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Biography
Michael Hurley (born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on December 20, 1941) is an American folk singer and guitarist who was essential to the New York Greenwich Village folk music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to playing a wide variety of instruments (including the fiddle), Hurley is also a cartoonist and a painter. Hurley's music has been described as "outsider folk".
Hurley's debut album, First Songs, was recorded for Folkways Records in 1965 on the same reel-to-reel machine that taped Leadbelly's Last Sessions. He was "discovered" by blues and jazz historian Frederick Ramsey III, and subsequently championed by boyhood friend Jesse Colin Young, who released his 2nd & 3rd albums on The Youngbloods' Warner Bros. imprint, Raccoon. In the late 70's, Hurley made three albums for Rounder, all of which have since been reissued on CD. His 1976 LP Have Moicy, a collaboration with the Unholy Modal Rounders and Jeffrey Frederick & The Clamtones, was named "the greatest folk album of the rock era" by the Village Voice's Robert Christgau.
