Skip’s Revival

Skip James performs in the company of other legendary blues men including Howlin’ wolf at the Newport Folk Festival in 1966.

In early 1931, Skip James auditioned for H. C. Speir a Jackson, Mississippi, record shop owner and talent scout who placed blues performers with a variety of record labels including Paramount. On the strength of this audition, James traveled to Grafton, Wisconsin to record for Paramount. James’s 1931 work is considered unique among pre-war blues recordings, and formed the basis of his reputation as a musician.

For the next thirty years, he recorded nothing drifting in and out of music and was virtually unknown to listeners until about 1960. In 1964 blues enthusiasts John Fahey, Bill Barth, and Henry Vestine located Skip James in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi. According to Calt, the “rediscovery” of both James and of Son House at virtually the same moment was the start of the “blues revival” in the US. In July 1964 James, along with other rediscovered performers, appeared at the Newport Folk Festival. Several photographs by Dick Waterman captured this first performance in over 30 years. Throughout the remainder of the decade, he recorded for the Takoma, Melodeon, and Vanguard labels and played various engagements until his death in Philadelphia from cancer in 1969.

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