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Skip James

 
Black Biography: Skip James
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blues singer; guitarist; pianist

Personal Information

Born on June 9, 1902, in Bentonia, MS; died on October 3, 1969, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Eddie James (a minister); three marriages.
Education: Attended Yazoo City Divinity School, Yazoo City, MS.
Religion: Missionary Baptist.

Career

Learned to play guitar, piano, and organ as a young man; worked as bootlegger, saloon pianist, and gambler in 1920s; made first recordings, 1931, for Paramount label; moved to Dallas, Texas, and joined gospel group, Dallas Texas Jubilee Singers, 1931; ordained Missionary Baptist minister, 1932; ordained Methodist minister, 1946; largely stopped performing blues, 1940s and 1950s, working as minister, farmer, and miner; rediscovered while a patient in a Tunica, MS, hospital, 1964; recorded for Vanguard label and made festival appearances, 1960s.

Life's Work

Perhaps the most stylistically original of the blues performers from that music's original homeland in the Mississippi River Delta region, Skip James left a small legacy of almost experimental blues recordings marked by unusual guitar tunings, haunting falsetto vocals, and an intense, variable marriage of music and text. James made only a few recordings during that music's classic era, and for many years he gave up the blues altogether. James was rediscovered during the folk-music revival of the 1960s and his performances at the festivals of that decade were considered to be true gems.

Nehemiah Curtis James was born in Bentonia, Mississippi, on June 21, 1902, and was raised on a local plantation called Woodbine. His life stood out in some ways from the lives of other blues artists: his father, Eddie James, a minister, later headed two small religious colleges, and James attended Yazoo City High School, where he took some piano lessons. He played piano and organ in a local church as a young man. From the beginning, James's family noticed how musical he was. He was quoted by author and blues historian Peter Guralnick in Guralnick's book Feel Like Going Home: "We used to have a well, and every time I'd go to the well for water I'd beat a tune on the pail." His father encouraged his efforts by providing him with a $2.50 guitar.

The surviving music of blues performers from Bentonia has a distinct style of its own, and some historians have suggested that the influence of Bentonia guitarist Henry Stuckey, who never made recordings, was important in creating that style. James heard Stuckey play at parties and probably studied the guitar with him. He also taught himself to play the piano by watching barroom players. On both guitar and piano, to judge by his later recordings and performances, he developed a unique style of his own. He also played the kazoo on occasion.

Worked as Bootlegger

Before making his first recordings, James left Bentonia and spent much of the 1920s working at a series of odd and sometimes illicit jobs--he was a lumberman, sharecropper, gambler and, at the height of the Prohibition era, a bootlegger operating under the protection of a white plantation owner. James claimed that he had once repeatedly shot a romantic rival. He also continued to play the blues, and word of his talent began to spread. Scouts from the OKeh label hoped to record him in 1927, but James refused, possibly because he felt he had to keep a low profile due to his illegal activities. His nickname "Skip" may have been given to him in childhood, but it also may have resulted from his frequent decisions to "skip" town or ramble from place to place in early adulthood.

In 1930 or 1931, James finally auditioned for Paramount Records' talent scout H. C. Speir, who immediately recognized James for the unique figure he was. He gave James a train ticket to the label's studios in Grafton, Wisconsin, where James recorded 18 sides. The resulting 78 rpm records became prized rarities among blues collectors and, in the opinion of All Music Guide's Cub Koda, the recordings "could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck." James played both guitar and piano at these sessions, and his piano pieces, according to author Guralnick, "resemble nothing so much as a bravura display of anarchic impulses, combining blues, barrelhouse, and private inspiration in a blend which threatens at times to destroy any semblance of order ... It is a style characterized by nervous rhythms, inexplicable pauses, and tumbling cascades of notes."

Influenced Blues and Rock Musicians

Scarcely less unusual was James's guitar style, which haunted listeners with its uncanny alterations of the seemingly stable language of the blues in order to express a specific text. Several James numbers went on to become blues standards. The rock band Cream recorded "I'm So Glad" on its first album, giving James a measure of financial stability in his final years. James's younger contemporary Robert Johnson adapted James's compositions in two of his most famous recordings: Johnson's "32-20 Blues" was based on James's "22-20 Blues," and there are links between James's signature number, "Devil Got My Woman," and Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail."

More generally, James may have inspired Johnson and others to regard the blues less as a communal expression of feeling and more as an individualistic art form. Guralnick quoted James, who had a way of speaking that was almost academic in its convolutions, as saying, "It's a great privilege and an honor and a courtesy at this time and at this age to be able to confront you with something that may perhaps go down in your hearing and may be in history after I'm gone." James could also discuss theoretical matters such as tunings and modes at great length.

