I'd Rather Be the Devil

Offering a look into the life of one of the greatest Mississippi bluesmen, this book presents a biography of the late Skip James. It draws on conversations with James himself, and paints a dark and unforgettable portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, and a man who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in his life.

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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.