Eccentric folk music troubadour Michael Hurley (1941-2025) recorded just one album for Folkways Records: First Songs, released in 1964, was the beginning of a discography that spanned sixty years, right up until the end of his life. As we reflect on Hurley’s life and career, we look to the Smithsonian Folkways catalog as a window into his lifetime of listening, traveling, and the music that inspired generations of artists and fans.
Read more about Hurley’s life and legacy in an obituary by folklorist Emily Hilliard here, and take this long journey through the catalog by reading the track notes and listening along below.
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The Werewolf Song
By Michael Hurley
From First Songs (1964)
Michael Hurley’s first album, First Songs, was released in 1964 on Folkways Records. The album debuts a few songs and characters whose worlds Hurley would develop in song and illustration for the rest of his life. “The Werewolf Song” appears as “Werewolf” on both Armchair Boogie (1972) and Wolfways (1994).
In an interview for Popwatch magazine in 1997, Hurley describes the werewolf as “a gentleman who was a helpful influence. He showed me that there were others who would never fit in. It seemed that once that snout and facial hair and pointed ears appeared, there wasn’t really a realistic chance that the guy would ever be able to have a lovely wife and a good home.”
Pastures of Plenty
By Michael Hurley and Jon Neufeld
From Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie’s 26 Northwest Songs (2017)
“Pastures of Plenty” was a song Hurley often played live. A longtime member of the Portland, Oregon folk and DIY music scene, he performs the song here alongside producer and guitarist Jon Neufeld, as part of a Smithsonian Folkways compilation that celebrates Guthrie’s lasting contributions to the history and musical traditions of the Pacific Northwest.
Friends from All around the World (Hello Version)
By Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs
From Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs Sing and Play Folk Songs for Children (2023)
Songwriter and childrens’ musician Mr. Greg asked Hurley to contribute a song to his Smithsonian Folkways album with Cass McCombs, Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs Sing and Play New Folk Songs for Children. He reflects on his relationship with Hurley and his music:
“I’ve noticed that Michael Hurley’s songs and drawings contain a similar whimsy and wisdom to the artworks and fantastical conversations that I am treated to by the preschoolers in my classroom. If I were still a child, I’d like to imagine that my dramatic play would take place within Michael Hurley’s colorful world of wildegeeses, hoot owls, protein monsters, old black crows, snips of parsnips, bowls of beans, mock trumpets, blue navigators, Mr. Whiskerwitz, Automatic Slim, Zeke Boone, and Jocko.
My initial interplanetary trip into Michael Hurley’s world began while listening to his debut Folkways album, and I never wanted to return. It is my favorite-ever Folkways release. When Cass McCombs and I were given the opportunity to record a children’s album for Smithsonian Folkways, I thought it was essential to get Doc Snock back on his old label for a quick cameo. Michael Hurley closes out ‘Friends From All Around The World’ with my daughter Oona, who, by the way, used to slumber under a picture of Zeke Boone that Michael painted for our family. ‘Hi Michael Hurley, say hi to Boone and Jocko for me.’ -Oona Gardner (8 years old)”
(Mr. Greg released some 45s, an LP, and an 8-track cassette of Hurley’s on his label Secret Seven Records. Most of them were co-released with Mississippi Records.)
Green, Green Rocky Road
By Elizabeth Mitchell with Dan Zanes
From Sunny Day (2010)
Elizabeth Mitchell is beloved for her original and traditional arrangements of songs that kids love to sing along to. She has six full-length albums on Smithsonian Folkways; Dan Zanes, Grammy-winning children’s artist and Mitchell’s collaborator on “Green, Green Rocky Road,” has three. (Hurley once recorded an unreleased album of children’s songs, including a unique version of “The Woody Woodpecker Song.”) Mitchell also has a storied career as a member of the indie rock outfit Ida, who collaborated with Hurley on the tremendous album Ida Con Snock. Hear her especially on “Going Steady.”
“Green, Green Rocky Road” was largely composed by Len Chandler from a traditional African American children’s game song (here’s one version from the catalog). The song was popularized during the folk revival by Dave Van Ronk, but fellow traveler Karen Dalton also regularly performed it live (as captured on two of her posthumous albums, 1966 and Green Rocky Road).
