I’d Rather Be the Devil
Skip James and the Blues
A biographer spends years with a bluesman he reveres and does not much like.
Stephen Calt tracked down Skip James in the 1960s blues revival and spent years in his company, and the resulting book is as much about the biographer’s disillusionment as the musician’s genius. James emerges as cold, mercenary and unmistakably great. It is one of the few blues books that declines to romanticise its subject.
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Jimmy McDonough
Calt had a love-hate relationship with decrepit blues genius Skip James and most likely himself.
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