Latest / DISGRACELAND / Skip James: A Sawmill Shootout, Pimping, Bootlegging, and the Son of a Preacher Man

Transcript

Skip James: A Sawmill Shootout, Pimping, Bootlegging, and the Son of a Preacher Man · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
0:14
Speaker 1: Skip James are insane. One of the last discovered authentic
0:19
Speaker 1: Delta bluesmen of the nineteen sixties blues revival, Skip James
0:24
Speaker 1: shot and perhaps killed more than one man. He was
0:28
Speaker 1: a pimp, a bootlegger, and a preacher's son. Yet Skip
0:32
Speaker 1: James was celebrated, feted, and embraced for his undeniable musical
0:37
Speaker 1: talent because Skip James made great music. Unlike that music
0:43
Speaker 1: I played for you at the top of the show.
0:45
Speaker 1: That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from
0:49
Speaker 1: my mellotron called Wiggle Waggle MK. Two. I played you
0:54
Speaker 1: that clip because I can't afford the rights to Raggall
0:58
Speaker 1: by Frankie Valley in the Forest Seasons. And why would
1:02
Speaker 1: I play you that specific slice of Jersey Boy Cheese?
1:06
Speaker 1: Could I afford it? Because that was the number one
1:10
Speaker 1: song in America On July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty four,
1:14
Speaker 1: and that was the day Skip James first played the
1:17
Speaker 1: Newport Folk Festival, an event that would mark the long
1:20
Speaker 1: overdue arrival onto the scene of one of the greatest
1:23
Speaker 1: blues men of all time and simultaneously marked the beginning
1:27
Speaker 1: of the end for the tortured and doomed Blue Singer.
1:30
Speaker 1: On this episode sawmill shootouts, pimping, bootlegging, and the son
1:36
Speaker 1: of a preacher man dealt a Blue Singer Skip James,
1:40
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Brennan in this this disgrace. Land Blantis is
2:16
Speaker 1: a condition where the head of the penis becomes inflamed,
2:19
Speaker 1: causing pain, swelling, itching, a rash, and a strong smelling discharge.
2:25
Speaker 1: Episidius is what it is called when one is born
2:28
Speaker 1: without a fully developed urethra, so the opening that is
2:31
Speaker 1: normally at the top of one's penis sends up on
2:33
Speaker 1: the side of one's penis. This causes a shorter, wider
2:38
Speaker 1: penis that is abnormally shaped. Priaphism is an erection that
2:42
Speaker 1: lasts four or more hours, the result of which is
2:45
Speaker 1: extreme and constant pain that cannot be relieved by any
2:49
Speaker 1: normal methods. Manually draining the blood from the penis in
2:53
Speaker 1: a hospital room is as of this writing, the only
2:56
Speaker 1: known cure. Fun parodies disease condition where platforms within the
3:01
Speaker 1: penis causing it to curve drastically. This leads to a
3:05
Speaker 1: rectile dysfunction. It makes sex impossible. Time and evengeful God
3:10
Speaker 1: seemed to be the only solution. Penile cancer is exactly
3:14
Speaker 1: what it sounds like, cancer cells within the penis. If
3:18
Speaker 1: caught early, the penis can be saved. If not, the
3:21
Speaker 1: penis has to be removed in an amputation process known
3:24
Speaker 1: as a penectomy. Celebrated Blues singer Skip James screamed in agony.
3:32
Speaker 1: The orderlies held him down. There were no match for him,
3:35
Speaker 1: even with his skinny frame. The sawmill camps have been
3:39
Speaker 1: far tougher than this, Skip James knew from tough. Skip
3:43
Speaker 1: bucked and the orderlies pressed him down by his shoulders
3:46
Speaker 1: and his ankles onto the hospital bed. It took four
3:49
Speaker 1: of them to do what the sedative wasn't doing, holding
3:51
Speaker 1: him down, So the surgeon's job was tougher than it
3:55
Speaker 1: had to be in this procedure. The penectomy was already
3:58
Speaker 1: a tough gig. Amputating a penis was tricky business. It
4:03
Speaker 1: wasn't like offing an arm or a leg. Any butcher
4:06
Speaker 1: from a state medical school could handle that, but amputating
4:10
Speaker 1: a penis was a higher degree of difficulty, and even
4:13
Speaker 1: with the surgeon's private medical school education, this amputation in particular,
4:18
Speaker 1: was proving more challenging than most. For one, the patient
4:22
Speaker 1: was not adhering to the sedative. Local anesthesia was the
4:25
Speaker 1: wrong way to go. Turns out, leaving a man awake
4:29
Speaker 1: while another man endeavors to sever his manhood isn't a
4:32
Speaker 1: smart idea. A guy tends to get possessive about such things.
4:37
Speaker 1: The surgeon regretted not opting for the general anesthesia, which
4:41
Speaker 1: would have knocked the patient out cold. But that ship
4:44
Speaker 1: had sailed. This patient was not taking to the procedure.
4:48
Speaker 1: He was resisting at every turn, but his strength was fading.
4:52
Speaker 1: He was, after all, an old man sixty two. In
4:56
Speaker 1: between screams of agony, the patient spoke of an evil
4:59
Speaker 1: woman with the words cribed from the Old Testament. The
5:03
Speaker 1: patient swore his penis malady and this resultant amputation was
5:07
Speaker 1: her fault. His wrath consumed him. He was overcome, his
5:12
Speaker 1: strength drained. He faded off to sleep with the familiar
5:15
Speaker 1: knowledge that once again his penis had done him in.
