Frank Hutchinson

The first white bluesman on tape, Frank Hutchison recorded for a brief three years. But the 32 tunes that he laid down between 1926 and 1929 influenced everyone from Leo Kottke and Spider John Koerner to Bob Dylan and Paul Geremia. Doc Watson covered both sides of Hutchinson's first single, "Worried Blues"/"The Train That Carried the Girl Back Home," recorded in New York in October 1926. Cowboy Copas rewrote Hutchison's tune "Coney Isle," renamed it "Alabam'," and had a country hit in 1960. An ex-miner, Hutchison reportedly learned to play the blues by watching Bill Hurt, a di...