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The haunting falsetto of Skip James seems to arrive directly from the afterlife. In fact, when he recorded this disturbing collection of songs, he was already a dead man walking. Terminally ill with cancer, the Bentonia bluesman was aware of being merely a provisional shadow, the resigned ruin of what once was.
The fact is that almost nothing is known about what Nehemiah Curtis James was in life. After recording a handful of songs in 1931 for Paramount, he literally disappeared from the scene, only to reappear musically thirty years later. But those few songs, recorded in an old attic, were enough to preserve the aura of mystery that would make him a legend and lead to his rediscovery in 1964. It was indeed in 1964 that Skip James was found in a hospital in Tunica, gravely ill and awaiting surgery.
After an impressive performance at the Newport festival, Skip James was finally recognized as a completely innovative bluesman, endowed with an extraordinary guitar technique and an absolutely unique voice. He recorded several albums for Vanguard in the following years, and "Devil Got My Woman" is one of them. Skip James's style is unmistakable, and his songs, often somber and distressing, are characterized by an suffocating falsetto that represents the most distinctive feature of his internal laments, an instinctive outburst of a man who feels the weight of imminent death upon him. Those for Vanguard would be the last recordings of his life. In fact, Skip James died of cancer in 1969.
What Skip James did in those thirty years of anonymity is a mystery. He was probably a slave to the bottle and spent those years of his life wandering from city to city, doing a bit of everything. It is said he was also a bootleg alcohol merchant and a shepherd of souls, a minister of the Baptist and Methodist faiths, but as often happens in these cases, reality and fiction become indistinguishable. What is certain, however, is the ease with which he played and sang after his rediscovery, which is astounding. He proves to be a dynamic and fluid guitarist, capable of creating incredibly deep and evocative atmospheres, and when he momentarily abandons the guitar to switch to the piano, his songs also traverse some moments of temporary serenity, which, naturally, are not destined to last.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
03 Devil Got My Woman (05:15)
Must have been the devil, believe that woman has gone mad
Must have been the devil, believe that woman has gone mad
Nothin' but the devil change my baby's mind
Nothin' but the devil change my baby's mind
Laid there last night, laid there last night, tried to take my rest
My mind got to ramblin' like wild geese from the west
Must have been the devil, believe that woman has gone mad
Must have been the devil, believe that woman has gone mad
Woman I love, woman I love took off with my best friend
Woman I love took off with my best friend
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