Devil Got My Woman

Traveling from Mississippi to a frigid Wisconsin studio during the depths of the Great Depression, Skip James recorded what many consider the most chilling performance in acoustic blues. Playing an intricate fingerstyle in a haunting open D-minor tuning, James wailed in a ghostly, unsettling falsetto. Because Paramount Records used cheap materials and the Depression crushed record sales, the 78 RPM record fell into extreme obscurity. Decades later, a royalty check of $10,000 from Cream's 1966 cover of another song from this session ('I'm So Glad') would be the only real money James ever made in music.