(Skip James Killing Floor):
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James was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Bentonia, his hometown. In 2020, James' song "Devil Got My Woman" was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame
Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James (June 9, 1902 – October 3, 1969)[1] was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. AllMusic stated: "Coupling an oddball guitar tuning set against eerie, falsetto vocals, James' early recordings could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck."
After a long absence from the public eye, James was rediscovered in 1964 by blues enthusiasts including John Fahey, helping further the blues and folk music revival of the 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, James appeared at folk and blues festivals, gave concerts around the country, and recorded several albums for various record labels. His songs have influenced generations of musicians and have been adapted by numerous artists. He has been hailed as "one of the seminal figures of the blues"
Nehemiah Curtis James was born on June 9, 1902, in a segregated hospital near Bentonia, Mississippi.[4] His mother Phyllis worked as a cook and babysitter on the Woodbine Plantation, which was 15 miles south of Yazoo City. His father Eddie James, a bootlegger who was described as a "local lowlife" by Stephen Calt, left the family around 1907. He later reformed and became a preacher. As a youth, James heard local musicians, such as Henry Stuckey, from whom he learned to play the guitar, and the brothers Charlie and Jesse Sims. His mother bought him a $2.50 guitar, which was his first instrument. James later began playing the organ in his teens. He later left Bentonia in 1919, and began working on road construction and levee-building crews in Mississippi in the early 1920s, and wrote what is perhaps his earliest song, "Illinois Blues", about his experiences as a laborer. He began playing the guitar in open D-minor tuning.[4]
1920s and 1930s
For most of the 1920s, James worked a series of illicit jobs, such as bootlegging, gambling, and procuring. His lifestyle was reportedly so "unbridled", that when he returned to Bentonia from Dallas, Texas, in 1929, he was met with local reports of his supposed "violent death". He was met with the same reports five years earlier when he returned from Arkansas. That same year, in 1929, he met a local musician named Johnny Temple, who became his first protégé. The 23 year old Temple learned how to play in cross-note tuning, which was then unknown to musicians who were from the Jackson area, and also attempted to copy James' high falsetto voice, until he advised Temple to sing in his natural voice.[5] James also operated a music school for would-be blues musicians in Jackson, giving lessons on guitar, piano, and even violin.[6]
James continued working locally as a street singer. In early 1931, James auditioned for the record shop owner and talent scout H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi. Speir placed blues performers with various record labels, including Paramount Records.[7] On the strength of this audition, James traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin, to record for Paramount.[7] His 1931 records are considered idiosyncratic among prewar blues recordings and formed the basis of his reputation as a musician.
As was typical of his era, James recorded various styles of music – blues, spirituals, cover versions, and original compositions – frequently blurring the lines between genres and sources. For example, "I'm So Glad" was derived from a 1927 song, "So Tired", by Art Sizemore and George A. Little, recorded in 1928 by Gene Austin and by Lonnie Johnson (Johnson's version was entitled "I'm So Tired of Livin' All Alone"). James's biographer Stephen Calt, echoing the opinion of several music critics, considered the finished product totally original, "one of the most extraordinary examples of fingerpicking found in guitar music".[4] Several other recordings from the Grafton session, such as "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues", "Devil Got My Woman", "Jesus Is a Mighty Good Leader", and "22-20 Blues" (the basis of Robert Johnson's better-known "32-20 Blues"),[8] have been similarly influential. Very few original copies of James's Paramount 78 rpm records have survived.
