Skip James

Skip James cut a singular path through the Delta blues with an eerie high falsetto, an open-D minor guitar tuning, and a haunted piano style. His 1931 Paramount sessions, including 'Devil Got My Woman' and 'Cypress Grove Blues,' sold poorly and nearly vanished, leaving him to drift out of music for decades. His rediscovery at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival made him a revered figure of the revival and preserved one of the era's strangest, most personal voices.