Ordained as Missionary Baptist Minister

Parallel to James's dissolute lifestyle in the 1920s ran another set of activities that became more and more important to him as time went by. He took classes at a Yazoo City Divinity School in the 1920s, and for a time he came to regard the blues as sinful. In 1931, the year he made his classic recordings, James moved to Dallas and founded a gospel group, the Dallas Texas Jubilee Singers. He toured Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and neighboring states with this group, visiting churches and preaching along the way. In 1932 James was ordained a Missionary Baptist minister. He preached in Birmingham until the early 1940s and was then ordained in the Methodist church in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1946. He also did farm and mining work and was later active as a preacher in the Hattiesburg and Tunica, Mississippi, areas.

It was in 1964, in a Tunica hospital, that James was rediscovered by folk guitarist John Fahey. He was suffering from the early stages of the cancer that would eventually kill him. James enjoyed a brief revival of his blues career in the 1960s; his nine-minute appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 was among the most powerful musical moments of that landmark event, and he recorded several albums of new material. He lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his third wife, and performed at folk coffeehouses in the Northeast, but his health declined in the late 1960s. One of his last appearances was at the Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C., in 1968. Skip James died in Philadelphia on October 3, 1969.

Awards

Inducted into Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, 1992.

Works

Selected discography

  • Today!, Vanguard, 1964.
  • She Lyin', Vanguard, 1964.
  • Skip James Today!, Vanguard, 1965.
  • Devil Got My Woman, Vanguard, 1968.
  • Complete Recorded Works (1931), Document, 1990.
  • The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James, Yazoo, 1994.
  • Blues from the Delta, Vanguard, 1998.

Further Reading

Books

  • Calt, Stephen, I'd Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues, Da Capo, 1994.
  • Contemporary Musicians, Volume 24, Gale, 1999.
  • Guralnick, Peter, Feel Like Going Home, Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971.
  • Harris, Sheldon, Blues Who's Who, repr. ed., Da Capo, 1991.
  • Herzhaft, Gérard, Encyclopedia of the Blues, translated by Brigitte Debord, University of Arkansas Press, 1992.
  • Obrecht, Jas, ed., Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music, GPI Books, 1990.
Periodicals
  • Down Beat, August 1995, p. 55.
On-line
  • All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com.
  • Eyeneer Music Archives, http://www.eyeneer.com/America/Genre/Blues/Profiles/skip.james.html.
  • Lycos, http://music.lycos.com.

— James M. Manheim

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Artist: Skip James
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Home > Library > Entertainment & Arts > Pop Artists

Similar Artists:

Robert Johnson, Son House, Pink Anderson, Gus Cannon, Charley Patton, Mance Lipscomb, Brownie McGhee, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Blind Willie McTell, Tommy Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt

Followers:

Little Axe, Robert Johnson, Cephas & Wiggins, John Fahey, Sonny Landreth, Johnnie "Geechie" Temple, Dave Ray & Tony Glover, Glorytellers, The Tallest Man on Earth, Jake La Botz, Dexter Romweber

Performed Songs By:

Nehemiah James

Formal Connection With:

Henry Stuckey
See Skip James Lyrics
  • Born: June 21, 1902, Bentonia, MS
  • Died: October 03, 1969, Philadelphia, PA
  • Active: '30s, '60s
  • Genres: Blues
  • Instrument: Vocals, Kazoo, Songwriter
  • Representative Albums: "The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James," "I'd Rather Be the Devil: The Legendary 1931 Session," "Skip James Today!"
  • Representative Songs: "I'm So Glad," "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues," "22-20 Blues"

Biography

Among the earliest and most influential Delta bluesmen to record, Skip James was the best known proponent of the so-called Bentonia school of blues players, a genre strain invested with as much fanciful scholarly "research" as any. Coupling an oddball guitar tuning set against eerie, falsetto vocals, James's early recordings could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Even more surprising was when blues scholars rediscovered him in the '60s and found his singing and playing skills intact. Influencing everyone from a young Robert Johnson (Skip's "Devil Got My Woman" became the basis of Johnson's "Hellhound on My Trail") to Eric Clapton (who recorded James's "I'm So Glad" on the first Cream album), Skip James's music, while from a commonly shared regional tradition, remains infused with his own unique personal spirit. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
Wikipedia: Skip James
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Skip James

Background information
Birth name Nehemiah Curtis James
Born June 9, 1902(1902-06-09)
Bentonia, Mississippi, United States
Died October 3, 1969 (aged 67)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Genres Delta blues
Occupations Musician, songwriter
Instruments Vocals, guitar, piano
Years active 1931
1964–1969
Labels Paramount, Vanguard, Biograph, Adelphi, Document, Snapper Music Group, Universe, Body & Soul, Yazoo, Genes

Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James (June 9,[1] 1902 – October 3, 1969[2]) was an American delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter.