The Great Depression struck just as James's recordings were hitting the market. Sales were poor as a result, and he gave up performing the blues to become the choir director in his father's church.[7] James was later an ordained minister in Baptist and Methodist churches, but the extent of his involvement in religious activities is unknown
In July 1964, James and other rediscovered musicians appeared at the Newport Folk Festival.[7] Several photographs by the blues promoter Dick Waterman captured this performance, James's first in over 30 years. James subsequently recorded for Takoma Records, Melodeon Records, and Vanguard Records and performed at various engagements until his death from cancer on October 3, 1969, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the age of 67.[7][11]
More of James's recordings have been available since his death than were available during his lifetime. His 1931 recordings and several of his recordings and concerts from the 1960s have been reissued on numerous compact discs, in and out of print. His songs were not initially recorded as frequently as those of other rediscovered blues musicians. However, the British rock band Cream recorded "I'm So Glad",[3] providing James with $10,000 in royalties, the only windfall of his career.[1][12] Subsequently, Cream's adaptation was recorded by other groups. James' "22-20" inspired the name of the English group 22-20s. The British post-rock band Hope of the States released a song partially about the life of James, entitled "Nehemiah", which reached number 30 on the UK Singles Chart.[13] Only 15 copies of James' original shellac 78 recordings are still in existence, and have become extremely sought after by collectors such as John Tefteller.[14]
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.[15] Because James had not been filmed before the 1960s, Keith B. Brown played the part of the young James in the documentary. James' song "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" was featured in the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and included on the soundtrack album.
Equipment
The guitar that James played in his 1931 sessions is now generally accepted to have been a 12-string Stella guitar restrung as a six-string. When he was rediscovered in the 1960s, he typically played a Gibson J-185, Gibson J-45, Martin D-18, and a Martin D-28
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Skip James - Bentonia
The haunting quality of Nehemiah “Skip” James’s music earned him a reputation as oneof the great early Mississippi bluesmen.James (1902-1969) grew up at the Woodbine Plantation and as a youth learned to playboth guitar and piano. At his 1931 sessionfor Paramount he recorded eighteen songs, including the dark-themed “Devil GotMy Woman” and “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” He later became a minister, butreturned to performing blues during the1960s “blues revival.”
The music of Skip James and fellow Bentonia guitarists such as Henry Stuckey (1897-1966) and Jack Owens (1904-1997) is often characterized as a genre unto itself. The distinctive approach is notable for its ethereal sounds, open minor guitar tunings, gloomy themes, falsetto vocals, and songs that bemoan the work of the devil. Stuckey learned one of the tunings from Caribbean soldiers while serving in France during World War I, and said that he taught it to James, who went on to become the most famous of Bentonia’s musicians.
James was born on June 9, 1902, on the Woodbine Plantation where his mother Phyllis worked as a cook; his father, Edward, a guitarist, left the family when James was around five. Inspired by Stuckey, James began playing guitar as a child, and later learned to play organ. In his teens James began working on construction and logging projects across the mid-South, and sharpened his piano skills playing at work camp “barrelhouses.” In 1924 James returned to Bentonia, where he earned his living as a sharecropper, gambler and bootlegger, in addition to performing locally with Stuckey.
James traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin, for his historic 1931 session for Paramount Records, which included thirteen songs on guitar and five on piano. “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” alluded to the Great Depression, while the gun-themed “22-20 Blues” provided the model for Robert Johnson’s “32-20 Blues,” and the haunting “Devil Got My Woman” was the likely inspiration for Johnson’s “Hell Hound on My Trail.” James’s records sold poorly, and later in 1931 he moved to Dallas, where he served as a minister and led a gospel group. He later stayed in Birmingham, Alabama, and in Hattiesburg and Meridian, Mississippi, occasionally returning to Bentonia. When he applied for a Social Security card in 1937, he was employed locally by the Cage Brothers (probably the Cage family who had a farm north of town). He returned in 1948 and sometimes played for locals at the newly opened Blue Front Cafe, although he did not earn his living as a musician. He later lived in Memphis and Tunica County, where he was located in 1964 by blues enthusiasts who persuaded him to begin performing again.
James relocated to Washington, D. C., and then to Philadelphia to play folk and blues festivals and clubs. He recorded several albums and gained new renown from the rock group Cream’s 1966 cover of his song “I’m So Glad,” but the somber quality of much of his music and his insistence on artistic integrity over entertainment value limited his popular appeal. James died in Philadelphia on October 3, 1969. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1992. msbluestrail.org/...
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Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the ending of slavery in the United States. The holiday's name is a portmanteau of the words "June" and "nineteenth", as it was on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas at the end of the American Civil War.[8][9] Although this date commemorates enslaved people learning of their freedom under the Emancipation Proclamation, this only applied to former Confederate states. There remained legally enslaved people in states that never seceded from the Union. These people did not gain their freedom until the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution on December 6, 1865.
The day was recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. Juneteenth became the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983
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