Skip James, for the love of God

No thread on Skip James, the spookiest and most original of the *Delta bluesmen? Just about to read Calt's biography of the man, which I hear is controversial and somewhat bitchy (author hated Fahey, apparently), but it's the only full length work on the subject, so here I go. Anybody read it? What's your favorite of the bad man from Bentonia's recorded work?

(*A misnomer, I think - iirc James was actually born in the Delta)

Fahey's brief bit on James in "Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life" is fairly scathing--suggesting that James was a narcissist and a crank. But who's to say for sure. I'd like to hear what you think of the Calt book; I haven't read it, but I'd buy it if I saw a copy used on some table somewhere. Favorite? Cherry Ball Blues maybe.

Narcissist and crank can be good things for musician to be. "Devil Got My Woman" probly my favourite. Dude had the most amazing voice.

Dude had the most amazing voice.

stunning. at this remove, it's hard to care much about what kind of person he might have been. the music speaks for itself. 2nd "devil got my woman", but this too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytVww5r4Nk0

i dug that woman's grave, eight feet in the ground
and i didn't feel sorry till they laid her down...

Just finished the Calt book. I may read it again. It's extremely cynical - not quite a hatchet job, but you come away with the impression of Skippy as little more than a misanthrope and a hustler. Calt also repeatedly refers to Son House as a little more than a drunken delinquent, and is FAR too unkind in his estimation of the great Jack Owens (who he calls a 'derivative amateur' - ouch). He also skewers others I don't care much about (like Johnny Temple, Alan Lomax, John Fahey, Al Wilson, the entire 'folk' movement and, err, Peter Paul and Mary) who, unlike Owens and House, all seem pretty worthy of the scorn for their myriad crimes. He refers more than once to James as 'too much of a plantation darkey' to trouble himself with civil rights issues. Ouch again. The tone is sarcastic and bitchy throughout, but the book is extremely well written and very informative (even going into great detail about things like the so-called "Bentonia tuning" and meticulously breaking down the structure of "22-20 Blues"). Pretty indispensable to anyone with even a passing interest in this stuff, I'd say.

Calt also repeatedly refers to Son House as a little more than a drunken delinquent

I don't think that's an uncommon characterization. Have you seen that Howlin' Wolf documentary where Wolf just clearly has no patience for Son House being all slobbery drunk?

what kind of freak writes a detailed book on a subject he despises

I don't think that's an uncommon characterization. Have you seen that Howlin' Wolf documentary where Wolf just clearly has no patience for Son House being all slobbery drunk?

I have - but, in his prime, the man was every bit the innovator and musician Wolf was

what kind of freak writes a detailed book on a subject he despises

lol. Calt clearly has a deep love and appreciation for the music, even now, but yeah, it gets a little smear-y.

I guess I kinda assume old blues dudes were nasty drunks

been meaning to pick up this book for some time and finally did cuz of this thread, thanks for bringing him up.

i've been trying to learn to play some of skip's stuff recently. just piecing it together clumsily from various recordings. its tricky cuz a lot of it seems to be neither major nor minor key, or maybe i should say, exhibits shadings/biases toward both simultaneously and...just really cool and fun stuff to figure out. i'm really interest to see how the book goes into that.

really love the stuff already mentioned in the thread. as well as washington d.c. hospital center blues, hard time killing floor blues, all night long, all of it really! there wasn't another one like him.

he's amazing. haven't really heard too much of his "comeback" era stuff, but the yazoo disc of his 30s recordings is up there with any great 20th century american music. what's interesting to me about skip is that he considered himself a musical genius, no modesty about it. would be kinda interested in reading a bio, but this one sounds like a downer.
arby's, are you using alt tunings for skip's stuff? isn't most of it in bizarro tunings of his own invention?

apparently comeback stuff was stitched together from multiple takes as it was hard for him to get through a whole song without some mistakes. did i read this in calt's book or elsewhere?

some of the tunings for s. james's songs appear to be common in the bentonia area, see e.g. jack owens who was contemporary of james and played certain songs in a very similar way.

that isn't to discount james's artistry or anything, it's just an interesting wrinkle. for all we know james pioneered the "bentonia style" but there's some evidence he was picking up on some local traditions that had been around..

yeah, i guess i assume that james wasn't quite as original as he claimed -- he had to come from somewhere.
love his piano playing too.

is there a compilation of bentonia-style blues out there? haven't heard too many of the other people in that scene.

arby's, are you using alt tunings for skip's stuff? isn't most of it in bizarro tunings of his own invention?

― tylerw, Sunday, June 26, 2011 1:54 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

i've mostly been stuck on hard times killing floor which i'm playing in an open D minor (which i then pitch the record player to match exactly cuz the version i use most seems to be a few microtones higher or something. maybe it's a half-step idk i can't find my capo). it's taking some time cuz 1) he seems to do things just a little differently in different versions of the song (or even shuffling it a bit between verses) and i'm sort of stringing it together all ADD-like between them all. then 2) i've mostly just played with a flat-picking style until now so a lot of it is just exorcizing those dead digits until they're useful and responsive and getting the correct notes is only coming gradually with every bit of progress there.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SKIP-JAMES-LETTER-W-SIGNATURE-PARAMOUNT-BLUES-78-RPM-/260805046590?pt=Music_on_Vinyl&hash=item3cb931313e

sold my copy of king of the delta blues singers. why?

there are radio sessions of skip james from the 60s, not distinguished stuff but I don't recall it being especially shambolic either. all the accounts make him sound odious even by the standards of some of his murderous contemporaries, but you can tell that just by listening to him

tyler, this is the one you want:

http://www.amazon.com/Must-Have-Been-Devil/dp/B000003OR0/

The book discusses how the so-called 'Bentonia sound' - like the term 'country blues' - was an invention of white blues collector types. No one who actually played that stuff described their music this way.