Contents

Biography

Early years

James was born near Bentonia, Mississippi.[2] His father was a converted bootlegger turned preacher.[3] As a youth, James heard local musicians such as Henry Stuckey and brothers Charlie and Jesse Sims and began playing the organ in his teens. He worked on road construction and levee-building crews in his native Mississippi in the early 1920s, and wrote what is perhaps his earliest song, "Illinois Blues", about his experiences as a laborer. Later in the '20s he sharecropped and made bootleg whiskey in the Bentonia area. He began playing guitar in open D-minor tuning and developed the three-finger picking technique heard in his recordings. In addition, he began to practice piano-playing, drawing inspiration from the Mississippi blues pianist Little Brother Montgomery.

1920s and 1930s

In early 1931, James auditioned for Jackson, Mississippi record shop owner and talent scout H. C. Speir, who placed blues performers with a variety of record labels including Paramount Records.[3] On the strength of this audition, James traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin to record for Paramount.[3] James's 1931 work is considered idiosyncratic among pre-war blues recordings, and formed the basis of his reputation as a musician.

As is typical of his era, James recorded a variety of material — blues and spirituals, cover versions and original compositions — frequently blurring the lines between genres and sources. For example, "I'm So Glad" was derived from a 1927 song by Art Sizemore and George A. Little entitled "So Tired", which had been recorded in 1928 by both Gene Austin and Lonnie Johnson (the latter under the title "I'm So Tired of Livin' All Alone"). Biographer Stephen Calt, echoing the opinion of several critics, considered the finished product totally original, "one of the most extraordinary examples of fingerpicking found in guitar music."[citation needed]

Several of the Grafton recordings, such as "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues", "Devil Got My Woman", "Jesus Is A Mighty Good Leader", and "22-20 Blues" (the basis for Robert Johnson's better-known "32-20 Blues"), have proven similarly influential. Very few original copies of James's Paramount 78s have survived.

The Great Depression struck just as James' recordings were hitting the market. Sales were poor as a result, and James gave up performing the blues to become the choir director in his father's church.[3] James himself was later ordained as a minister in both the Baptist and Methodist denominations, but the extent of his involvement in religious activities is unknown.[3]

Disappearance, rediscovery, and legacy

For the next thirty years, James recorded nothing and drifted in and out of music. He was virtually unknown to listeners until about 1960. In 1964 blues enthusiasts John Fahey, Bill Barth and Henry Vestine found him in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi. According to Calt, the "rediscovery" of both James and of Son House at virtually the same moment was the start of the "blues revival" in America.[citation needed] In July 1964 James, along with other rediscovered performers, appeared at the Newport Folk Festival.[3] Several photographs by Dick Waterman captured this first performance in over 30 years. Throughout the remainder of the decade, he recorded for the Takoma, Melodeon, and Vanguard labels and played various engagements until his death in 1969.[3]

Although James was not initially covered as frequently as other rediscovered musicians, the British rock band, Cream, recorded two versions of "I'm So Glad" (a studio version and a live version), providing James the only windfall of his career.[2] Despite the band's well-known musicianship, Cream based their version on James's simplified 1960s recording, instead of the faster, more intricate 1931 original. Deep Purple covered "I'm So Glad" on their first album, Shades of Deep Purple. Singer Dion DiMucci released an album in November 2007 entitled Son of Skip James.

Since his death, James's music has become more available and prevalent than during his lifetime — his 1931 recordings, along with several rediscovery recordings and concerts, have found their way on to numerous compact discs, drifting in and out of print. His influence is still felt among contemporary bluesmen.[citation needed] James also left a mark on 21st-century Hollywood, as well, with Chris Thomas King's cover of "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and the 1931 "Devil Got My Woman" featured prominently in the plot and soundtrack of Ghost World. In recent times, British post-rock band Hope of the States released a song partially focused on the life of Skip James entitled "Nehemiah", which charted at number 30 in the UK Singles Chart.[4] "He's a Mighty Good Leader" was also covered by Beck on his 1994 album One Foot in the Grave.

