Skip James life and biography

Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter, born in Bentonia, Mississippi, died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Skip James was unique among blues players. He was accomplished on two instruments, guitar and piano. While many lesser musicians made pests of themselves in their attempts to be recorded, James refused his offer to be recorded and embraced his rediscovery in the 1960s only halfheartedly. Rather than the deep, rough shouts associated with many early male blues singers, James sang in a high thin wail. But his otherworldly voice, haunting guitar, and staccato piano bursts contributed to some of the greatest blues sides ever recorded.

Nehemiah Curtis James was born on June 21, 1902, in an African American hospital in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He was raised on the Woodbine plantation just outside Betonia, Mississippi. He was drawn to music from an early age. As a child he heard musicians Henry Stuckey and Rich Griffin play a frolic-a Saturday night dance party-in Betonia. Afterwards, he sang the songs he had heard constantly until his mother finally bought him a $2.50 guitar. As a teenager, he played his aunt's organ, and his mother encouraged his interest by sending him to a couple of piano lessons. However, James was a natural musician, his talent far outstripped the educational resources available to a young African American growing up on a southern plantation. He taught himself piano after watching a rural pianist in a barrelhouse, and he developed his guitar style on his own after Henry Stuckey showed him how to tune his guitar to an open E minor chord. Both James' guitar and piano sound are totally unique in blues.

James left Betonia around 1919 and led the life of an itinerant worker for the next few years. He worked a series of jobs, both legitimate and illegitimate, including lumberman, rail splitter, minister, sharecropper, gambler, bootlegger, and pimp. James was the product of a violent, lawless milieu where practically anything was permitted-as long as it did not erupt into the surrounding white society. He carried a gun from an early age and did not hesitate to use it. He had once emptied his weapon into a romantic rival, he told biographer Stephen Calt proudly. Calt speculated that James' nickname may have had its roots in his criminal activities not his dancing abilities as he often claimed-James often had to "skip" town in a hurry.

Young Skip James gave little thought to becoming a professional musician. At first he was interested only in playing for himself and his friends. Throughout most of the 1920s he lacked the financial incentive to play for money; he was a successful bootlegger under the protection of a white plantation owner. He earned far more from making illegal whiskey than he could hope to earn in the dangerous world of the Southern jukehouse. In 1927, Okeh Records approached him about making some records. James refused. Calt believes James' shadowy criminal side may have been the reason-records would simply have brought him too much unwanted publicity. James was finally persuaded to see H.C. Spier in February of 1931.

Spier was a furniture and record dealer, and a master scout who had single-handedly discovered most of the great Mississippi bluesmen of the 1920s and early 1930s, including Tommy Johnson, Ishmon Bracey, Bo Carter, and the legendary Charlie Patton. James played a little bit of "Devil Got My Woman," and Spier was convinced. The next day he presented the singer with a contract and a train ticket to Wisconsin, where Paramount Records had a studio. In Grafton, Wisconsin, James apparently recorded 18 tunes-he would later remember doing 26. Either way, it was a sign of how he had impressed Spier and Paramount-he recorded more sides in his session than any other Paramount artist, except Charlie Patton.

Records Classic Blues, Finds God

Accompanying himself, James laid down pieces that were later acknowledged as classics in recorded blues: "Devil Got My Woman," "I'm So Glad," "Hard Time Killin' Floor," "Special Rider Blues" on his weird modal guitar, and "If you Haven't Any Hay, Get On Down The Road" and "22-20 Blues" on piano that utilized abrupt pauses and explosive fills. The first record released by Paramount in the spring of 1931 was "Hard Time Killin Floor Blues" backed with "Cherry Ball Blues." Only 650 copies were issued. No more than 300 copies of James' other records were put out by Paramount, however, including his fifth 78 "I'm So Glad" backed with "Special Rider Blues," which Calt has called "probably the greatest double-sided blues 78 ever issued." But it was the height of the Depression, and the audience for blues had been hit harder than any, and Paramount was about to go out of business.

Not long after his recording session, James met his father again for the first time since his childhood. The senior James was a Baptist minister. He asked Skip to go to Dallas, to attend his divinity school, and study for the ministry. James accepted the invitation. The most serious implication of his new-found religion was relinquishing blues, which was considered "the Devil's music." Spier approached James in 1932 about recording for Victor Records, but James refused. For the next fifteen years, the only music Skip James would play would be spirituals.

However obscure his music was it did not go forgotten. Other blues artists recorded his music during the 1930s. Charlie and Joe McCoy recorded "Devil Got My Woman" for Decca in 1934, for instance. In 1943, two white jazz collectors obtained a test pressing of "Little Cow And Calf is Gonna Die Blues" and subsequently re-released it on their own label. It was the first re-issue of a blues song for the white collectors market and sold about 300 copies-as many as Paramount had pressed of its version.

In 1948 James quit a job with a mining company in Birmingham and returned to Betonia, planning to resume his blues career. But the African American population in Mississippi was dwindling. Tastes in blues had changed, as well. Electric blues, so-called "Chicago blues," were in vogue. Time had passed Skip James and his acoustic guitar by. He was only able to play an occasional party in town. Eventually James vanished from Betonia. He apparently skipped town again after cashing in a cotton crop raised with $500 his cousin had lent him and headed to Memphis where he tried to open his own honky-tonk.

Rediscovered in Hospital

By the 1950s collectors had made Skip James records valuable commodities; by the early 1960s a blues revival was underway and three of his songs had been reissued on anthologies of early blues. Young blues aficionados set out to track down James and the other men who had made the old, exotic, scratchy records. James proved difficult to find. It was not until 1964 that guitarist John Fahey and two friends located him in Tunica, Arkansas, where he lay in a hospital suffering from cancer. Finally coaxed back to performing, his first public appearance was the Newport Folk Festival that year. He played a mere nine minute set, four songs in all, but his performance according to Calt in I'd Rather be the Devil, was "to many blues devotees, the most dramatic moment of the festival."

In constant pain from the as yet untreated cancer, James was unable to record at first, despite interest from various record companies. In July of 1965, he received $200 for a session for Melodeon Records, which later that year resulted in an album entitled Skip James: Greatest of the Delta Blues Singers. He would later record two LPs for Vanguard, Skip James Today! and Devil Got My Woman. During the last four years of his life he occasionally played gigs at coffeehouses up and down the northeast coast. But his unrelentingly depressing music made the clubs loathe to book him. His records were not particularly successful either.

Another factor contributing to his lack of success late in life was his decline in musical quality. He had forsaken blues music at the time of his religious conversion. Calt wrote in I'd Rather be the Devil: "Before his death, James was to tell the author that he had considered blues sinful to perform. As a compromise, he had played with his 'thinkin' faculties' but had deliberately refused to 'put my heart in it.' What James feared above all was becoming the mesmeric blues performer he had been in 1931 and thus infecting others with the sin that blues represented. "Feelin' in music is electrifyin," he said, "it'll infect people." Star-struck audiences were satisfied with whatever he did, hearing more what he represented than what he was actually playing.

Living in Philadelphia with his third wife, James was chronically broke during his last years. Until the group Cream recorded "I'm So Glad" and gave James the songwriter's credit, that is. As a result, he received a royalty check for nearly $10,000.Skip James died of cancer on October 3, 1969, in Philadelphia. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 1992.

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