Folklorist Emily Hilliard recently resurfaced a direct link between Dalton and Hurley. Swiss artist Emmanuelle Antille’s documentary A Bright Light features a quick pan of Dalton’s papers and song notes that includes chord changes for an unattributed song called “O My Stars.” In 2013, Hurley told Arthur magazine that after his Folkways album, he unsuccessfully sent out a demo: “Three of the songs on that demo I also sent to Karen Dalton. I didn’t hear back from her, but years later she did play ‘O My Stars’ for me on her old guitar.”
On Time
By Victoria Williams
From Fast Folk Musical Magazine (1989, Vol. 4, No. 9): Los Angeles (1989)
In 1997, Hurley told Popwatch magazine about musical contemporaries who he currently related to: among others, Stampfel, Weber, and “Victoria Williams from Joshua Tree, CA.” A singer, songwriter, and musician born in Shreveport, Louisiana, whose life and career kept her in southern California, Williams has had a storied career blending genres like country, folk, and jazz in her signature soaring vibrato. She’s recorded two songs for Fast Folk Musical Magazine, an outlet for folk singer-songwriters to release their first recordings that boasts alumni like Nanci Griffith, whose music Hurley loved (and who also recorded two songs for the magazine). In the Los Angeles issue—“a marking of the simultaneous ending of a musical cycle and the beginning of a new one,” according to Los Angeles Times music critic Steve Hochman—Williams has a two-page profile feature, which you can read in the album’s liner notes.
His Tapes Roll On
By Peter Stampfel
From The Harry Smith Connection: A Live Tribute to the Anthology of American Folk Music (1998)
The Holy Modal Rounders started as a psychedelic folk duo helmed by Steve Weber and fiddle and banjo player Peter Stampfel, featured here, solo, with an original song about experimental polymath and producer of Folkways Records’ pivotal Anthology of American Folk Music (for which Stampfel contributed liner notes to the reissue, and of which Hurley was also a fan).
Hurley drew the cover for The Holy Modal Rounders’ Good Taste Is Timeless (1971) and penned several songs they recorded across their catalog. He was also joined by the outfit to create The Unholy Modal Rounders on his 1976 album Have Moicy!.
Louisiana Two Step
By Clifton Chenier
From Louisiana Blues and Zydeco (1990)
In the mid-1960s, a twenty-something Michael Hurley sent a letter to Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz, writing reverently and at length about Clifton Chenier. A telling excerpt:
“That Clifton Chenier is great - fabulous - excellent....He is the best blues singer I heard in a dogs age [sic]...It will take more time before he catches on, but he must be bound to win, because anyone with an ear for that jazz thinks he hits the spot like a jackhammer. Beautiful!...A whole nest of us freaks are eagerly awaiting Chenier’s next album with more of both zydeco & the blues on it. By the way, can you send me information about where we can catch this band live in Louisiana? Would also like his mailing address.”
Clifton recorded “Louisiana Two Step”—a song with origins in south Louisiana Cajun dance culture—for his first full-length LP, released by Arhoolie Records in 1965.
Old Ship of Zion
By Lead Belly
From Lead Belly's Last Sessions (1994)
The songs of musician and composer Huddie Ledbetter (“Lead Belly”) majorly influenced artists in, outside of, and across the folk scene in the mid-twentieth century. Hurley was no exception. In addition to citing Lead Belly as a formative artist to his own career (and early on, as his favorite singer, along with country music mainstay Hank Williams), Hurley shares a fortuitous connection to the virtuosic singer: Frederic Ramsey Jr. recorded First Songs on the same reel that he used for Lead Belly’s spontaneous and spellbinding Last Sessions.
Sleepy Man Blues
By Bukka White
From Blues Rediscoveries (1966)
Hurley was deeply inspired by artists like Big Bill Broonzy and Blind Willie McTell, and cites Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, John Lee Hooker, and Bukka White as the musicians who influenced him most when he was learning to play guitar. He’d often play blues and blues arrangements, and he imbued a blues spirit in many of his songs.
