Skip James (1902-1969) was perhaps the most creative and idiosyncratic
of all blues musicians. Drawing on hundreds of hours of conversations
with James himself, Stephen Calt here paints a dark and unforgettable
portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man
who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in a life haunted by
failure. And in doing so, Calt offers new insights into the nature of
the blues, the world in which it thrived, and its fate when that world
vanished.