Personality

James was known to be an aloof and idiosyncratic artist.[citation needed] He seldom socialized with other bluesmen and fans.[citation needed] Like John Fahey, James loathed the so-called "folkie" scene of the 1960s.[citation needed] He held a high regard for his own work and was reluctant to share musical ideas with other performers.[citation needed] James epitomized the complicated personality typical of many bluesmen, living a hard and sometimes reckless life while holding austere religious beliefs.[citation needed] Though the lyrical content of some of his songs led to the characterization of James as a misogynist, he remained with his wife Lorenzo (niece of Mississippi John Hurt) until his death. He is buried with his wife at a private cemetery (Merion Memorial Park) just outside of Philadelphia in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

Musical style

James As Guitarist

James often played his guitar with an open D-minor tuning (DADFAD), resulting in the "deep" sound of the 1931 recordings. James purportedly learned this tuning from his musical mentor, the unrecorded bluesman Henry Stuckey.[citation needed] Stuckey in turn was said to have acquired it from Bahamanian soldiers during the First World War.[citation needed] Robert Johnson also recorded in this tuning, his "Hell Hound On My Trail" being based on James' "Devil Got My Woman."[2] James' classically-informed, finger-picking style was fast and clean, using the entire register of the guitar with heavy, hypnotic bass lines.[citation needed] James' style of playing had more in common with the Piedmont blues of the East Coast than with the Delta blues of his native Mississippi.[citation needed]

One of James' favored techniques in this tuning involves a fingered slide of the third string from the second to the fourth fret; a slide on the same string from the fourth back to the second fret; striking the fourth string open; then hammering the third string in the first fret.[citation needed] James can be heard using this in many of his songs, including "Devil Got My Woman."

The "Bentonia School"

James is sometimes associated with the Bentonia School, which is either a sub-genre of blues music or a style of playing it. Calt, in his 1994 biography of James, I'd Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues, maintains that there was indeed no style of blues that originated in Bentonia, and that this is simply a notion of later blues writers who overestimated the provinciality of Mississippi during the early 20th century, when railways linked small towns, and who failed to see that in the case of Jack Owens, "the 'tradition' he bore primarily consisted of musical scraps from James' table." Owens and other musicians who may have been contemporaries of James were not recorded until the 60s revival period. As such, the extent to which the work of said musicians is indicative of any "school," and whether James originated it or was simply a "member," remains an open question.

Discography

Paramount 78s: 1931

Rediscovery: 1964–1969

James, despite poor health, recorded several LPs worth of music, mostly revisiting his 1931 sides, traditional music, and spirituals; but along with these, he sang a handful of newly-penned blues meditating on his illness and convalescence. Unfortunately, these five prolific years have not been thoroughly documented: recordings, outtakes, and interviews not released on James's few proper LPs (which, themselves, have been endlessly cannibalized and reissued) are scattered among many small label compilations. Previously unreleased performances continue to be found, released, and left largely unexplained — sometimes hours' worth at a time. CD releases comprising entirely previously available material are denoted below (†).

  • Skip James Melodeon - MLP-7321, 1964
  • Greatest of the Delta Blues Singers Biograph, 1964
  • She Lyin Adelphi, 1964 (first released: Genes, 1996)
  • Skip James Today! Vanguard, 1965
  • Devil Got My Woman Vanguard, 1968
  • I'm So Glad Vanguard, 1978
  • Live: Boston, 1964 & Philadelphia, 1966 Document, 1994
  • Skip's Piano Blues, 1964 (Genes, 1998)
  • Blues From the Delta Vanguard, 1998 (two unreleased recordings)
  • The Complete Bloomington, Indiana Concert - March 30, 1968 Document, 1999
  • Skip's Guitar Blues, 1964(?) (Genes, 1999)
  • Studio Sessions: Rare and Unreleased, 1967 (Vanguard, 2003)
  • Hard Time Killing Floor Blues Biograph, 2003†
  • Heroes of the Blues: The Very Best of Skip James Shout!, 2003
  • Hard Time Universe, 2003†

References

  1. ^ Social Security Death Index
  2. ^ a b c d "Biography by Cub Koda". Allmusic.com. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&searchlink=SKIP. Retrieved May 30, 2009. 
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues - From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. Dubai: Carlton Books Limited. pp. 123. ISBN 1-85868-255-X. 
  4. ^ Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. pp. 259. ISBN 1-904994-10-5. 

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Black Biography. Contemporary Black Biography. Copyright © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Artist. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Skip James".  Read more

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