5:24
Speaker 1: When Skip James awoke, his penis was gone. In its place,
5:29
Speaker 1: a man's sized pit in his stomach, a palpable absence,
5:33
Speaker 1: the feeling of a vacuum that would never be filled. Psychologically,
5:37
Speaker 1: he was horrified. It was worse than the pain of
5:40
Speaker 1: losing his wife, worse than the stress of trying to
5:43
Speaker 1: keep in line the women he kept during his days
5:45
Speaker 1: as a pimp, worse than the fear he felt when
5:48
Speaker 1: he dodged violent revenue men as a bootlegger, worse than
5:51
Speaker 1: fending off murderers in the saw milk camps, worse than
5:55
Speaker 1: the shame from his judgmental preacher father's eyes, and worse
5:59
Speaker 1: than the god from his father's parishioners, and even worse
6:03
Speaker 1: than the humiliation he felt as a failed musician despite
6:07
Speaker 1: his unique and undeniable talent. At least he could do
6:11
Speaker 1: something about all of that. He aspired. He identified opportunities
6:16
Speaker 1: where others couldn't, and he seized them. Skip's father got
6:20
Speaker 1: himself in trouble with the law, and then got religion.
6:23
Speaker 1: He took off from the family of Anonia, Mississippi, to
6:26
Speaker 1: set up shop in Plano, Texas as a preacher. The
6:29
Speaker 1: abandonment stopped as young Skip matured into a man. He
6:33
Speaker 1: suspected there was an opportunity preaching with his father if
6:37
Speaker 1: he could only find him. But where was the fun
6:39
Speaker 1: in that? Where was the adventure and where was the freedom?
6:44
Speaker 1: Seemed to Skip that there were better opportunities like the
6:47
Speaker 1: one music presented, specifically the blues in the nineteen twenties.
6:53
Speaker 1: Skip James saw the blues music presented a path beyond
6:56
Speaker 1: the discipline of religion or the bleakness of the Mississippi Delta,
7:00
Speaker 1: and that he, somehow, ironically, by the grace of God,
7:03
Speaker 1: had that necessary something to make words sing in juke
7:07
Speaker 1: joints swaying. So Skip James put rhymes together in his
7:10
Speaker 1: head and then songs together with his piano and his guitar.
7:14
Speaker 1: He wrote. Specifically, he wrote the words I'd rather be
7:18
Speaker 1: the devil for the recording of his nineteen thirty one
7:21
Speaker 1: song Devil Got My Woman, because, as Skip James saw it,
7:25
Speaker 1: at least the devil had an agency. At least the
7:28
Speaker 1: devil had a choice. The devil had options, and that
7:32
Speaker 1: was more than could be said for Skip James and
7:34
Speaker 1: most black people in the early nineteen thirties when he
7:37
Speaker 1: sang those words in the Jim Crow South, a time
7:40
Speaker 1: in place of unimaginable hardship, injustice and deprivation for so
7:45
Speaker 1: called free black men, and by the time the nineteen
7:49
Speaker 1: sixties rolled around, and white American and English kids started
7:52
Speaker 1: taking an interest in blues music. Skip James's unique experiences
7:56
Speaker 1: in his place in this flawed but unique exparoent called
8:00
Speaker 1: America resulted in an authenticity that was and still is
8:04
Speaker 1: extremely rare in popular music and culture. It was the
8:07
Speaker 1: type of authenticity that caused young, progressive white blues obsessives
8:11
Speaker 1: from the North to scour the Mississippi Delta in hopes
8:14
Speaker 1: of discovering the last great bluesman. Emmett Till was murdered
8:22
Speaker 1: on August twenty eighth, nineteen fifty five. The fourteen year
8:25
Speaker 1: old black Mississippian was tortured and lynched for merely speaking
8:29
Speaker 1: to a married white woman. Sadly, Till's murder wasn't an
8:33
Speaker 1: uncommon event. To say that the state of Mississippi in
8:36
Speaker 1: early and mid twentieth century was a largely lawless, violent
8:40
Speaker 1: place would be an understatement, But that didn't stop John Fahey,
8:44
Speaker 1: a twenty five year old white guitar enthusiast from Maryland,
8:47
Speaker 1: from venturing into the heart of American darkness to seek
8:50
Speaker 1: out who he thought to be the last of the
8:52
Speaker 1: great undiscovered authentic bluesman. Skip James Till's murder in fifty
8:57
Speaker 1: five had in part given rise to but the inactivism
9:01
Speaker 1: from Northeast progressives who supported what had come to be
9:04
Speaker 1: known as the Civil rights movement. The brutality of tills
9:07
Speaker 1: lynching and the unjust acquittal of the men who admitted
9:10
Speaker 1: to killing the boy led to large groups of white
9:13
Speaker 1: liberal college students infiltrating the South from northern universities and
9:16
Speaker 1: support of civil rights. They made strides to register as
9:20
Speaker 1: many unregistered black voters as possible, an unferral democracy across
9:25
Speaker 1: a largely undemocratic region of the not soo United States.
9:29
Speaker 1: Needless to say, the effort was not welcomed by local conservatives,
9:33
Speaker 1: who aimed to keep their racist power structure untouched by
9:36
Speaker 1: the hand of these progressive interlovers. Violence, the threat of it,
9:41
Speaker 1: and the implementation of it as attacked it to keep
9:43
Speaker 1: meddling Northeasterners away from rilling up the local black population
9:47
Speaker 1: and disrupting the way things were. None of that could
9:50
Speaker 1: be discounted by any white visitor to Mississippi. In nineteen
9:54
Speaker 1: sixty four, young On Faye he saw the car in
10:01
Speaker 1: his rear view. The two good old boys following him
10:04
Speaker 1: in the beat up forward smacked of menace and stupidity.
