Mississippi John Hurt's Louis Collins

An 1897 riverboat murder found to be the source of Hurt's song

I graduated from high school in three years, not four, and turned up as the youngest freshman (with the longest hair) at Washington & Lee University in the fall of 1970. On first meeting, Pleas Geyer, an upperclassman, loaned me two LPs: Jesse Winchester's eponymous first record, and Mississippi John Hurt's Today.

We'd just been introduced, and because I…