\n<\/p>\n
Michael Hurley, a singer and songwriter whose music \u2014 an idiosyncratic kind of folk mixed with a variety of other styles \u2014 made him a revered elder to younger artists like Cat Power, Devendra Banhart and the band Yo La Tengo, died on April 1 in Portland, Ore. He was 83.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hurley\u2019s family announced the death but did not specify the cause.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hurley was visibly ill during his final shows \u2014 two on March 28 and 29 in Knoxville, Tenn., as part of the Big Ears Festival, and the third on March 31 in Asheville, N.C. \u2014 before flying back to Portland, said Regina Greene, the booking agent for his Southeast shows.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hurley stopped breathing on the ride to his home in rural Brownsmead, Ore., and after his driver tried to revive him, he died in the ambulance taking him to a hospital, said Eric Isaacson, the owner of Mississippi Records, one of several labels Mr. Hurley recorded for over the years.<\/p>\n
For more than 60 years, Mr. Hurley performed (somewhat under the radar and usually in intimate spots) and recorded (often at home on his reel-to-reel tape recorder) in a gentle, twangy and worldly voice, accompanied by his guitar and sometimes nothing else. He wrote and sang about subjects as diverse as love, drinking (tea and wine), the human digestive system and a weeping werewolf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cI never thought of a career in music,\u201d he told The New York Times in 2021. \u201cWhat I do is goof off \u2014 and try to get away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
At some point he adopted a nickname, Snock, which he used on album covers and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis songs are timeless; you can\u2019t tell if they were written in the 1400s or now,\u201d said Mr. Isaacson, whose label reissued some of Mr. Hurley\u2019s old albums as well as releasing some newer ones. He added: \u201cHe\u2019d perform a song that I hadn\u2019t heard, and I\u2019d ask, \u2018What\u2019s that, an old English air?\u2019 and he\u2019d say, \u2018No, I wrote it last night.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In \u201cSweedeedee,\u201d from his early 1970s album, \u201cArmchair Boogie,\u201d Mr. Hurley talked his way through the first verse:<\/p>\n
My little woman causes me a lot of trouble sometimes<\/em> Chan Marshall, who performs as Cat Power, recorded \u201cSweedeedee,\u201d and restructured its lyrics, on her 2000 album, \u201cThe Covers Record.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201c\u2018Sweedeedee\u2019 is such an intense love story,\u201d she said in an interview. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t understand it if you hadn\u2019t played house with someone and lost that love. That really resonated with me, being young, loving that song and mourning my losses.\u201d<\/p>\n In the late 1990s, Mr. Hurley\u2019s unconventional music developed a following among indie rock bands and practitioners of the genre that came to be known as \u201cfreak folk.\u201d Mr. Banhart, a leading light of that genre, said that he drew inspiration from reissues of Mr. Hurley\u2019s early albums, as well as from the original comics Mr. Hurley tucked into them. (Mr. Hurley was renowned not just for his music but also for his surreal cover illustrations, which depicted, among other things, wolves cruising in cars, getting wasted and wolfing down pies.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe hasn\u2019t created a character just to sell records,\u201d Mr. Banhart told The Times. \u201cHe has created his own world for the sake of enjoying making it come to life.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Hurley was born on Dec. 20, 1941, in Jersey City, N.J., and grew up in rural Bucks County, Pa. His father, Dunlea Hurley, known as Pat, drove his family to theaters in Florida in the 1950s to produce operettas; his mother, Alice (Moussette) Hurley, managed the house.<\/p>\n When he was a toddler, his older sisters spun him around on a 78-r.p.m. turntable until he squealed. He wrote his first song at 5; at 16, he started teaching himself to play a guitar that a sister\u2019s boyfriend had left behind. (He also played fiddle and banjo.