10:07
Speaker 1: Even at this distance. They weren't too far, though far
10:11
Speaker 1: enough to maintain deniability, close enough to intimidate. The good
10:15
Speaker 1: old boys knew why Faye was in their state, at
10:17
Speaker 1: least they thought they did. Fay. He slowed his car
10:20
Speaker 1: as he wheeled into the town of Bentonia, Mississippi, population
10:24
Speaker 1: five hundred and eleven. The good old boys in the
10:27
Speaker 1: rear view peeled off Fay. He breathed a sigh of relief.
10:31
Speaker 1: He curbed his car at the local post office, entered,
10:34
Speaker 1: asked about a black man who was rumored to be local,
10:37
Speaker 1: a man named Skip James. The postman grunted off to
10:41
Speaker 1: the town clerk, same question, no response. Over to the
10:45
Speaker 1: drug store again nothing Fay. He then hopped back in
10:49
Speaker 1: his car and began cruising with his eyes wide, scanning
10:51
Speaker 1: for elderly black residents of Bentonia, men and women who
10:55
Speaker 1: would be roughly Skipped James's age early sixties. They weren't
10:59
Speaker 1: hurt to find, but they wouldn't talk. The fact that
11:02
Speaker 1: no one was saying anything was a tell to local Bentonians.
11:07
Speaker 1: Skip James was trouble trou b l e and trouble,
11:14
Speaker 1: any trouble for black residents of Mississippi in the early
11:17
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties was a tough road to hoe, and if
11:20
Speaker 1: it was tough in the nineteen sixties, it was a
11:23
Speaker 1: lot tougher in the nineteen twenties. Skip James was a
11:27
Speaker 1: hard man to find, either because he didn't want to
11:30
Speaker 1: be found or because no one wanted him. Around te
12:00
Speaker 1: teen nineteen, at the age of seventeen, Skip James left
12:03
Speaker 1: his home in Ventonia, Mississippi, to find work elsewhere. Staying
12:08
Speaker 1: in Bentonia meant one thing, sharecropping, and sharecropping, or what
12:13
Speaker 1: some called slavery by another name, meant death. Skip could
12:17
Speaker 1: handle the hard work, but handling the hard reality that
12:20
Speaker 1: the landlord effectively owned Skip was unacceptable. When prohibition became
12:25
Speaker 1: the law of the land, Skip not unlike other young,
12:28
Speaker 1: enterprising black men in the Delta, found work as a bootlegger.
12:32
Speaker 1: Bootlegging had its perks and the product for one and
12:36
Speaker 1: of course the freedom it afforded Skip. But at the
12:39
Speaker 1: end of the day, Skip still had to answer to
12:41
Speaker 1: the man who put up the cash for his Still
12:44
Speaker 1: Skip was still hustling someone else's property, just like a sharecropper.
12:48
Speaker 1: And making matters less than ideal. Bootlegging was more dangerous
12:51
Speaker 1: than sharecropping. Bootlegging could get you killed, end you up
12:55
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of a revenue man, shotgun revenue
12:59
Speaker 1: men up. Federal men in league with the local white
13:01
Speaker 1: authorities might as well have been in league with satan
13:05
Speaker 1: revenue men government men. They weren't to be challenged a
13:08
Speaker 1: black man in a white man's crosshairs. There's no place
13:11
Speaker 1: to be for young Skip James. So he put bootlegging
13:15
Speaker 1: down and set out for the road camps, manual labor
13:18
Speaker 1: crews organized throughout the South and the teens and twenties
13:21
Speaker 1: funded by the federal government to build highways and roads.
13:24
Speaker 1: The work was harsh. From there, Skip moved on to
13:27
Speaker 1: become a dynamite blast, more hard work, and finally he
13:31
Speaker 1: settled upon the job of log cutter at a saw
13:34
Speaker 1: mill camp in Yazoo County, Mississippi. Life at the saw
13:37
Speaker 1: mill camp was harsh, but at least Skip had some
13:40
Speaker 1: sort of freedom. Long days and deadly working conditions. Aside,
13:44
Speaker 1: Skip did not if the deals corrupt and violent sharecropping
13:47
Speaker 1: landlords or revenue men. Instead, he had a deal with
13:51
Speaker 1: his coworkers men who were far less refined and far
13:55
Speaker 1: more violent than Skip, who had grown up in a
13:57
Speaker 1: Christian home. But unlike the land lords and g men,
14:01
Speaker 1: these men were black, which men's Skip was allowed to
14:04
Speaker 1: defend himself against their transgressions, and there were many transgressions.
