First Songs LP

First Songs catches Michael Hurley at 22, recorded by Smithsonian Folkways on the same reel-to-reel machine used for Lead Belly's Last Sessions, with nothing behind him but a thumping acoustic guitar and his own voice. It's the most unpolished he ever sounded, loose porch-jam country blues that somehow turned him into a Greenwich Village folk fixture and won over admirers like Lucinda Williams and Cat Power. A 2001 reissue retitled it Blueberry Wine on Locust Music, which is a strange way to build a cult following, but it worked.