An early American folk song with a wild mixture of country, blues, and legendary sea creatures, “Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me” tells the sad tale of a man enduring hardship and heartache who’s driven to seek sweet respite through burial at sea among the mermaids. The tune has origins from the late 1920’s but wasn’t released until 1972 as one of famed country-bluesman Mississippi John Hurt’s folk-revival era recordings.  Hurt’s composition drew from the music from country pioneer Jimmy Rodgers’ “Waiting For A Train” (1928) and the lyrics by Virginia songwriter-publisher William E. Myer (1929). Myer had heard Hurt’s 1928 recordings for OKeh Records and determined he was the right man to set his lyrics to music for upcoming recordings, suggesting that Rodger’s classic railroad melody might fit.  Soon after, Myers fell ill and the Great Depression hit, ending any chance of Myers recording the song.  Believing his music career to be over, Hurt disappeared from the radar, spending the next 35 years working as a sharecropper at the Delta’s edge.  During that time, Hurt would have certainly put the finishing touches to the song and perhaps performed it at social gatherings.  When someone commented that “Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me” sounded a little like Jimmy Rodgers, Hurt grinned, slapped his leg and said, “I sho’ likes Jimmie Rodgers.” 

“Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me” would finally emerge in the 1960’s when Mississippi John Hurt was given a second chance at a musical career. In 1963, hippie music enthusiast Tom Hoskins ventured to Avalon, Mississippi hoping to “rediscover” Hurt, who had gained legendary stature in the burgeoning folk music revival.  Hoskins found Hurt, then 69, alive and picking, and “Let the Mermaids Flirt With Me” was among the first pieces Hurt played into Hoskins’s portable tape machine. Soon after his “rediscovery” in 1963, Hurt would record much of his repertoire at sessions at the US Library of Congress, including the earliest known recording of “Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me.”  Sadly, the Library of Congress recordings would not be commercially distributed until 1980 in the UK on “Monday Morning Blues” by Flyright Records, and over 40 years later in the US by Fuel 2000 Records (2004). The song was a mainstay of Hurt’s extensive folk circuit performances over the next two and a half years.  Fans wouldn’t get to hear a commercial recording of “Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me” until Vanguard Records released the posthumous LP “Last Sessions” (1972), which Hurt hauntingly recorded in a Manhattan hotel just a few months before his fatal heart attack in 1966. 

“Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me” is part of the body of work that helped the rediscovery of pre-war era blues and start the American folk revival in the 1960’s.  It features Hurt’s iconic Piedmont picking style, which influenced so many guitarists after him, including Maverick Stanza’s Wes Creech.