Hurley’s song “Three Blinds Blues” pays tribute to Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, and Blind Willie McTell, but his most explicit tributes are often unrecorded: live covers of their and others’ blues songs, performed throughout his long and winding career. As late as 2024, Hurley was still performing Bukka White’s “I Am the Heavenly Way” and “Sleepy Man Blues,” featured here on the blues-forward Folkways subsidiary label RBF Records.
Old Dog Blue
By Jim Jackson
From Anthology of American Folk Music (1952)
This song-story of a man and his dog who are faithful to each other made its way into Hurley’s live performance repertoire for years. The wolfish characters Boone and Jocko and Uncle Gaspard who appear throughout Hurley’s cartoons were inspired by collie dogs from the farm of his youth.
I Lost It
By Lucinda Williams
From Happy Woman Blues (1980)
Hurley admired Lucinda Williams’ music, and both Hurley and Williams can locate the beginning of their legendary careers as recording artists and storytellers at Folkways. Lucinda’s first album, Ramblin’ On My Mind, was released in 1979, fifteen years after Hurley’s First Songs. That album showcases her artistry through traditional blues and country standards; her next, Happy Woman Blues, is the beginning of her recorded output as one of the best original songwriters of the century. Like Hurley, one song from that album resurfaces in another recorded work: eighteen years later, “I Lost It,” on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998).
Kill for Peace
By The Fugs
From The Best of Broadside 1962-1988: Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine (2000)
1960s psych folk-rock tricksters The Fugs had a rotating cast of characters, including The Holy Modal Rounders (Stampfel and Weber) and singer-drummer Coby Batty. Hurley’s many-armed relationship to The Fugs wasn’t through playing with or writing for the band itself, but he was a friend to and collaborator with Stampfel and Weber, and Batty, the band’s youngest member, used to write a regular column in The Snocko News–a newsletter describing gigs and other musical thoughts.
Like The Fugs, Hurley was, for a time, very active in the Greenwich Village scene. So, too, was Broadside Magazine: a small underground magazine filled with new songs by artists who were seen to be too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment. A number of compilations centered on Broadside were published by Folkways in the 1960s and ’70s. The Fugs are featured on the Smithsonian Folkways compilation The Best of Broadside 1962-1988. (Hurley was never featured in the magazine, but he did print illustrations in the similarly named but otherwise unrelated magazine of the Boston folk scene, Broadside & The Free Press.)
Squeeze Me
By Fats Waller and His Rhythm
From Jazz, Vol. 11: Addenda (1953)
Growing up, Hurley soaked up the music his parents played on records in their household in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller were both in heavy rotation. Hurley loved R&B and jazz, and thought of both artists as formative influences on his music.
Hurley locates a formative element of his relationship with jazz music in his then-budding friendship with jazz scholar, Folkways affiliate, and neighbor Frederic Ramsey, Jr. Hurley and Ramsey, Jr. would listen to jazz and blues from the latter’s collection together. Eventually, Ramsey, Jr. recorded Hurley’s demo for Folkways in that same house. This recording of Jelly Roll Morton was issued on Folkways’ eleven-volume Jazz series, which Ramsey, Jr. selected music for using 78 RPM records and previously unissued Folkways material.
Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
By Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock
From Haywire Mac (1972)
The last time Mr. Greg spoke with Michael Hurley, Hurley mentioned that his favorite Folkways records were Cat-Iron Sings Blues and Hymns by the eponymous blues and gospel musician, and Harry McClintock’s Haywire Mac. In live performances, Hurley used to cover McClintock’s iconic recording of the beloved labor song “Hallelujah, I’m A Bum.” See also Hurley’s “Just a Bum” from First Songs: “Just a tramp/Call me what you like, see me traveling down the pike, and singing love songs/Sitting by the fireside, dreaming all night.”
The Blackfly Song
By Wade Hemsworth
From Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods (1955)
Jaunty and peculiar, “The Blackfly Song” is Hemsworth’s autobiographical account of his employment on a survey crew in Northern Ontario while being harassed by pesky, blood-sucking gnats. It shares uncanny pacing, lyricism, and feeling with Hurley’s songs. A true obscurity and a sleeper Folkways classic, the appearance of “The Blackfly Song” in Hurley’s live performance repertoire bespeaks his depth of knowledge, eccentric ear, and intimate connection to the Folkways catalog.