Skip James was born and grew up in Mississippi where his father was a bootlegger who found Jesus and became a preacher. Life was tough for a young black man in rural Mississippi at the turn of the century. Young Skip knew it well as a worker on road crews and levees in his 20’s. He no doubt drew from his experience as inspiration for one of his most famous songs, Hard Time Killing Floor.
Skip James’s musical prowess was developed early, likely honed in his father’s church. His talent was recognized by somehow by Paramount. They paid for his travel to Grafton, Wisconsin in 1931 to record his songs. Skip drew influence and style from blues and spirituals, bending genres with original and cover compositions, but the latent emotion and authenticity in his music was the substance of his own life.
The slaughterhouses that employed many black men at the time may have inspired Hard Time Killing Floor, though it isn’t clear whether Skip James ever worked in one. A blues song by nature, one might imagine a modern day psalmist pouring his heart out to God, expressing the emotional anguish of the drudgery of life under the sun. Inherent in the plaintive heart of the blues, though, is a sorrowful note of hope, a certain resigned peace and satisfaction in the singing of which hope rises above the pain.
Skip’s musical career never got off the ground with the heavy air of the Great Depression flattening out the wind under his wings. Skip James turned his attention to directing the choir in his father’s church. He was ordained into both Baptist and Methodist churches. His musical career was quashed even as it started. Not much would likely have survived about Skip James, the musician, if it wasn’t for the blues and folk music revival of the 50’s and early 60’s.
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Blind Willie Johnson had a profound influence on the world of music. Born in 1887, the son of a Texas sharecropper, his father got him a cigar box guitar at the age of 5. The guitar became his lifelong companion. He was blind by the age of 7. Reports differ on the cause. Perhaps, it’s true that his step-mother splashed water with lye in it on his face in a moment of anger. Whatever the cause, Blind Willie Johnson sang Gospel-infused blues, a craft he honed as a street musician and preacher.