14:10
Speaker 1: Familiality does indeed breed contempt, and these men work together,
14:14
Speaker 1: lived together, ate together, and eventually fought together. The saw
14:18
Speaker 1: milk camp's communication style relied on the practice of playing
14:21
Speaker 1: the dozens or hurling insults at one another mercilessly to
14:24
Speaker 1: grab attention or to motivate a one of Skip's first days,
14:28
Speaker 1: he saw how brutal life on the saw milk camp
14:31
Speaker 1: could be. Two workers broke out into a fight over
14:34
Speaker 1: something or another. No one intervened to break it up,
14:37
Speaker 1: and one of the men worked his way over to
14:38
Speaker 1: an ox and yoke a heavy wooden't beam strong enough
14:41
Speaker 1: to yoke together two three thousand pounds oxen, and the
14:44
Speaker 1: guy picked it up. He then heaved it down upon
14:48
Speaker 1: the head of his brawling coworker. The unlucky coworker's brains
14:52
Speaker 1: literally blasted out of his nostrils from the impact of
14:55
Speaker 1: his skull skit saw him die instantly. It was a
15:02
Speaker 1: culture of only the strong survive. The week got sorted
15:06
Speaker 1: out quickly. If some worker wanted something from another, they
15:09
Speaker 1: just took it, and there was no moral code. There
15:11
Speaker 1: was hardly any social order at all. As long as
15:14
Speaker 1: the workers showed up on time for their shift in
15:16
Speaker 1: the morning and worked the whole day through, the boss
15:19
Speaker 1: man couldn't care less how they treated each other. Cheap
15:22
Speaker 1: labor was bountiful. Of the three hundred man crew, two
15:25
Speaker 1: armed guards were stationed on site round the clock to
15:28
Speaker 1: shoot and kill any worker who stepped out of line.
15:31
Speaker 1: Each saw mill camp had a makeshift cemetery nearby to
15:34
Speaker 1: handle the inevitable body count. Black on black crime was
15:38
Speaker 1: almost entirely ignored in the South, and this practice of
15:41
Speaker 1: injustice extended, of course to the saw mill camps. It
15:44
Speaker 1: was a lawless existence for black Americans in nineteen twenties Mississippi,
15:49
Speaker 1: nearly as lawless as America's wild Wild West some fifty
15:53
Speaker 1: years prior. Skipp James kept his head down while they
15:57
Speaker 1: worked toiling under a merciless sun. He weaved rhymes together
16:01
Speaker 1: at his head, violent rhymes and the thought of his gun.
16:04
Speaker 1: His twenty two to twenty gave him some sense of security.
16:08
Speaker 1: Oh you're thirty eight, special, buddy, It's too late, but
16:11
Speaker 1: my twenty two to twenty will make everything all right.
16:14
Speaker 1: The gun was the answer. There were lots of questions,
16:17
Speaker 1: but the gun. The gun answered them all. What do
16:21
Speaker 1: you do when the big man bust into your tent
16:22
Speaker 1: at night looking to steal your kiddy? The answer is
16:25
Speaker 1: the gun. And what about the other big man bent
16:28
Speaker 1: on taking your chow at lunch? The answer is the gun.
16:32
Speaker 1: And that mountain of a man who only speaks in grunts,
16:35
Speaker 1: the one who doesn't pay his gambling debts and eyes
16:37
Speaker 1: your poker winnings, The answer is the gun, the twenty
16:41
Speaker 1: two to twenty. In or out of the sawmill camp.
16:44
Speaker 1: There was no straight path to adulthood for Skip James.
16:47
Speaker 1: The only road in life that he saw was crooked,
16:50
Speaker 1: and the alternative was a life under the thumb of
16:52
Speaker 1: someone else. So Skip James traveled that crooked road, and
16:56
Speaker 1: he traveled it with his gun. I was stranding on
16:59
Speaker 1: the highway with my twenty two twenty in my hand.
17:02
Speaker 1: They got accused for murder. I declare I never harmed
17:05
Speaker 1: a man, But that would change. Skip heard the angry
17:12
Speaker 1: footsteps stamping the ground outside of his tent. Skip was
17:16
Speaker 1: in no position for what was coming next. He knew
17:18
Speaker 1: who it was, the husband, the little local bitty he
17:21
Speaker 1: lent some money to. He knew her husband would be upset.
17:25
Speaker 1: He wasn't surprised. He wondered why sometimes that he did
17:28
Speaker 1: the stupid things that he did. His dick, mainly his dick.
17:33
Speaker 1: That's why he did the stupid things that he did
17:35
Speaker 1: not sometimes all the times, Skip's little king James was
17:39
Speaker 1: constantly getting him in trouble. And now that trouble had
17:42
Speaker 1: come home to roost this man. The husband pulled back
17:46
Speaker 1: the opening to Skip's tent. Skip sat naked, submerged in
17:49
Speaker 1: water and his cowboy barrel bathtub. The husband barked out
17:53
Speaker 1: an angry verse at Skip. Skip sat quiet, and as
17:56
Speaker 1: the husband let his emotion get the better of him,
17:59
Speaker 1: Skips his hand outside of the tub and down to
18:01
Speaker 1: the table at its side. He grabbed his gun, and
18:04
Speaker 1: the husband went for skipping the tub to wring his
18:06
Speaker 1: neck or worse, Skip drew his pistol, aimed, and pumped
18:10
Speaker 1: six bullets into his attacker. What became of the man
18:18
Speaker 1: Skip James perhaps smart enough to know that no statute
18:21
Speaker 1: limitations exist for murder never admitted in his recounting of
18:24
Speaker 1: this story years later. We can assume that the man
18:28
Speaker 1: ended up in the sawmill cemetery, and that man wouldn't
18:32
Speaker 1: be Skip James's last victim. Skip carried his pistol everywhere.
