Name: I'd Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues
Price: 30 USD
Availability: BackOrder
ISBN: 9781556527463

Out of stock at the UK distributor

You may order it now but please be aware that it may be six weeks or more before it can be despatched

I'd Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues

About
Reviews
Explore

About

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.

ISBN: 9781556527463 (1556527462)

Reviews

Entertaining and on the mark . . . Calt's narrative is always interesting and often spellbinding . . . Fascinating reading

A fascinating and disturbing book, containing a lot of truth, a lot of interesting historical research, and a lot of food for thought

[Calt] writes with a knowledge and intelligence that make even his most extreme statements interesting . . . His greatest virtue is his insistence on painting James as a real, albeit infuriating, person

Less a biography of one blues legend than a biography of Mississippi blues . . . Calt's interviews with James just before his death in 1969 imbue this book with a true survivor's voice

Book

Contents

Download queue