Michael Hurley, Underground Folk Legend and Singer-Songwriter, Dies at 83

Michael Hurley, the outsider people artist and singer-songwriter who got here up within the Greenwich Village people scene within the Nineteen Sixties and continued making music into the current day, has died at residence in Astoria, Oregon, his household revealed in an announcement. “The ‘Godfather of freak people’ was for a prolific half-century the purveyor of an eccentric genius and compassionate wit. He alone was Snock. There is no such thing as a different,” it reads. Hurley was 83.

For over 60 years, Hurley wrote and recorded authentic songs that parse by way of bluegrass, freak-folk, and blues with an ear for eccentric concepts and stripped-back moments. Although his music and album paintings was playful—a wolf devours whoopie pies at a diner on the quilt of 1994’s Wolfways, and tune titles vary from “You’re a Canine; Don’t Speak to Me ” to “What Made My Hamburger Disappear?”—Hurley discovered a technique to faucet into the intense elements of life concurrently, utilizing minute particulars and sweeping reflections to encourage listeners to take a step again and admirer the larger image of life earlier than them.

Born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a number of days earlier than Christmas in 1941, Hurley began taking part in music and writing his personal songs as a preteen. Summers had been spent listening to Fat Waller and Jelly Roll Morton, and making up easy songs throughout roadtrips along with his household. He dropped out of highschool to design fanzines, play music, and hitchhike with a guitar slung over his again. It was on a type of wandering routes that he was picked up by Fred Ramsey, a folklorist who lived up the highway and ended up producing his debut. After recovering from a multi-year-long wrestle with mononucleosis, a 22-year-old Hurley lastly recorded his debut album, the aptly titled First Songs, in 1963 for Folkways, the famed label residence to Woody Guthrie and Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folks Music.

Hurley expanded his abilities past singing and taking part in guitar to additionally embody fiddle and banjo, and was an energetic illustrator as nicely, portray and drawing lots of the artworks that comprised his album covers. When his childhood pal and future Youngbloods singer Jesse Colin Younger selected to champion his work, Hurley’s music started to unfold by phrase of mouth – partly due to Younger releasing his subsequent two albums, 1971’s Armchair Boogie and 1972’s Hello Fi Snock Uptown, on his Warner Bros. imprint Raccoon.

After signing a contract with Rounder, Hurley launched Have Moicy! in 1975 and the album garnered each underground fanfare and important acclaim, resulting in the discharge of two extra LPs on the label: 1976’s Lengthy Journey and 1980’s Snockgrass. As he continued to churn out dozens of data, Hurley additionally garned the admiration of his youthful friends, together with Yo La Tengo, Cat Energy, Lucinda Williams, Vic Chesnutt, and Calexico, amongst others.