Backstage With Mississippi John Hurt and Son House

Manager Dick Waterman Remembers Two of His Famous Clients

Mississippi John Hurt recording for the Library of Congress.

If you enjoy listening to Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Fred McDowell, Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Junior Wells, Robert Pete Williams, Bukka White, and Bonnie Raitt, you owe a debt of thanks to Dick Waterman. Through his Avalon Productions, the foremost booking agency for blues artists during the 1960s and ’70s, Dick promoted all of these artists. He managed their careers, booked their shows, photographed them, oversaw their publicity, arranged their payments and passports, helped negotiate their recording deals, and most important, guarded their well being. He played essential roles in the “rediscovery” of two of the most beloved figures of the era, Mississippi John Hurt and Son House. After many of his artists passed away, Dick oversaw their estates and provided for their heirs, a role he’s still passionate about today.

Dick Waterman backstage with Junior Wells.

Waterman’s other richly deserved claim to fame is his photography. During the past half-century, he’s captured enduring images ranging from a who’s-who of postwar bluesmen to Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, and a very young Bob Dylan. Many of his stories and images are gathered in his 2004 book, "Between Midnight and Day: The Last Unpublished Blues Archive", and his Dick Waterman Photography website. In 2019, Tammy L. Turner’s "Dick Waterman: A Life in the Blues" was published as part of the American Made Music Series.

On September 7, 2012, I journeyed to Dick’s home in Oxford, Mississippi, to talk about his close encounters with the blues. Dick began our conversation by speaking about Mississippi John Hurt.

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I saw Mississippi John Hurt at Newport ’63, and I was profoundly affected by that. He was all the good things. When you think of blues people, it’s with a sense of sadness. But if you mention Mississippi John to Maria Muldaur or John Sebastian or Stefan Grossman, it’s a smile. He just [smiles] – yeah. He was only ’63 to ’66 – just three years. But he had so much! He was just such a positive guy. He didn’t talk a lot. But he’d be sitting there, and people would be standing and talking, talking, talking. And John would look up and make a remark, and you went [snaps fingers], “Well, yeah! Of course.”