Remembers Louisa, “He was sort of swaggering around in those shorts, which was in the old way of thinking—remember when this was back in the ’60s—an uppity thing to do.” James was feeling strong again, strong enough to show the devil in himself. Soccer Work Here Sales were poor as a result, and he gave up performing the blues to become the choir director in his father's church. Only primal country blues satisfied their craving. James looked more like a man contemplating death than one saying yes to life. A handful of these white suburban oddballs organized their lives around country blues. City Lights: Your weekly guide to artsy goings-on, hitting your inbox Thursdays and Sundays. When it began to bother him again and he was in considerable pain, he went to a man he called a “witch doctor’ in Washington. According to Calt, the "rediscovery" of both James and Son House at virtually the same time was the start of the blues revival in the United States. James, buoyed by the enthusiastic reception at Newport, now tried to accomplish the same. Skip told me the witch doctor diagnosed the case and said [Skip] had been hexed by a jealous woman in the area of the navel, and the poison had sort of drained downward.”, James once asked Louisa to pick up the witch doctor’s medicine. “It made me think of some dark bayou with Spanish moss hanging off the trees, an eerie voodoo atmosphere….Skip’s music evoked thoughts in people that maybe they didn’t want to be thinking when they were out on the town trying to have a good time. James began playing the organ in his teens. During the two-day session, James would record two dozen other songs, including the salacious “Special Rider Blues,” the morbid “Little Cow and Calf Is Gonna Die Blues,” and the apocalyptic “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues,” which were eventually issued as Paramount 78s. Meeks was no younger than Mable (like James, in her 60s), but James thought Meeks was uptown and high-class, a notch above his former wife. His father disapproved of James’ blues-singing past. On a winter night in 1931, he’d boarded a segregated train to Grafton, Wis. James didn’t hide his jealousy. Hurt met such spiteful behavior with an almost Christlike acceptance. But James’ attempts at reform—being ordained in his father’s church, even singing in a traveling gospel quartet—didn’t last. James at first refused, vowing to endure the agony though the doctors told him he couldn’t imagine the torment ahead if he postponed the procedure. The bluesman was now a man of leisure—strolling around Dupont Circle, feeding pigeons in the park, and generally taking it easy. James improvised the words on the spot after the engineer requested a “gun song.” Those lyrics still pack a wallop, even by the standards of gangsta rappers: All the doctors in Wisconsin sure won’t help her none. “I know how Howard Carter felt when he opened Tutankhamen’s tomb and looked in. [1] His father was a bootlegger who reformed and became a preacher. I knew I had something special.”. He hung out with the musicians who congregated there from all over Mississippi, and came to see himself as more than a mere entertainer. In 1952, a high-school student named Dick Spottswood flipped through a stack of jazz records at an Adams Morgan music store. Never a full-time musician, he found other ways to survive: as a laborer, dynamite blaster, gambler, pimp, and bootlegger. "[1] James's classically informed fingerpicking style was fast and clean, using the entire register of the guitar, with heavy, hypnotic bass lines. I said, “I’d be happy to take you to Mardi Gras, and after that, I want to go up to Mississippi and see if I can find somebody.’ ”, After the pair made it to New Orleans, Hoskins phoned a friend back east and discovered that police had posted a 26-state alarm for him on charges of kidnapping, grand theft auto, and violating the Mann Act: His companion, he found out, was only 17, and the Dodge belonged to her father. James subsequently recorded for Takoma Records, Melodeon Records, and Vanguard Records and performed at various engagements until his death from cancer in 1969. All three met with critical acclaim, and all three logged disappointing sales. Washington D.C. Hospital Center Blues #4. She remembers “a mauve flower with scalloped edges.”, “Then he said to me rather proudly, “I say to these young doctors, This would be really sad for someone your age.’ Basically he was saying he’d done it all. As the girl waited in the car, Hoskins knocked on the front door. In the apartment, he often played the piano the Spottswoods had loaned him. Spottswood and company knew that Patton and both Johnsons had died decades before. But in early 1965, James surrendered. He currently resides in a gospel mission shelter in Oregon, and spends his time—what else?—record-hunting. Undaunted, Hoskins stuck out his hand and said, “Hey, John, my name’s Tom, and I’m from Washington, D.C., and I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”. Calt’s exhaustive biography sheds light on James’ little-known early life, previously documented in only a few paragraphs of obscure anthologies’ liner notes. They’d found Skip James in a Mississippi hospital, long forgotten by his own community. He now seeks used classical albums, which he trades for cash. Once, he’d “deadened the mind” of his female fans with his music. According to Calt, James received only $40 for his 1931 recordings, and he soon quit the music business, bitterly declaring it a “barrel of crabs.” The next year found him in a Dallas bread line. Even that remedy didn’t work enough magic. His cancer continued to spread, and in late ’68, doctors removed his testicles and the remains of his penis. Hard Time Killing Floor Blues This song is by Chris Thomas King and appears on the movie soundtrack O Brother, Where Art Thou? But he faced one problem. Johnson embodied a kind of Delta Dr. Faustus, and his celebrated iniquities earned him rock ‘n’ roll street credibility with an entirely new generation of listeners. "Killing Floor" is recognized as a blues standard, with Skip James' 1931 recording "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" as the likely inspiration. Spottswood’s coterie began to reach beyond his collection. Yet James had never been up north until he was brought to Grafton, Wisconsin, in 1931 to ⦠Not even a crossroads, Avalon boasted a lone grocery store that also served as the post office. James figured that after he regained his health, he could focus on his new career and become a blues star. “He didn’t suffer fools or take no kind of shit.”, James stood in stark contrast to Hurt, Washington’s—and the nation’s—most famous rediscovered bluesman. After Mardi Gras, the fugitives drove to Mississippi, arriving in Avalon one Friday at dusk. There, Hoskins asked a pair of elderly men if they knew a blues singer named John Hurt. Like rabid jazz collectors before them, some of the younger blues converts road-tripped throughout the South, canvassing black neighborhoods for old 78s. “We had expected that we had another John Hurt on our hands,” recalls Ed Denson, another member of the Washington blues cult. The Original Delta Blues ... 