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He did not graduated from high school, and he began his troubadour-like rambles at 17.<\/p>\n \u201cA muskrat will do the exact same thing,\u201d he told Popwatch magazine in 1997.<\/p>\n He hitchhiked to New Orleans, to Mexico and to New York, where he found his way to the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village and performed during the folk revival of the early 1960s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He recorded his debut album, \u201cFirst Songs\u201d (1964), after meeting a Bucks County neighbor, the music historian Frederic Ramsey Jr<\/a>., who produced it for Folkways Records (now Smithsonian Folkways Recordings). Recorded in Mr. Ramsey\u2019s home, it included \u201cThe Werewolf Song,\u201d about a mournful monster, which he also sang at Carnegie Hall in May 1965, as part of a four-day folk festival that featured Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry<\/a> and Muddy Waters. \u201cThe Werewolf Song\u201d<\/a> (later simplified as \u201cWerewolf\u201d) would become one of his signature numbers.<\/p>\n He sang, in part:<\/p>\n For the werewolf, for the werewolf<\/em> Mr. Hurley\u2019s childhood friendship with Jesse Colin Young<\/a>, the leader of the Youngbloods, led to the release of \u201cArmchair Boogie\u201d and \u201cHi Fi Snock Uptown\u201d in 1972 on the group\u2019s imprint, Raccoon Records, distributed by Warner Bros. (Mr. Young died<\/a> last month.)<\/p>\n \u201cHurley has written a number of absolutely great songs,\u201d Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, a kindred musical spirit who collaborated with Mr. Hurley and others on the 1976 album \u201cHave Moicy!,\u201d said in an interview. \u201cBut my take is that one in four or five were great \u2014 \u2018O My Stars\u2019<\/a> and \u2018Sweet Lucy\u2019<\/a> are masterpieces \u2014 but the rest are not so good.<\/p>\n \u201cBut,\u201d Mr. Stampfel added, \u201chis batting average is better than Irving Berlin\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n Among Mr. Hurley\u2019s champions was the veteran rock critic Robert Christgau, who once praised him as an \u201cold-timey existentialist\u201d whose \u201coblique wail recalls both Jerry Garcia and John Prine because all three are more obsessed with mountain vocal styles than most mountain vocal stylists.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Hurley released albums on several labels, including his own, Bellemeade Phonics, as well as Mississippi, Gnomonsong and No Quarter. The last album he released before his death was \u201cThe Time of the Foxgloves\u201d (2021), on No Quarter. Another album, \u201cBroken Homes and Gardens,\u201d is to be released this summer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mike Quinn, the owner of No Quarter, said that Mr. Hurley was \u201cas consequential an American songwriter as there is.\u201d His compositions, he said, were \u201calmost like children\u2019s music for adults, but with themes about death, love and relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Hurley is survived by a daughter, Daffodil Stark, and two sons, Jordan and Colorado Stark, from his marriage to Marjorie Stark, whom he called Pasta, which ended in divorce; a son, Rollin Miller, from his relationship with Kim Miller; a daughter, Wilder Honey, from his relationship with Bethanie Miller; two sisters, Maureen Hurley and Jeanne Remaily; and two grandchildren.<\/p>\n Mr. Hurley was a regular at the Nelsonville Music Festival in Ohio for more than a decade. His ode to that event, \u201cAre You Here for the Festival,\u201d<\/a> is on \u201cThe Time of the Foxgloves.\u201d It begins:<\/p>\n Did you ever leave Nelsonville<\/em>
She worries me so bad<\/em>
I don\u2019t know what to do.<\/em>
I take a walk<\/em>
Figure the rolling of my feet would come to ease my mind<\/em>
I\u2019ll just go away<\/em>
And I won\u2019t know<\/em>
Where I\u2019m going.<\/em><\/p>\n
Have sympathy<\/em>
Because the werewolf he\u2019s someone<\/em>
Just like you and me.<\/em>
Once I saw him in the moonlight<\/em>
And the bats were flying.<\/em>
All alone I saw the werewolf and<\/em>
The werewolf was crying.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
With a broken heart?<\/em>
Did you ever leave Woodstock<\/em>
Falling apart?<\/em>
You was doing all right<\/em>
Things went wrong<\/em>
You was up all night<\/em>
Singing along.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n