Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me

Here's a really interesting country blues by Mississippi John Hurt. I like Hurt's music because it's quiet and unassuming but always masterfully played. His alternating bass finger-picking style, which is really quite different from the harder driving delta blues of the likes of Son House or Robert Johnson that I was first exposed to, is the one that I predominantly play nowadays and I'm gradually getting a sense of the possibilities that his style opened up. I like this piece because it's such as melancholic but playful blues lyric. And of course, it reminds me of Eliot's "Prufrock". I don't sing all the verses but here's the MJH tune, "Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me".



Blues all on the ocean, blues all in the air.
Can't stay here no longer, I have no steamship fare.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

I do not work for pleasure, earthly peace I'll see no more.
The only reason I work at all, is drive the world from my door.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

My wife controls our happy home, a sweetheart I can not find.
The only thing I can call my own, is a troubled and a worried mind.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

Blues all in my body, my darling has forsaken me.
If I ever see her face again, I have to swim across the sea.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

Blues all on the ocean, blues all in the air.
Can't stay here no longer, I have no steamship fare.
When my earthly trials are over, carry my body out in the sea.
Save all the undertaker bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.