The book discusses where Skip stole a lot of his stuff, namely from an unrecorded dude called Henry Stuckey. He also stole from old ragtime and pop hits (like his "I'm So Glad," which is a pretty direct rip off, melodically and lyrically speaking, despite it being one of the most amazing songs ever recorded).

For modern Bentonia sound, though, Jimmy Duck Holmes (on Fat Possum) is said to be carrying the torch. There's also this white dude I like called Mississippi Gabe Carter, though some of you more purist types may not dig him much (there's as much Black Keys in his sound as there is Skippy James - but he's plenty spooky).

IMO the Skip James 'comeback' material is largely dispensable.

and second amateurist's recommendation - that album rules

The book discusses how the so-called 'Bentonia sound' - like the term 'country blues' - was an invention of white blues collector types. No one who actually played that stuff described their music this way.

well, yeah, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a style peculiar to the area around bentonia--just that folks living there hadn't named it.

True - I always thought the so-called 'Bentonia sound' was just open Em (or, the same tuned down a whole step, which would mean arby's is spot on with his tuning), making it more forlorn sounding than standard blues of the period.

Anyway, read the book, everybody! It's definitely worth it.

Anyone read this? Looking for something to follow up the Calt book...

http://www.amazon.com/Preachin-Blues-Life-Times-House/dp/0195395573/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309364658&sr=1-1

skip James just digging into his now - guess you only really need the 1931 recordings they sure sound spooky

I knew Steve Calt and I interviewed Jack Owens for the James book. If there is a "Bentonia style," it's simply Skip James' style, which Owens copped--by the time I talked to Owens in the '90s, plenty of white people had gone down to that part of Mississippi and wanted the real info on the blues and so forth. The way Skip played on the 1931 records is entirely a function of how he tuned his guitar and his use of big open fifths, etc. Bentonia is not large enough to have a style associated with it. I've come to enjoy Skip's '60s stuff--as Steve said, Skip had lost some of his guitar facility and his originality (after all, Skip had been laid up in a hospital with cancer when the blues acolytes found him), but not as much as Calt claimed. I think Calt's book is cantankerous, of course, but he's right about the basics.

some of skip's 60s stuff is pretty great — definitely not as dazzling as the 30s recordings, but some deep performances for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klGgTySgA4I

Yeah, I think Calt way overstates the decline in Skip's playing in the '60s. I think he still had it, and his singing was always incredible.

The Insect Trust's version of "Special Rider Blues" on their '68 album is choice, one of my favorite covers of a blues tune ever.

His Today album from is from '66 is pretty great imo, it has a really booming Hard Times Killing Floor Blues on there.

The Insect Trust's version of "Special Rider Blues" on their '68 album is choice, one of my favorite covers of a blues tune ever.

― eddhurt, Wednesday, April 11, 2018 1:11 PM

Amen.
My blogged comment in 2004:
"People driftin', from door to door." On the soundtrack
of
Wim Wenders's THE SOUL OF A MAN, Lucinda Williams drifts the line, but then
she's slapping the rest of Skip James' "Hard Times Killing Floor Blues"
flat on
the bar, like there's more where that came from. (She knows there better be.)
...Turns out Skip James really DIDN'T miss (his falsetto's appropriated
ghost of)"Crow Jane" 'til she was gone (how could he?). Now he's fascinated
by
this feeling, this windfall. And "you can't take her place, can't take her,"
but "someday you got to die." Looking forward? He's not looking away.
In "Washington D.C. Hospital Center Blues," Skip (channeled by the
almost-as-elusive Garland Jeffreys) is admitted, because (he coaches staff), "you's
a good man, you's a po' man, we can understand." He gets better, and promises
to make his doctor "a wealthy man," luring me past Bible-searching Blind
Willie, who finds "nothin' but a burnin' light." And so on (Wenders' doc was in Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues---A Musical Journey, well worth checking out:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blues_(film_series))
Of course you can miss someone before they're gone, but (alibi) Skip can make your mind go skippin' in the vibe.

That Insect Trust album is sick as hell

have never heard insect trust before today, it’s great. never put it together that hawkwind’s “hurry on sundown” is a cover of the same s james tune. in fact the arrangements are so similar, i can’t help but wonder if dave brock nicked it from the IT

^^^^

Skip is one of the greatest

The Insect Trust (1968) is dope, but or and Hoboken Saturday Night(1970) is even better
https://img.discogs.com/G-CeHaHKCBSSsdxOzh4CP2oliaM=/fit-in/600x587/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2209852-1495553931-8171.mpo.jpg

Also, I always heard Al "Blind Owl" Wilson of Canned Heat as a Skip disciple, with that voice in there between a blues harp and a slide guitar (*sort of* like Neil Young without the warble)---there's a collection I still need to check, Blind Owl.

wilson def made clear that his falsetto was an homage to skip

I bought the Blind Owl collection on Mississippi Records and absolutely love it.https://www.discogs.com/Blind-Owl-Wilson-Blind-Owl-Wilson/release/9244952 Makes sense that his voice is a homage.
Never heard of Insect Trust, but sounds cool on first listen, and pretty cool they got Bernard Purdie and Elvin Jones to play drums on their records.