I'd Rather Be The Devil. This item is unavailable.I'd Rather Be The Devil

Skip James (1902-1969) was one of the greatest Mississippi bluesmen, and a creative and idiosyncratic blues musician. His 1931 performances of "Devil Got My Woman", "I'm So Glad" and "22-20 Blues" transcend the genre. "I'd Rather Be The Devil" is a biography of James - and one of the few accounts of the dangerous and disreputable life of a professional blues musician. Based largely on hundreds of hours of conversations with James himself, Stephen Calt paints a portrait of a man troubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man who achieved one moment of greatness in a life haunted by failure. And, in doing so, Calt offers insights into the nature of the blues, the world in which it thrived, and its fate when that world vanished.

Less a biography of one blues legend than a biography of Mississippi blues, this account chronicles Skip James's life in part to make a more important, more affecting point. Most blues players from the early '20s and '30s waited decades for their music to earn them any degree of fame or financial reward. With a record's worth of songs earning them only $10 or $20, musicians survived as sharecroppers or manual laborers. Calt depicts James, born on a plantation in 1902 and abandoned early by his bootlegger father, as a man whose life before and after a single 1931 recording session was the blues. James's early years were not so different from his music-superstitious and undeniably violent. James made his living on the road, playing dance music in juke joints and whorehouses. Jazz fans discovered James in the '40s, and his songs "22-20" and "Devil Got My Woman" became instant classics. That James was one of the few to live long enough to witness his fame, which peaked in the '60s, was luck after years of hard living. Calt's interviews with James just before his death in 1969 imbue this book with a true survivor's voice.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.