skip james hard time killing floor blues tab

These tunes, though mostly recorded in the 1930s, only rose to wider prominence several decades later – ‘rediscovered’ by artists of the Transatlantic blues booms of the 1950s and 60s – some of whom coaxed the old master out of an extended musical retirement to tour with them in the 1960s. Other Skip classics set to the same tuning shape (including nearby transpositions) include Devil Got My Woman, Cherry Ball Blues, and Crow Jane. Not a target of federal officials or revenue agents – as he initially feared (his nickname ‘Skippy’ had grown out of his frequent need to skip town when in trouble) – but of a trio of young white, middle-class enthusiasts from California, for whom Skip James was nothing but a mysterious name on a rare, dusty old 78 record, a phantom of the blues…” (from Ian Tasker’s I’m So Glad ) “A career bootlegger, pimp, gambler, gunslinger, and sometime minister of the church, the stricken James was also the subject of a manhunt. While Skip was not the first to use the DADFAD layout, he does seem to be the originator of the ‘ cross-note‘ term – offering the somewhat unclear explanation that, in his tuning, “ the major crosses the minor” (I guess that the ‘0-0-0- 1-0-0′ major shape ‘crosses the straight line’).

The Dm-tuned Illinois Blues, one of his earliest compositions, describes his experiences of this era: “I been to Chicago and I been to Detroit…I gin my little cotton, and sell my seed…the people will treat you just so-so…”. The son of a bootlegger-turned-preacher, James spent years labouring for low pay around Mississippi, drawing sonic solace from his guitar strings amidst hard work building roads and levees across the Southern state – as well as following his father’s excursions into both the church and the underworld. Open Dm will forever remain closely associated with Nehemiah Curtis ‘Skip’ James (1902-1969), a foundational Delta bluesman known for his intricate minor-key fingerpicking techniques. Similarly fantastic for fingerpicking sequences which make liberal use of droning open string resonance – and also for slow, minor-locked acoustic slide playing. And, as with the rest of the Open D family, the layout offers powerful vertical possibilities, with parallel octaves on 6+4+1str and 5+2str – as well as comfortable access to a useful range of chords, harmonies, and extensions.īut, unlike its siblings ( Open D & DADGAD), it also retains much of Standard’s melodic familiarity by keeping 3-2-1str in the same relative configuration (semitone jumps: 4>5) – making it much easier to repurpose the treble-side vocab you already know. In many ways, Dm is a very logical place to start your open-tuned explorations: after all, the Em shape it mirrors is almost always one of the very first chords we learn. Associated with haunting Delta bluesman Skip James (and sometimes referred to as ‘ Bentonia ’ tuning, after his Mississippi hometown). Thus forms a ‘ cross-note‘ layout, as (unlike in Open Dmaj) you can easily ‘cross over’ to major voicings with just one finger (e.g.

Matches a Standard-tuned Emin shape (‘0-2-2-0-0-0’) in terms of interval structure – with everything twisted a whole tone lower.

Skip james hard time killing floor blues tab