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.
The floating-verse lineage for this recording (who else recorded it, where the melody or lyric traveled, and how it was adapted) is still being mapped. This section will trace the song's DNA across the archive.
Contributions welcome at OlMrRead@ccblues.com.