18:37
Speaker 1: At another sawmill camp in northern Mississippi, near Tupelo, Skip
18:41
Speaker 1: blasted two bullets into the shoulder of a coworker who
18:44
Speaker 1: attacked him with a club, and the only regret Skip
18:46
Speaker 1: had was not setting his aim straight and blasting the
18:49
Speaker 1: man in the neck. The violence was ratcheting up. Skip
18:53
Speaker 1: James was no dummy. He knew it was only a
18:55
Speaker 1: matter of time and there had to be another way.
19:00
Speaker 1: So Skip James took to his music with a little
19:02
Speaker 1: more intention than just piecing rhymes together in his head.
19:05
Speaker 1: He'd given the piano and guitar passing attention for as
19:08
Speaker 1: far back as he could remember, but he never threw
19:11
Speaker 1: his backbone into it until life on the camps. The
19:14
Speaker 1: camps had their own juke joints. At the jukes, you
19:17
Speaker 1: could drink, dance, or engage a working girl to take
19:20
Speaker 1: care of you for the night. Those were your options,
19:23
Speaker 1: and all of them cost money, or you could make
19:27
Speaker 1: money by being the entertainment. You could play the music
19:30
Speaker 1: that made people want to drink, dance and make time
19:33
Speaker 1: in the arms of a paid professional, and you could
19:35
Speaker 1: make money. To boot, Skip James smelled opportunity. Skip James
19:40
Speaker 1: went to work. Whenever the jukes hired piano player would
19:42
Speaker 1: go on a break, Skip would steal time on his
19:45
Speaker 1: bench and bang down with a fury, his take on
19:47
Speaker 1: whatever blue song he could remember, or that he could
19:49
Speaker 1: make up on the spot. Bessie Smith's tunes always went
19:52
Speaker 1: overwhel Skip learned from a man named Crabtree. Crabtree could
19:56
Speaker 1: command an audience. Crabtree made the house swing. Crabtree made
20:00
Speaker 1: the women swoon. Crabtree didn't have to pay for it.
20:03
Speaker 1: In fact, before long, Skip realized that not only was
20:07
Speaker 1: Crabtree getting paid for playing music and getting it for
20:11
Speaker 1: free from the ladies, but Crabtree was also running the ladies.
20:14
Speaker 1: Crabtree was a musician and a juke joint pimp. A
20:19
Speaker 1: light went off and Skipped James's head. Music pimping, or
20:24
Speaker 1: sporting as it was called them, twin professions to relieve
20:27
Speaker 1: drunken juke patrons of their hard earned cash. It was
20:30
Speaker 1: the side hustle to beat all side hustles. In fact,
20:33
Speaker 1: with enough time in the jukes at night, Skip James
20:36
Speaker 1: could eventually work his way out of his days in
20:38
Speaker 1: the sawmill camps. It was a crooked path, sure, his
20:41
Speaker 1: preacher father, no doubt, would disapprove, but at least it
20:44
Speaker 1: was a path, a way out. But something funny happened
20:48
Speaker 1: along the way from the sawmill to the sporting man's life.
20:51
Speaker 1: Skip James realized he was one hell of a beach musician.
21:02
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this. We're were were. The
21:15
Speaker 1: warmth from the vinyl wrapped itself around young John Faye
21:18
Speaker 1: and focused his attention. He was nearly twenty years old
21:22
Speaker 1: and almost immediately brought to tears by the sound of
21:25
Speaker 1: the man's voice that followed the record's opening crackle, Charlie Patton,
21:30
Speaker 1: the father of the Delta Blues. Charlie sounded unlike anything
21:34
Speaker 1: Faye had ever heard before, unlike anything most people had
21:37
Speaker 1: ever heard before. Faye reckoned. Nothing the young man had
21:41
Speaker 1: heard previously had been so compelling. Fayie packed up a
21:44
Speaker 1: suitcase and his recorder and headed south to find Charlie
21:48
Speaker 1: Patten to introduce him to the world. Why not others
21:51
Speaker 1: have done it? Dick Spotswood and Tom Hoskins discovered Mississippi,
21:55
Speaker 1: John Hurt, Why not Faye? Why not Charlie Patton? For
22:00
Speaker 1: Faye's efforts, though he discovered nothing, Charlie Patton was dead.
22:06
Speaker 1: The Fay he made another discovery. There was talk of
22:08
Speaker 1: another unknown at least to white audiences, another undiscovered Delta bluesman,
22:14
Speaker 1: and his name was Skip James. The sporting life looked
22:21
Speaker 1: good on Skip James. There wasn't a finer looking gentleman
22:24
Speaker 1: in any Mississippi duke. Sporting or being a sport was
22:28
Speaker 1: another way of saying pimping or being a pimp, and
22:31
Speaker 1: Skip James was all about that big pimpin' shine flourshemed shoes,
22:36
Speaker 1: neatly pressed, highwaisted pants, a proper jacket, a gold watch,
22:39
Speaker 1: and his stetson hat pimp sheet by way of the
22:42
Speaker 1: Southern outlaw. Skip James looked the part, and he walked
22:46
Speaker 1: the walk with his pistol at his side and switchblade
22:48
Speaker 1: in his pocket. Skip needed that switchblade too, and the pistol.
22:53
Speaker 1: He ran a girl named Buno Mary who was nothing
22:56
Speaker 1: but bad. Buno Mary trick, which he husted of men
23:00
Speaker 1: blind and was rumored just as Skip James was to
23:03
Speaker 1: have killed a man. Mary carried a bowie knife between
23:06
Speaker 1: her breasts. Mary gave Skip long looks, not the kind
23:10
Speaker 1: he wanted, the kind that kept them up at night.
