Skip James - Devil Got My Woman (Bluesville Series Vinyl)

Bluesville Series 180-Gram Vinyl With Tip-On Jacket And Obi

Craft Recordings' Bluesville reissue is cut all-analog: lacquers taken from the original master tapes by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings in conjunction with Acoustic Sounds. The jacket is a tip-on reproduction of the 1968 Vanguard sleeve, and the obi carries reflections by Grammy-winning producer Scott Billington.

Devil Got My Woman was recorded in New York on March 22-24, 1967 and issued by Vanguard in 1968. It was the second of two albums Skip James made entirely on his own for the label, and the last released in his lifetime; he died in October 1969. He accompanies himself on guitar and piano across twelve performances, six to a side.

The title song goes back to his 1931 Paramount session in Grafton, Wisconsin. That recording entered the Blues Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2020, and the Blues Foundation calls it "the quintessential Skip James song."

James was born in 1902 near Bentonia, Mississippi, cut roughly twenty-six sides for Paramount in 1931, and then spent three decades away from recording - ordained first as a Methodist and later as a Baptist minister, working in the Birmingham mines, cutting timber, driving a tractor. John Fahey, Bill Barth and Henry Vestine found him in a hospital in Tunica in June 1964, and he appeared at that summer's Newport Folk Festival. The Vanguard albums followed.

The album has not been pressed since 1968, apart from a one-off Vanguard run for Record Store Day in 2012.

Tracklist

Side One

1. Good Road Camp Blues
2. Little Cow, Little Calf Blues
3. Devil Got My Woman
4. Look At The People Standing At The Judgment
5. Worried Blues
6. 22-20 Blues

Side Two

1. Mistreating Child Blues
2. Sickbed Blues
3. Catfish Blues
4. Lorenzo Blues
5. Careless Love
6. Illinois Blues