Nehemiah “Skip” James
June 21, 1902 – October 3, 1969
Skip James was a hard living bootlegger, a sharecropper and a hard laborer. But above all, he was one of the most influential of the early Delta bluesmen. With a unique and highly sophisticated style of picking coupled with a ghostly falsetto voice, James was indeed one of a kind. His form of playing and singing was a direct influence on many, such as Robert Johnson, but no one has ever truly been able to replicate it effectively. James’ professional music career began in 1931 when he began recording sides of Paramount Records. James re-recorded many blues standards at the time, but it was generally his versions of the songs that later got covered by the likes of Johnson and even later, Cream, Deep Purple and Beck. As quick as James came onto the scene, he vanished. Over the next three decades, he rarely performed live and made no new recordings, becoming not much more than a footnote in blues history, until the early ’60s when he was “re-discovered” during the folk and blues revival. After being descovered by folk guitarists John Fahey, Bill Barth, and Henry Vestine in a Mississippi hospital in 1964, James’ career was put back on track. During his later years, he was a featured performer at the Newport Folk Festival and recorded for Takoma Records and Vanguard Records, where he was dubbed a “Vanguard Visionary” by future Vice-President, Dan Sell. His influence on pop culture has been felt in recent years as well. Indie rock icon, Beck covered his “He’s A Mighty Good Leader” in 1994, while Chris Thomas King recorded his “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” for the O’ Brother, Where Art Thou flim and soundtrack. And his “Devil Got My Woman” was prominently featured both the plot of and soundtrack to the 2001 cult hit, Ghost World, starring Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson. With his health deteriorating in later years, Skip James passed away in 1969 at the age of 69.
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