23:12
Speaker 1: Mary was scheming. Skip worried about where the knife might
23:16
Speaker 1: end up, what it might end up taking off of him,
23:18
Speaker 1: So Skip took off in the dead of knight, left Bruno,
23:21
Speaker 1: Mary and her bowie knife and pimp him behind. But
23:24
Speaker 1: once again, his instincts told him it was only a
23:27
Speaker 1: matter of time. Hustling women was over. Hustling music was
23:31
Speaker 1: to be his new gig. After Bruno Mary, Skip washed
23:36
Speaker 1: up out of the Delta into Memphis, Tennessee, had found
23:39
Speaker 1: work in Hernando Street horror House. As an entertainer. Skip's
23:42
Speaker 1: job was to quote unquote hold the floor for two
23:45
Speaker 1: to three hours. He played whatever music he could muster
23:48
Speaker 1: on piano and guitar, and did his best to work
23:50
Speaker 1: the place into a good time. Frenzy dance songs, traditional
23:54
Speaker 1: blues like heel to Toe, the Shimmy, sheet Wobble, foxtrot,
23:57
Speaker 1: follow the Log, and drinking tunes. Men gambled, women worked
24:01
Speaker 1: the room and eventually the upstairs bedrooms. Skip James's craft
24:06
Speaker 1: blossomed as a blues musician. Skip was wholly unique because
24:10
Speaker 1: he began learning his craft on piano and eventually moved
24:13
Speaker 1: to guitar. It meant that his approach was completely different
24:16
Speaker 1: from contemporaries like John Hurt, or even his predecessors like
24:19
Speaker 1: Charlie Patton or Blind Lemon Jefferson. Skip James's fingers flew
24:24
Speaker 1: over his guitar neck and his hands furiously sped across
24:26
Speaker 1: his piano's keyboard. He saw both as instruments to be
24:30
Speaker 1: man handled, violently, bent into submission like a sawmill oxen yoke.
24:35
Speaker 1: Skip applied an open minor key tuning to his guitar playing,
24:38
Speaker 1: and it was darkness and carnate, and the character of
24:41
Speaker 1: his songs because of the world he inhabited, a world
24:44
Speaker 1: of violent, hard labor, gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging, was darker
24:49
Speaker 1: than most of his blues contemporaries. Skip James's music was
24:53
Speaker 1: as nasty as the men and women he surrounded himself with.
24:57
Speaker 1: Skip James's music was haunted because Skip James was haunted,
25:03
Speaker 1: and eventually Skipp's haunted talent was discovered by H. C. Styer,
25:08
Speaker 1: who owned a music store in Jackson, Mississippi. A recording
25:12
Speaker 1: engagement was set at a studio all the way up
25:14
Speaker 1: in Grafton, Wisconsin. In February nineteen thirty one. Skip James
25:18
Speaker 1: entered the studio and recorded twenty six songs by his count,
25:22
Speaker 1: eighteen of which would see release on the Paramount Records label.
25:26
Speaker 1: And the songs tell a bleak story of low down women,
25:29
Speaker 1: men messed up in the head, and an almost complete
25:31
Speaker 1: lack of hope, with a couple of half hearted gospel
25:34
Speaker 1: hymns thrown in for good measure. He's on a drunken spree,
25:37
Speaker 1: as one of the song titles explains, He's on the
25:40
Speaker 1: hard time killing floor. He's got the twenty two to
25:43
Speaker 1: twenty blues. Skip James got the inspiration for his best
25:47
Speaker 1: known song, Devil Got My Woman from her short lived
25:50
Speaker 1: marriage to the sixteen year old daughter of a minister.
25:53
Speaker 1: She left him for a friend, and that gave the
25:56
Speaker 1: finish version of the song its bitter potency. I'd rather
25:59
Speaker 1: be the than to be that woman's man, he moaned, seriously,
26:04
Speaker 1: fuck them both. He'd go his own way, consequences being
26:08
Speaker 1: damned When Skip James emerged from the studio. What he
26:11
Speaker 1: put down on the record was one of the most
26:13
Speaker 1: significant recordings ever captured in the blues at him, but
26:16
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. No one cared. Skip James's music completely
26:21
Speaker 1: failed to catch on. He knew what his preacher father
26:24
Speaker 1: would say, for we live by faith, not by sight.
26:29
Speaker 1: Skip James had no faith, and he couldn't see much
26:32
Speaker 1: of any future. Skip James was nowhere after all that,
26:37
Speaker 1: after tracking it up all the way to Wisconsin, after
26:39
Speaker 1: suffering the indignity of bearing his greatest failure, losing his
26:43
Speaker 1: woman on to record, after trying and failing to make
26:47
Speaker 1: something of himself, and for what For nothing? He'd thrown
26:51
Speaker 1: away each of his previous lives, as a bootlegger, as
26:54
Speaker 1: a sawmill laborer, as a sport, each just another stepping
26:58
Speaker 1: stone down the crooked path, and they all let him.
27:01
Speaker 1: Hear nowhere without options, still under the thumb of Jim Crow,
27:06
Speaker 1: the work camp, saw mills, and worse, the sharecroppers. They
27:09
Speaker 1: all waited for him in the not so distant future.
27:13
Speaker 1: Skip thought herd. He couldn't believe where his mind went.
27:17
Speaker 1: He heard his preacher father's voice. It was Sosa one
27:20
Speaker 1: one blessed is the one who does not walk in
27:23
Speaker 1: step with the wicked. The crooked path was a dead end.
