CD Review
Skip James
Studio Sessions: Rare And Unreleased
(Vanguard (2003) 79705-2)
19 tracks, 60 minutes.
by Craig Ruskey
Review date: December 2003
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"Keeping the Blues Alive Award"
Achievement for Blues on the Internet
Presented by The Blues Foundation
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While there are numerous players who fall into the various schools of blues, such as Delta, Texas, and Piedmont, Skip James was such an entirely individual performer that he was saddled with his own "Bentonia school" or style by music scholars. His Devil Got My Woman appears to have been the template for Robert Johnson's Hellhound On My Trail, while I'm So Glad was revived by Eric Clapton during the Cream years, and Hard Time Killing Floor is still a recognized classic in steady rotation among acoustic blues players worldwide. The emergence of these nineteen previously unissued tracks (recorded in 1967) stem from repeated requests from an online blues community for Vanguard to blow the dust off and issue them for everyone to hear. Skip's voice was oddly high-pitched and other-worldly while his guitar playing could be as intricate as it could be harsh, and his piano playing still defies accurate description today, more than thirty years after his death. Everything here is frightfully stark with an ability to instantly chill the senses from little more than a vocal phrase or guitar lick. Jack Of Diamonds, My Last Boogie, Bumble Bee, and Sporting Life Blues are absolutely brilliant with deft guitar and soulful vocals, and it's highly interesting to hear James traverse songs seemingly so outside his realm like Lazy Bones and Oh, Mary Don't You Weep. Skip also delivers some stunning religious offerings with Let My Jesus Lead You and They Are Waiting For Me. His bizarre piano, with odd timing and clusters of chords and notes, surfaces on My Own Blues, Backwater Blues, Omaha Blues and elsewhere, but remains as personal a statement as anything else he recorded. The legendary status of Skip James is well deserved - he was around during the dawning days of blues and made his first records for Paramount in 1931, he drifted back into obscurity shortly after that, and returned more than three decades later in the mid-1960s, sounding like no time had passed at all. Exceptional and timeless.
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