52 weeks of blues

There isn’t a lot known about Skip James’ early life. He very nearly was one of the bluesmen who fell through the cracks and would have remained unknown except for the efforts of three blues fans in the 1960s.

Nehemiah Curtis James was born on June 9, 1902, in Bentonia, Mississippi. His father was a former bootlegger turned preacher, and in his teens the young Skip worked in levee building and road construction.

Inspired by the local delta musicians Henry Stuckey and brothers Charlie and Jesse Sims, Skip started on the organ, then the guitar in his teens. As work for labourers started to become scarce in the late 20’s, Skip turned to share cropping and bootlegging whiskey to earn a living.

James developed a three fingered guitar technique, and a more bouncey rhythm than most Delta players. It’s likely his mentor Henry Stuckey was primarily a Piedmont blues guitarist and taught Skip the Piedmont style, which differs slightly from Delta Blues due to a more obvious rag time influence. James mainly played in open D minor tuning, creating a haunting feel to a lot of his songs that was a major influence to bluesman of his time.

In early 1931, he performed for the record store owner and talent scout H. C. Speir in Jacksonville, Mississippi. Impressed with what he heard, Speir arranged a recording session for Skip with the Paramount label in Grafton, Wisconsin, in February 1931. He recorded 18 tracks, released as 9 double sided 78 rpm records.

The Great Depression was hitting the world at the time, and Skip’s recordings failed to have any commercial success, though they were a major influence on his contemporaries. Robert Johnson recorded his own version of James’ “22-20 Blues”, renaming it 32-20 blues, and his “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” became an instant blues standard.

Seeking a more stable life, James quit performing music to become the choir director of his father’s church and later became an ordained minister. His recording days were seemingly over, and he disappeared from the blues scene.

Over 30 years later, in 1964, 3 blues fans, John Fahey, Bill Barth, and Henry Vestine, discovered James recuperating in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi. Later that same year he performed his first gig in 33 years, playing at the Newport Folk Festival. The rediscovery of James and other greats such as Son House lead to the blues revival of the 60’s, and directly caused the British Explosion of bands ike Zeppeln, Cream, and th Rolling Stones that followed later in the decade.

James recorded old and new songs, including Crow Jane, for the next 5 years and was a regular performer. He died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 3, 1969.

Skip James performing Crow Jane in 1967.

Crow Jane has long been a blues standard, and its roots can be traced back to a much older song, “Red River” which was a traditional folk song and became one of the first Blues standards around 1900. By the 1920’s, the song was a regular for all blues men, and different versions of it started to becme popular in different regions and with different names.
In 1926, Bo Weavil Jackson recorded “Pistol Blues” which probably contains the first recorded mention of the Crow Jane character. Pistol Blues uses the 8 bar progression of Red River. The following year, Julius Daniels released the first song bearing the title “Crow Jane”. Lyrically it has more in common with Bo Weavil’s Pistol Blues than James’ version. Piedmont master Rev. Gary Davis was known to play a version in the 20’s, and it’s likely his version was the main influence on Skip James’ later recording.
There has been much debate about the meaning of the term “Crow Jane”, and Max Haymes has an excellent essay about it that you can read here. “Jane Shore” was a rhyming slang term for “whore”, probably stemming from the 17th century term “Jade” to denote a prostitute. Thomas Ingoldby wrote of “Jane Shores” as early as 1837. Petey Wheatstraw and Blind Willie McTell both sang of the problems “Janes” had caused them.
“Crow” was in use as early as 1820 as a derogatory term for a woman of low character, so Crow Jane becomes the lowest of the low in blues parlance. “Crow Jane” is a song about the murder, and subsequent regret by the murderer, of a prostitute.
Skip James plays it in standard tuning, though his guitar is tuned down half a step in the recording and about a full step in the video.

E                                             B7
Crow Janie, Crow Janie, Crow Jane
A7
Don't you hold your head high
E                          B7
Someday, baby, you know you got to die
E                          B7                 E                B7               E
You got to lay down and you got to die, you got to

And I want to buy me a pistol
Want me forty rounds of ball
Shoot Crow Jane just to see her fall
She got to fall, she got to, she got to fall, she got to

You know I begged Crow Jane
Not to hold her head too high
Someday, baby, you know you got to die
You got to lay down and you got to die, you got to

And I dug her a grave with a silver spade
Ain't nobody going to take my Crow Jane's place
No, you can't take her, no, you can't take her

You know I begged Crow Jane
Not to hold her head too high
Someday, baby, you know you got to 
You got to lay down and you got to die, you got to

You know I let her down with a golden chain
And every link I would call my Crow Jane's name
Crow Jane, Crow, Crow Jane, Crow

You know I never missin' my water til my well ran dry
Didn't miss Crow Jane until the day she died
Til the day she, 'til the day she

You know I begged Crow Jane
Not to hold her head too high
Someday, baby, you know you got to die
You got to lay down and you got to die, you got to

You know I dug her grave eight feet in the ground
Didn't feel sorry til they let her down
They had to let her down, they had to let her down

You know I begged Crow Jane
Not to hold her head too high
Someday, baby, you know you got to die
You got to lay down and you got to die, you got to

Skip played the a few different ways. In the recording he uses chords while he uses higher double stops in the video. Here’s the recording intro (the hammeron 0-1 in bar 5 is a trill: 0-1-0-1):
In the video, he uses a run of double stops:

The progression is a variant on an 8 bar blues. The first 4 bars are always the same, E (played as a D shape on the 4th fret) B7 (4th fret) and two bars of A7, and the rest is alternating between bars of E (open position) and B7. He ‘ends’ each repetition on the E so it’s a 9 bar blues though he sometimes adds in an extra two bars of E/B7.
It features an alternate bass line hitting on every beat with a melody played over the top. The melody varies only slightly in each repetition, but the bass line is consistent throughout the song. However he changes the rhythm in just one of the B7 bars in the second half. Sometimes it’s the first B7, mainly its the second. It’s a nice sound, but it messes up the one two three four of the rest of the song and can really throw off your timing. Watch out for it!
The bass also has a few notes on the G string and need to be played with the thumb which is a little unusual.
I’ve tabbed the bass line seperately, with the special B7 in bar 6. Get the bassline down then add in the melody.
The melody features strong notes played mainly on the beat – 7ths and major 6ths – with some additional notes on the off beat. It looks tricky, but like all finger style blues if you can get your thumb to shift into automatic and just concentrate picking out the melody with your fingers it’s not so bad. The 0-1 hammeron in bars 5 and 7 are trills: 0-1-0-1 played very quickly.

In the studio version, Skip doesn’t play a solo but incorporates a similar melody in the outro. In the video recording he plays a brief solo. It starts with a slide on the last beat of the previous bar of the progression. Skip messes up a bit in bar 3, so I’ve put in my interpretation of what he was trying to do in that bar.

Skip plays the outro on the recorded version. It uses similar double stops to the solo and intro from the video,