts the two finders from time to time he only plays with 3 fingers: https://youtu.be/gwiqnJdN1Ug?t=1m59s



Ralf

If I read the posts from the UMGF thread correctly, the Rainbow Quest guitar is the one built for John by Jack Alderson. See also this snippet (via Google Books):

https://books.google.com/books?id=V...AH#v=onepage&q="Jack Alderson" guitar&f=false

This blog post includes a long account of one of John's other guitars (the Emory slothead he is pictured playing at Newport) and at the end mentions the Alderson. The post gets a good bit of information from Jim Ohlschmidt and Neil Harpe, both sources I would trust to be careful and accurate.

http://kenlelen.blogspot.com/2015/03/mississippi-john-hurt-and-emory-guitar.html

And here's a more direct source:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/ste...itar-question-for-stefan-or-others-t1139.html

Mark Knopfler is a lefty and spent some early years playing a resonator guitar. The one on the cover of the album " Brothers in Arms ". I suspect he picked up his style from playing that.

As a lefty myself, I found I can drift into that style, if I don't have a flat pick in my hand, but what to do solo style stuff. It doesn't have the sharp sound of using a pick, so it's mostly slower Jazz type tunes I use it in.