Happy Birthday Mississippi John Hurt *Sweet and Low- The Blues of Skip James-Part One

Happy Birthday To You-

By Lester Lannon

I am devoted to a local folk station WUMB which is run out of the campus of U/Mass-Boston over near Boston Harbor. At one time this station was an independent one based in Cambridge but went under when their significant demographic base deserted or just passed on once the remnant of the folk minute really did sink below the horizon.

So much for radio folk history except to say that the DJs on many of the programs go out of their ways to commemorate or celebrate the birthdays of many folk, rock, blues and related genre artists. So many and so often that I have had a hard time keeping up with noting those occurrences in this space which after all is dedicated to such happening along the historical continuum.

To “solve” this problem I have decided to send birthday to that grouping of musicians on an arbitrary basis as I come across their names in other contents or as someone here has written about them and we have them in the archives. This may not be the best way to acknowledge them, but it does do so in a respectful manner.    

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Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Skip James Doing "Devil Got My Woman" At The Newport Folk Festival in 1966.


CD REVIEW


Devil Got My Woman, Skip James, Vanguard records, 1991

"I'd Rather Be The Devil Than Be That Woman's Man"

The last time that I used this above-titled headline was in a commentary related to Senator Hillary Clinton's late presidential campaign and I caught hell from my feminist friends for it. So I add here blues singer/songwriter Rory Block's translation on her cover version for "political correctness". Okay? "I'd Rather Be The Devil, Than Be A Woman To That Man." I would add, that one is dealing with the blues we are not talking about any kind of sense of political correctness but the primordial longings unvarnished by the political niceties of that day or this. But enough of that. Let's talk about the legendary Skip James' work.

For those who saw Martin Scorsese's six-part blues series on PBS you know that one of the segments was directed by Wim Wender's who chose the work of Skip James as a subject for presentation. There Skip's very short recording career (as it turns out early recording career) was highlighted. As others have mentioned Skip James was a Baptist preacher, not a professional musician, so aside from the incredible recordings he made for Paramount Records in 1931, he wasn't widely sought after as a performer until the blues revival of the late '50s and early '60s. At that time he came front and center with fellow "discovered" artists like Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White and Son House. That is the company he properly belongs in and should be compared to.

The contents of this CD only confirm that evaluation. His great falsetto voice accompanied by guitar or piano (as a nice change up) hold forth here. Interestingly, the CD features newer arrangements of several songs from James' 1931 Paramount recording, like the well-known title track "Devil Got My Woman" that got me into political trouble. There are also some moodier songs for piano here like the "22-20 Blues" and "Careless Love". Here, though, is the "skinny" on James. Like a number of blues artists you have to be in the mood and be patience. Then you don't want to turn the damn thing off. That is the case here.