James, Skip – Worried Blues - New LP

recorded 1964

1. All Night Long
2. Broke & Hungry
3. I’m So Glad
4. Bad Whiskey
5. Cypress Grove Blues
6. Catfish Blues
7. Goin’ Away To Stay
8. Crow Jane
9. Devil Got My Woman
10. She Lyin’
11. Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues
12. Drunken Spree
13. Black Gal
14. Illinois Blues
15. Worried Blues*
16. Look Down The Road

one of America’s greatest, Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James, born June 9, 1902 on a plantation near Bentonia, Mississippi (one of the few towns that had a subgenre named after them). Skip started writing songs as a teenager building levees and roads, got to recording in 1931, a bad time for selling records with the country suffering from the Great Depression and of course black people of the South facing a mighty load of suffering before, during (and after)...those times might have reduced a huge percentage of the population down to a pair of stained overalls, but for folks like Skip those old overalls was nothing new, the pain coming through his music clear as an ambulance siren on a Sunday morning. If you listen to any haunting music today, or any form of blues, it might not have been directly influenced by Skip James, but it was very likely influenced by someone who was influenced by him. After finding no success with his 1931 recordings, James stopped recording and while sources give different accounts of his life, he worked various jobs and reportedly led the choir at a church and became a preacher. For the last five years of his life, he was rediscovered, found by John Fahey, Bill Barth, and Henry Vestine and bought to the attention of musicians around the world with new performances, reissues and new recordings. It’s easy to claim integrity when you come from privilege (and judge others who need money to rise out of poverty) but the integrity James showed during his rediscovery was inspirational. Because of this, his name might not have become as known as some, but musicians took notice and his rediscovery drastically and forever changed the face of American music. — winch

Artist Biography by Cub Koda