2. Little Cow And Calf Is Gonna Die Blues

Skip James (Recorded Feb. 1931; released on Paramount 13085, b/w “How Long 'Buck'”); composed by Nehemiah Curtis James

Somewhat miraculously, all of the just eighteen sides Skip James cut for Paramount in 1931 have survived. On five of them, he played piano rather than the open D minor guitar that still makes the biggest impression on newcomers. Much of the latter impression comes from the way he sang so seductively over his relentlessly lilting guitar figures, in a sinuous falsetto both sorrowful and utterly pitiless, with lyrics to match. What is also unsettling about that voice is the way its seductive character simply vanishes on the piano sides. Arguably, James could not really play the piano – he banged out triads in several different tempos at once and almost distractedly crammed words into the cracks and breathless ha-aha-has. But this other weirder approach not only validates the guitar sides, it also suggests the breadth and depth of James’s overall concept. The effect is less Thelonious Monk than Cy Twombly – a deliberately primitivist approach elucidating a unique information system. The words, the notes, and the cursed feelings are all stones in his passway, piled into cairns leading the way to a hell planet. What happens when a first-order intelligence runs smack into the meanest adversity? Very occasionally, something like this.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day during Advent (approximately).