martin scorsese presents the blues propmtfile

They located the 62-year-old singer in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi and payed his modest medical bill. In June, 1964, guitarist Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine, John Fahey and musician, concert promoter, and entrepreneur Bill Barth tracked down the legendary and mystical blues singer Skip James. In 1964, the legendary Son House invited Alan Wilson to play guitar and harmonica with him at the Newport Folk Festival and that is where he met Skip James. In 1965, this resulted in the band Canned Heat. where fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, Bob Hite and Allen Wilson began to hang out at and eventually jam with Vestine’s band. and had his own band called the Henry Vestine Trio. Henry Vestine was one of the hottest electric guitar players in L.A.

When the folk scene exploded in the 1960s, long forgotten blues men like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, and James experienced a resurgence in interest that far eclipsed any notoriety they’d ever enjoyed before. Having made the records during the crest of the Great Depression, James’ music lingered in obscurity, and he gave up playing for decades. Robert Johnson adapted elements of James’ style back in the early ’30s and his ‘Hell Hound on My Trail’ was based on James’ ‘Devil Got My Woman’. In France, Stuckey had learned an open E minor tuning from some black soldiers (who he believed were Bahamians), and this tuning, picked with three fingers in complex patterns, became the basis of the guitar pieces Skip James was to record in 1931. After World War I, Henry Stuckey and Skip James, along with Jack Owens, developed the Bentonia Style, which is one of the most haunting sounds in all of blues. Skip followed Stuckey and other musicians, like the Pied Piper, all over town. Nehemiah Skip James was born in Bentonia, Mississippi in 1902 and he became interested in music around 1909, after hearing Green McCloud playing ‘ Drunken Spree ’ on the fiddle, backed by guitarists Henry Stuckey and Rich Griffith. It was the A side to a record that had ‘Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’ on the flip. ‘Cherry Ball Blues’ was written by Skip James and he released it in 1931. In 1930 a Mississippi record-store owner heard Skip James and arranged for him to record an album for Paramount Records.

Martin scorsese presents the blues propmtfile