Nehemiah “Skip” James was one of the most powerful and awe-inspiring blues performers to play the genre. Born near Bentonia, Mississippi in 1902, James took to music early. After seeing local musicians Henry Stuckey and Rich Griffith play at a local juke joint around 1909 he soon began to pick up the various guitar pieces he heard local musicians playing. In 1917, Henry Stuckey began to formally teach Skip James how to play the guitar and perform the blues. Through him, James picked up what has become known as the Bentonia style of blues. This, combined with the haunting falsetto vocal style common to the area, makes for some of the loneliest, deepest, darkest blues ever sung and recorded.

Skip all but disappeared until the 1960s when he was “re-discovered” and became a mainstay on the blues/folk circuit.

Skip has been an influence on musicians from Robert Johnson (Skip’s “Devil Got My Woman” became the basis of Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail”) to Eric Clapton (who recorded James’s “I’m So Glad” on the first Cream album).