27:26
Speaker 1: Again his father's voice. Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,
27:31
Speaker 1: but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out, his
27:34
Speaker 1: old man preacher, that was it. As a father has
27:38
Speaker 1: compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on
27:41
Speaker 1: those who fear him. And the elder's voice boomed in
27:44
Speaker 1: his son's heart. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline,
27:48
Speaker 1: Do not resent his rebuke. Because the Lord disciplines those
27:51
Speaker 1: he loves as a father, the son he delights in.
27:55
Speaker 1: And there would be no more sporting, for all have
27:57
Speaker 1: sinned and falls short of the glory of God. No
28:00
Speaker 1: more gambling. If we confess our sins, He is faithful
28:03
Speaker 1: and just and will forgive us our sins and purify
28:06
Speaker 1: us from all unrighteousness. No more killing. Put to the death.
28:10
Speaker 1: Whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual and morality, impurity, lust,
28:14
Speaker 1: evil desires, greed in the path of the righteous was pure,
28:19
Speaker 1: direct my footsteps according to your word. Let no sin
28:22
Speaker 1: rule over me. Skip James abandon any thoughts of life
28:26
Speaker 1: as a blues musician and headed out to Texas to
28:29
Speaker 1: find his father, and when he did, Skip pledged to
28:32
Speaker 1: him and to his Lord his life, first in his
28:35
Speaker 1: father's congregation, then in his father's seminary. Skip James, it seemed,
28:41
Speaker 1: had finally found his way. Skip James went gun religion.
29:11
Speaker 1: Skip James reconnected with his father, a Baptist pastor. At
29:15
Speaker 1: the end of nineteen thirty one. Music had proved to
29:18
Speaker 1: be a crooked road to nowhere, a sinful dead end.
29:21
Speaker 1: His father, Reverend E. D. James, welcomed Skip into the seminary.
29:25
Speaker 1: He found it. Skip renounced the blues and embraced the
29:28
Speaker 1: Good Lord. He also embraced the many fine females who
29:31
Speaker 1: filled out the pews of his father's congregation. Skip never
29:35
Speaker 1: quite gave up completely on his past life. Some things
29:39
Speaker 1: were harder than others to put down. Despite the fact
29:42
Speaker 1: that Skip's God, like his father, was angry, wrathful, mean.
29:48
Speaker 1: The turn toward religion lasted long enough for Skip to
29:51
Speaker 1: settle into some sort of security, But it wasn't long
29:54
Speaker 1: before that crooked road found its path to Skip James's
29:56
Speaker 1: front door. Baptist Fundamentalism was a strict religious discipline, one
30:01
Speaker 1: that Skip, in the end couldn't truck with, especially when
30:05
Speaker 1: his vanity was stoked. When one of his father's female
30:08
Speaker 1: congregation members recognized Skip for the blues man he was.
30:11
Speaker 1: Skip eagerly turned his back on God for the arms
30:14
Speaker 1: of a new woman. Temptation was too strong. Soon Skip
30:19
Speaker 1: was back in the jukes. If not playing music, then
30:21
Speaker 1: listening to it, vibing on it, drinking the devil's juice,
30:24
Speaker 1: and frolickings whichever women would have him. Religion didn't take.
30:29
Speaker 1: God wasn't the answer. Skip James would rather be the devil.
30:34
Speaker 1: The devil had a better go of it, better hooch,
30:36
Speaker 1: better women, a better life, dangerous, but better, more exciting.
30:43
Speaker 1: After his stint at his father's church in Dallas, Skip
30:46
Speaker 1: rambled over to Birmingham, Alabama, where he made a new
30:49
Speaker 1: living again with hard labor. As a quote unquote surface
30:52
Speaker 1: man loading timber and steel. Skip had resigned himself to
30:56
Speaker 1: the working man's life. He put down the blues, he
30:59
Speaker 1: put down religon, He took a wife. He was for
31:02
Speaker 1: him anyway, settled, no more sporting, no more violence, or
31:06
Speaker 1: so he hoped. It may now have been the nineteen forties,
31:10
Speaker 1: but the work environment was hardly any less dangerous than
31:12
Speaker 1: it was when Skip was working the sawmills back in
31:14
Speaker 1: the twenties. Skip felt that danger in the air. Walking
31:18
Speaker 1: home from work, he could hear the two men coming
31:21
Speaker 1: up on them from behind, talking loud, dipping into the
31:24
Speaker 1: dozens to get his attention. Skip knew where this was headed.
31:28
Speaker 1: It was because the situations like these that Skip continued
31:30
Speaker 1: to carry his gun, this one a post war p.
31:34
Speaker 1: Thirty eight. The men were drawing near, Skip didn't give
31:37
Speaker 1: them the opportunity to take them down from behind. He
31:40
Speaker 1: turned quick, drew his firearm and fired two shots over
31:43
Speaker 1: their heads. It was a civilized thing to do. A
31:46
Speaker 1: younger man would have blown them away, but Skip James
31:49
Speaker 1: was no longer a younger man. He'd grown matured, given
31:54
Speaker 1: up the baptism of fire that was the holy ghost.
31:57
Speaker 1: Life was now about taking it easy. He had that agency.
32:01
Speaker 1: He'd earn that choice. He'd be damned. Two hotheads in
32:04
Speaker 1: a back alley were going to take it away from him.
32:07
Speaker 1: But women, women were another story. Try as he did,
32:11
Speaker 1: Skip James couldn't leave the women alone. Despite his advanced age.
