A CONVERSATION WITH PETER CASE (continued)

PM: I noticed some dates coming up with you and Buddy and Julie [Miller]. Are they friends of yours?

PC: I've known Buddy and Julie for a long time, and I admire their work, you know.

PM: They're amazing folks.

PC: I met them here in San Francisco back in the 80s.

PM: Oh, yeah. I didn't meet them when I was there. I didn't meet them until Nashville.

PC: Buddy had a studio down there by Kaiser Stadium.

PM: Really? And so you've been friends since that time?

PC: Well, yeah. They're just people I know. I've always felt friendly toward them.

PM: Yeah. There's a long telling interview with them on Puremusic. Check it out sometime.

PC: Really?

PM: Yeah, it's a trip. [see our archives]

So, as it has been for you, the music of Mississippi John Hurt was and is really important to me. We ought to give that a little conversation.

PC: Yeah.

PM: You not only produced but also, I suppose, organized that Grammy nominated Hurt tribute called Avalon Blues.

PC: Right. Yeah, I mean, the production of it basically was the organizing of it. Picking out the songs and the players.

PM: Whose idea was it to begin with?

PC: It was mine. I brought it up with Kevin Wahl from Vanguard. I said, "Somebody should do a John Hurt record." He said, "You ought to do it." So I said, "Yeah." And I immediately started on it.

But it took about 18 months. It took a long time to get through all the different management companies and get the whole thing pulled together. Instead of doing it all at once, I did it song by song with different people, to make sure that we were on the right track. The only way to really keep control was to sort of do it song by song. I'd get a couple of people to work on their songs, and they'd send them in, so we could add pieces to the puzzle that would make sense. That way, in the end, the whole record really did play as one piece of music. Very rarely do tribute records come out in a way that you can listen to the whole thing. A lot of times there's just a couple of cuts. But I really felt like on this one, we got lucky.

PM: And it probably made a difference that people are so into John Hurt.

PC: It was surprising to me, because I knew I was, and I knew that a couple of my friends were, but I didn't realize that three different generations of guitar pickers were as hard into him as that. It really opened my eyes. I knew that he was important, but I didn't realize he was that important.

PM: Yeah. And I thought there were a lot of surprises, like Steve Earle cutting "Candy Man" with his son was really cool.

PC: Right, right, that was cool.

PM: I was surprised to see Gillian Welch on there, not being a big finger picker, but certainly an important musician of our generation to get on such a record.

PC: Yeah. She did a real nice version of "Beulah Land."

PM: Yeah. And so how did you decide who was going to be on it? And what was it like contacting them do it?

PC: Well, there were people I knew played the stuff, and that I played John Hurt's music with. And that included Bill Morrissey, Dave Alvin, Victoria Williams, and Lucinda Williams.

PM: You played Hurt's music with those people?

PC: Yeah. And Steve Earle, too. So I knew all those guys knew the music and were in love with Hurt, and could do it. But I don't know Bruce Cockburn or Ben Harper, and they blew my mind with what they were doing. I knew Beck was a fan, but I didn't know Beck, and I still don't, but...

Cockburn really surprised me. His piece was great. But he just submitted his. Some of them I didn't even solicit.

PM: Oh, really? They just came in.

PC: Yeah. Cockburn just called up Vanguard and said, "I've got a track for that John Hurt record." [laughter] I said, "Yeah, this is fantastic." So that was amazing. I mean, I guess he said he would do a track, and I had to talk to him about it and stuff. But yeah, it was exciting the way the whole thing came together. A couple of things were very surprising.

PM: And it's amazing that it got received at the level that it should have, for a change.

PC: Yeah, it was nice.  continue

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