people:
Skip James
(1902 – 1969) One of the most influential of the Delta Blues players, Mississippi-bred Skip James' intricate, unconventional guitar technique and high, haunting vocals made him one of the genre's most distinctive and expressive performers. In his 1930s heyday, James – who played piano as well as guitar, a rarity for Country Blues singers — was notably an influence on Robert Johnson, who reworked James’ "Devil Got My Woman" and "22-20 Blues" as "Hellhound on My Trail" and "32-20 Blues, respectively. In his early life, James worked as a manual laborer on road-construction and levee-building crews, as well as a sharecropper...