Michael Hurley, the outsider folk artist and singer-songwriter who came up in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s and continued making music into the present day, has died at home in Astoria, Oregon, his family revealed in a statement. “The ‘Godfather of freak folk’ was for a prolific half-century the purveyor of an eccentric genius and compassionate wit. He alone was Snock. There is no other,” it reads. Hurley was 83.
For over 60 years, Hurley wrote and recorded original songs that parse through bluegrass, freak-folk, and blues with an ear for eccentric ideas and stripped-back moments. Though his music and album artwork was playful—a wolf devours whoopie pies at a diner on the cover of 1994’s Wolfways, and song titles range from “You’re a Dog; Don’t Talk to Me ” to “What Made My Hamburger Disappear?”—Hurley found a way to tap into the serious parts of life simultaneously, using minute details and sweeping reflections to encourage listeners to take a step back and admirer the bigger picture of life before them.
Born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, several days before Christmas in 1941, Hurley started playing music and writing his own songs as a preteen. Summers were spent listening to Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton, and making up simple songs during roadtrips with his family. He dropped out of high school to design fanzines, play music, and hitchhike with a guitar slung over his back. It was on one of those wandering routes that he was picked up by Fred Ramsey, a folklorist who lived up the road and ended up producing his debut. After recovering from a multi-year-long struggle with mononucleosis, a 22-year-old Hurley finally recorded his debut album, the aptly titled First Songs, in 1963 for Folkways, the famed label home to Woody Guthrie and Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.
Hurley expanded his skills beyond singing and playing guitar to also include fiddle and banjo, and was an active illustrator as well, painting and drawing many of the artworks that comprised his album covers. When his childhood friend and future Youngbloods singer Jesse Colin Young chose to champion his work, Hurley’s music began to spread by word of mouth – in part thanks to Young releasing his next two albums, 1971’s Armchair Boogie and 1972’s Hi Fi Snock Uptown, on his Warner Bros. imprint Raccoon.
After signing a contract with Rounder, Hurley released Have Moicy! in 1975 and the album garnered both underground fanfare and critical acclaim, leading to the release of two more LPs on the label: 1976’s Long Journey and 1980’s Snockgrass. As he continued to churn out dozens of records, Hurley also garned the admiration of his younger peers, including Yo La Tengo, Cat Power, Lucinda Williams, Vic Chesnutt, and Calexico, among others.