32:15
Speaker 1: His wife was none the wiser. But that little local girl,
32:18
Speaker 1: the one in the delta where By the early nineteen sixties,
32:21
Speaker 1: Skip and his wife had settled that young girl wouldn't
32:24
Speaker 1: keep from coming around his back door. She was wise
32:27
Speaker 1: beyond her years, and Skip was caught up in her web.
32:30
Speaker 1: After they met and had their fun, Skip trod moving on,
32:33
Speaker 1: but the young girl wouldn't have any of it. She
32:35
Speaker 1: told Skip if he left her, she'd see to it
32:37
Speaker 1: that that big stick of his would never bring him
32:39
Speaker 1: any more pleasure. She'd fix them so that he'd never
32:42
Speaker 1: be able to fix himself. She'd fix them with a
32:44
Speaker 1: hex that would have forever changed Skip James. John Faye
32:51
Speaker 1: he found his man. Despite the fact that Mississippi locals
32:55
Speaker 1: didn't want Skip James around, and despite the fact that
32:57
Speaker 1: Skip James didn't want to be found, the fact that
33:00
Speaker 1: Skip James hadn't played music in years, John Faye found him,
33:05
Speaker 1: and John Faye he brought his discovery with a guitar
33:07
Speaker 1: in his hand, Norse to show him off at the
33:10
Speaker 1: only place in the world where Skip James would be
33:12
Speaker 1: given the proper reception that an authentic bluesman of his
33:14
Speaker 1: stature warranted, the nineteen sixty four Newport Folk Festival. Skip
33:20
Speaker 1: could not believe the turn his life had taken after
33:23
Speaker 1: all those years under the white man's thought. It was
33:25
Speaker 1: another white man who pushed him out onto the stage
33:28
Speaker 1: in front of a sea of white faces, all thumbstruck
33:30
Speaker 1: by his talent. Skip hadn't played in years. His form
33:35
Speaker 1: was rough and ragged, but as always true, authentic, heartfelt,
33:39
Speaker 1: and wholly unique. He ripped through a short, powerful set,
33:43
Speaker 1: as was usually the case that the many Jukes Skip
33:46
Speaker 1: performed at in his past life and on record, his
33:49
Speaker 1: song Devil Got My Woman. Whether it's impossible to ignore
33:52
Speaker 1: a lyric I'd rather be the Devil was the highlight.
33:56
Speaker 1: Skip James scared the shit out of everyone, and backstage
34:01
Speaker 1: after his set, Skip was feted even among blues grates
34:05
Speaker 1: like Muddy Waters and Sunhouse and youthful contemporary folk and
34:08
Speaker 1: country stars like Bob Dylan, Joe Bias, and Johnny Cash.
34:11
Speaker 1: Skip James was the toast of Newport. Skip James's world
34:15
Speaker 1: had finally turned towards something resembling a life worth living.
34:19
Speaker 1: His talent, his gift was finally recognized and about to
34:22
Speaker 1: earn him the living he deserved. Nineteen sixty four, freedom
34:27
Speaker 1: had finally arrived, and so too did Skip James. The
34:32
Speaker 1: spoils of success, money, adoration, respect. Women were all there
34:36
Speaker 1: for the taking and Skip the orderies were doing their best,
34:44
Speaker 1: but the patient kept bucking, screaming in agony. The surgeon
34:48
Speaker 1: had that postop Manhattan on his mind. It was only natural,
34:51
Speaker 1: and the ship wasn't worth it, but it was necessary.
34:54
Speaker 1: The penis had to go. If it didn't, the cancer
34:58
Speaker 1: it house would spread and kill the patient. The patient
35:01
Speaker 1: was sixty two year old Skip James, barely a year
35:04
Speaker 1: after his debut at Newport. In the subsequent fame that followed,
35:07
Speaker 1: Skip James was felled by the anger of a young
35:10
Speaker 1: Delta woman's hex. She warned him if he left off
35:13
Speaker 1: on some of the road without her, she'd fix him.
35:16
Speaker 1: So he couldn't fix himself no more, and that's exactly
35:19
Speaker 1: what happened. Soon after Skip's Newport debut, he noticed the
35:24
Speaker 1: growth on the side of his penis, and in early
35:26
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, at d C General Hospital, Skip James,
35:31
Speaker 1: to his great horror, was castrated four miles from the
35:34
Speaker 1: Washington Monument. The Washington Monument was built in eighteen fifty four.
35:39
Speaker 1: Its architecture takes its inspiration from ancient Egypt's Monolithic obelis.
35:44
Speaker 1: Obelis were large, four sided, narrow tapering monuments, consisting of
35:49
Speaker 1: a single stone and designed to symbolize strength, power, virility.
35:53
Speaker 1: There is no mistaking the phallic symbolism of the obelisk,
35:56
Speaker 1: and that was no accident. Obelis, like the one of
36:00
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt and the one in our nation's capital, were
36:03
Speaker 1: also meant to symbolize freedom. And there is perhaps no
36:07
Speaker 1: greater American tribute to freedom than the Washington Monument. Skip James,
36:11
Speaker 1: a man who sought freedom on his own path his
36:14
Speaker 1: entire life, and who finally found it at the age
36:16
Speaker 1: of sixty two, lost his freedom under the shadow of
36:19
Speaker 1: that American tribute. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan,
36:27
Speaker 1: and this is Disgraceland.
36:45
Speaker 2: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
36:48
Speaker 2: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
36:51
Speaker 2: found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod dot com.
36:55
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37:38
Speaker 1: He's ann