Skip James: Devil Got My Woman [BLUESVILLE]

Why you'll love it

This Bluesville Acoustic Sounds Series edition is cut all-analog from the original tapes by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, pressed on 180g vinyl and packed in a tip-on jacket with an obi. Skip James sings alone, with just his guitar and piano.

This edition

• Bluesville Acoustic Sounds Series
• 180g vinyl
• All-analog remaster from the original tapes
• Mastered by Matthew Lutthans
• Tip-on jacket
• Obi strip
• Notes by Scott Billington

About the album

Skip James first cut "Devil Got My Woman" in 1931, and for more than thirty years most people knew him as a name on a few scratchy 78s. When the folk and blues revival tracked him down in the 1960s, the eerie falsetto and the minor-key guitar were still there, and younger players were finally ready to listen.

Vanguard caught him in 1968 for what became the last album issued in his lifetime. It's just James, his guitar and his piano, and the songs reach back to his Bentonia, Mississippi roots. The title song is haunting and spare, "22-20 Blues" and "Illinois Blues" revisit his early recordings, "Look at the People Standing at the Judgment" carries a preacher's weight, and he turns "Careless Love" and "Catfish Blues" into something entirely his own.

AllMusic's Scott Yanow heard plenty of his influence on the folk movement of the day, and the title song later turned up in the film Ghost World. James died the following year. He left behind a record so quiet and intense that you may find yourself leaning towards the speakers without noticing.

Also at Kops: more Skip James on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Vanguard / Bluesville, a reissue of the 1968 album.