5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful slice of Blues history, w/ excellent sound quality! “Everybody became quiet and thoughtful—just the words of some of Skip’s songs send a shiver up your spine, and when he sang it, it was guaranteed to.”, James’ music spooked spectators. At the barbershop, Fahey received directions to a nearby shack where an old woman—after feigning ignorance—told them that her husband, Skip James, was in the hospital. Louisa remembers that when she first visited James in the hospital, she found him lying on his bed, the white sheet pulled over his head like a funeral shroud. Cypress Grove Blues #10. This song is a cover of "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" by Skip James. In 1931, he got to test his powers. Calt’s book traces the next three decades of James’ “lost years,” an extraordinary odyssey throughout the Deep South. Hoskins fetched his guitar from the car and presented it to his hero. The panel identified it as "one of Wolfâs most recognizable songs. “The first time, it was a shock, but after that it got to be kind of comical, and I’d say, “Hello Skip. “[I] found Mable alone, sitting in a darkened room,” Calt writes. “I don’t think he had a lot more use for git-along Southern blacks than he did for the white oppressors,” says Spottswood. “What is that body of water there?” he would ask as the car raced over a rickety bridge. Doctors told him bluntly that if he wanted to live, he had no choice: His penis would have to be amputated. James didn’t need much prodding. [14] The musicologist Dick Spottswood commented, "Skip James, you never knew. Hurt—who’d never considered himself a bluesman to begin with—presented material already familiar to the crowd, which knew his 1928 tunes from a popular Folkways compilation, Anthology of American Folk Music. [9], In 2004, Wim Wenders directed the film The Soul of a Man (the second part of The Blues, a series produced by Martin Scorsese), focusing on the music of Blind Willie Johnson, J.B. Lenoir and James. Museums/Galleries Itâs Monday morning, & time for some blues! “The rawer, the better” became their motto, and the rawest of all was the Mississippi Delta blues by such masters as Charley Patton, Son House, Tommy and Robert Johnson, Bukka White, John Hurt, and of course, Skip James. a re-issue of Skip James - Hard Time Killing Floor Blues with different artwork, which was itself a re-issue of Skip James - Greatest Of The Delta Blues Singers, with bonus-tracks (08-11) and new artwork There, the 28-year-old recorded the songs that made him a legend and eventually spurred these young strangers to search him out—music so haunting and hallucinatory that a critic would later compare him to Poe and Van Gogh. Except for Fahey, the pilgrims worshiped James; the young discoverer’s relationship to James stood in stark contrast to that of Hoskins and Hurt. Hard Time Killing Floor Blues Tab by Soggy Bottom Boys. Hoskins was ready to go; his American University classes would be there when he returned. His songs have influenced generations of musicians and have been adapted by numerous artists. After auditioning in a Jackson record store, James earned a recording session with Paramount Records in Grafton, Wis. But instead of groveling or complaining, James cast himself as Satan, as a figure of darkness and power. He believed that a jealous woman’s hex had caused his horrifying illness, a tumor on his penis. Now he had a second chance at the acclaim that had eluded him. Find album credit information for Hard Time Killing Floor Blues - Skip James on AllMusic That fall, James moved into an apartment on 19th Street NW, near Dupont Circle, and his wife, Mable, left Mississippi to care for him. Sleepy John Estes turned up in Brownsville, Tenn. Bukka White was alive and well in Memphis. Guitarist Eric Clapton made sure that the dying blues singer got his payments, which mostly went to pay his hospital bills. The blues standards of the day struck him as frivolous party music; he saw his own songs, and his idiosyncratic style, as something much darker. Speir placed blues performers with various record labels, including Paramount Records. “Unlike Hurt, he wasn’t a happy person, and when he drank he would become vicious.”. And she was selling whiskey on the side or something, so he threatened to get her thrown off the plantation. Download our mobile app now. He began playing the guit⦠), Where racial matters were concerned, James was too misanthropic to choose sides. In the District, he held court at the Ontario Place, a folkie coffeehouse in Adams Morgan. And this summer, the bluesman’s bad attitude dogged the U.S. He sounded like someone possessed, a one-man Southern Gothic drama. Maternal Health, Arts Club We started the year with 302 members. [3] On the strength of this audition, James traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin, to record for Paramount. Hard Time Killing Floor Blues Tab by Skip James with free online tab player. Delta bluesman Son House had just been found up in Rochester, N.Y. On July 13, 1964, Newsweek covered both rediscoveries in one story, rhapsodizing, “These two were the only great country blues singers still lost. ‘Cause nothing but the devil changed my baby’s mind. Fahey and two companions chased a lead turned up by a Southerner: that James’ hometown was Bentonia. The householders would rummage about excitedly, then announce, “We got a gang of ’em.”. Theater, Football In a way, James’ story is the truest story of the blues: He led an open wound of a life, and all he got for it was minor-league, post-mortem stardom. 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