Jun 12, 2009 Skip James- Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues. Skip James - Hard Times Killing Floor Blues, American Folk and Blues Festival, Cologne Oct. Listen to Hard Time Killing Floor Bluesby Skip James on Slacker Radio, where you can also create personalized internet radio stations based on your favorite albums.

At first, as the car barreled north toward Washington, D.C., the old blues singer pestered the driver with questions, demanding to know the name of every river, creek, and lake they crossed. “What is that body of water there?” he would ask as the car raced over a rickety bridge. He received each answer with a nod of recognition. The driver soon realized that this was how the old man was accustomed to traveling, that Nehemiah “Skip” James gauged his location using bodies of water, just as sailors navigate by the stars. It was the summer of 1964, and three California college students—led by Washington-born John Fahey—had ventured into the Deep South not as civil rights activists, but as blues fanatics in search of their hero. They'd found Skip James in a Mississippi hospital, long forgotten by his own community. Download Software Wipro 1070 Dx Printer Driver For Xp.

The bedridden James seemed to expect the sudden appearance of these fans; in fact, he seemed perturbed that they hadn't come sooner to pay him homage. The students worshiped the “lost” bluesman—among their idols, the 62-year-old James ranked as the most mysterious and most revered. His legendary 1931 recordings were some of the rarest of all the classic blues 78s, and their sublime artistry made them priceless. James' intricate guitar work was rivaled only by his near-surreal piano playing, and no other major bluesman had mastered two instruments. And then there was James' eerie voice, sliding back and forth between a keening falsetto and heart-slain soprano.

He sounded like someone possessed, a one-man Southern Gothic drama. In the hospital, one of the young admirers offered him a guitar; James no longer owned one. Doctors forbade any commotion for the ailing man, but James nevertheless began working out a brand-new song. He softly rasped the lyrics to “Sick Bed Blues,” in which he envisioned a “thousand people standing by my bedside.” A few days later, the hospital discharged him, after the pilgrims had paid not only James' medical bills, but also the money he owed his landlord. At his sharecropper's shack, James picked up the borrowed guitar and began playing his old songs, which he hadn't performed in years.

He was rusty, but he still clearly retained his talent. The students assured James that if he accompanied them back to Washington, D.C., capital of the so-called “blues revival,” he'd soon be as famous as Mississippi John Hurt, who'd been rediscovered the summer before and now ruled the local coffeehouse scene. James didn't need much prodding.

He packed a shabby old suitcase, and donned a dark suit and preacher's hat. And then the old man left Mississippi behind forever, crossing so many bodies of water that he eventually stopped asking. Night had fallen by the time the car reached Virginia, and the riders lapsed into silence. James stared out the car window. He had gone north to seek fame once before.

On a winter night in 1931, he'd boarded a segregated train to Grafton, Wis. There, the 28-year-old recorded the songs that made him a legend and eventually spurred these young strangers to search him out—music so haunting and hallucinatory that a critic would later compare him to Poe and Van Gogh. But James earned little money from those records.

Soon after making them, he quit music for good, thinking himself a failure. Now he had a second chance at the acclaim that had eluded him. In Washington, he would finally make a livelihood from his art. If a mere party picker like John Hurt could find fortune in the big city, how could a genius like Skip James be denied his proper deserts?

Furthermore, James saw D.C. As a place where he could be healed. He believed that a jealous woman's hex had caused his horrifying illness, a tumor on his penis.

Distrustful of the diagnosis back in the Mississippi hospital—the word “cancer” was whispered in a hushed tone—James had his own ideas about the bad mojo that was ailing him. He'd heard about the “International Man,” a root doctor in Washington who could break the evil spell. James figured that after he regained his health, he could focus on his new career and become a blues star. But just now, another matter seemed more pressing.