BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Skip James

Skip J

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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 ofAll 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