Week 38: Catfish Blues



Skip James

The Man

Skip James is an absolute legend of the blues, but very nearly slipped through the cracks and became lost to history. If it wasn’t for the efforts of three blues fans in the early 1960’s James could very well be an unknown today. Like his music, James’ story is a tale of pain and dark times.

Born Nehemiah Curtis James on June 9th or 21st, 1902, Skip grew up on a plantation just outside the town of Bentonia, Mississippi, right on the edge of the Delta. He was immediately known as ‘Skip’ – a traditional nickname given to a child who has the same given name as his grandfather – i.e. the name ‘skipping’ a generation. Skip’s father was a bootlegger, making and selling illegal whiskey and fled town when his still has raided by agents. His father was a musician and it is likely he started the young Skip on guitar.

By his teens Skip was well practised in both guitar and organ. He was tutored by a local guitarist by the name of Henry Stuckey in a local style of dark, brooding proto-blues. He played with the brothers Charlie and Jesse Sims, and had developed an intricate two fingered finger picking style more in line with the Piedmont style of playing than traditional Delta forms. He played in an unusual D minor tuning that Henry Stuckey introduced him to, creating sounds that few people had heard before.

Despite his ability as a musician and singer, Skip considered music a hobby – little more than a way of seducing women. He worked on levee building and road work crews around Bentonia, and in the 1920’s took to the road, drifting from town to town in the Delta picking up work where he could. He worked as a labourer and a dynamite blaster, played guitar in bars, he gambled, sold boot leg liquor and worked as a pimp for a while. In 1927 a scout from Okeh records approached Skip to record some tracks but he was making good money as a bootlegger so refused the offer, figuring he wouldn’t want to attract attention to his main ‘business’.

Skip was always precocious; quick to anger and despite his small size and scrawny build, he was never one to back down from the ‘occupational hazards’ of life as an itinerant bluesman dabbling in crime. He was known to carry a Colt revolver which reportedly he had used on a few occasions. He played music on the streets for change, and worked for a while as a guitarist in a whorehouse. His first musical partner was a pianist, who he admired more for his flashy clothes and stable of prostitutes than for his musical ability.

By 1930 he was in Jackson, the state capital, where his interest in music grew considerably. Jackson was a Mecca for Mississippi bluesmen, they congregated there from all over the state. Skip played with most of them, and became disillusioned with the version of the blues the others were playing. He saw it as frivolous party music, and further developed his own, dark style. To him the blues were something more, a force akin to magic; a way to “deaden the mind” of the audience – especially women. Skip decided to chase success with his music.

In early 1931, Skip met H.C. Spier, a white record store owner who acted as a talent scout for various labels specialising in ‘race records’. Spier was single-handedly responsible for the recording of all the early Delta musicians – in 1928 he had found Ishmon Bracey, Tommy Johnson, Charley Patton and Bo Carter. A decade later and his discoveries included Son House and Robert Johnson. Skip played him an original tune, “Devil Got My Woman”, and the next day was presented with a contact and a train ticket to Grafton, Wisconsin, for a recording session with Paramount.

Skip entered the studio in February, 1931, and recorded 18 tracks. Two were on piano, some were spirituals, some were arrangements of existing songs, and some were his original compositions in that D minor tuning which still today are some of the most original, dark and brooding blues ever recorded. Skip was paid $40 and a promise of further royalties. “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” backed with “Cherry Ball Blues” was the first released, and sold less than 650 copies. 8 other 78’s were released: none sold more than 300 copies.

It was the Great Depression, race record sales were falling and Skip’s idiosyncratic style was very different to what audiences were used to. He was a total failure; and with no royalties coming in he labelled the music business a “barrel of crabs” and bitterly turned his back on the recorded music industry.

Not long after, he met his father, reborn as a Baptist preacher, for the first time in 20 years and accepted an invitation to join his ministry in Dallas. He abandoned the blues and played spirituals, studied divinity and was a regular on the bread line. Spier approached him again in 1932 with a contract to record for Victor, but Skip refused and continued with his divinity studies, attempting to leave his old, unfulfilling life behind. He sang for a while in a travelling gospel quartet, but it wasn’t long before he was back on the road.

He drifted for most of the 1930’s and 40’s, ending up in a mining camp in Alabama where he married Mabel, the camp cook and in 1948 he took her back to Bentonia where he eked out a living working in a timber mill. He tried to make something of his musical career, but the Chicago blues scene was in full swing, and he could only get a gig playing the occasional house party. He and Mabel tried to raise a family, but failed. Sometime in the 50’s they left Bentonia after selling a cotton crop and headed to Memphis where Skip intended to open a honky tonk, and they disappeared completely.

Despite Skip disappearing from the music scene, and his songs failing to have any success, they made a big impression on some of the next generation of bluesmen. Robert Johnson in 1936 took Skip’s piano on “22-20 Blues”, adapted it for guitar and called it “32-20 Blues”. Johnson also took the chord progression and melody (both guitar and vocal) from “Yola My Blues Away”, tuned the guitar up a whole tone from Skip’s D minor to an E minor and used it for the basis of “Hellhound On My Trail”.

The blues revival was in full swing in the early 60s, spearheaded by the rediscovery of Mississippi John Hurt and Son House. Blues aficionados were relentlessly digging up old 78’s, and Skip’s brooding sounds had attracted a large fanbase. Encouraged by Hurt and House being found still living by blues fans, the trio of John Fahey, Bill Barth, and Henry Vestine scoured Mississippi for any word of Skip. They went to Bentonia, but the few people who recognised the name said he’d left long before, whereabouts unknown. A chance meeting at a gas station lead them to a barber shop, and then to a dilapidated shack outside of Tunica, Mississippi in 1964. The woman who answered the door was a Mabel, and after first denying she knew him, after a few minutes she told them Skip was in the local hospital. Skip James had been found.

But Skip was in a bad way – he had no guitar, he had no friends, and he had no money to pay either his hospital bill or his rent, but the three blues fans paid them for him. Even worse, he was hospitalised because a tumour had grown on his penis years before and had been left untreated. The tumour was cancerous. The men gave him a guitar, and although rusty, he still retained most of his playing abilities. Delighted, they arranged to take him to Washington to record and perform as John Hurt had a few years earlier. They set him up at the house of another blues fan, Dick Spotswood, where he quickly got his playing and singing up to speed. A few weeks later, and Skip was performing at the Newport Folk Festival.

He toured the states around Washington frequently, especially Philadelphia. In Washington, he had a residency sharing the billing with the crowd favourite John Hurt. Unlike Hurt’s friendly demeanour, Skip was as feisty as ever. In jams together, Skip made a point of showing up Hurt – although Hurt was a master Piedmont guitarist, he couldn’t match it with Skip’s frenetic style that took trips all over the fretboard. Skip used these jams to really try to prove he was the better guitarist, playing with a bitter passion; Hurt, as was his way, would just smile and say “Boy, that Skippy sure can finger pick”.

Dick Spotswood set up a studio in his basement and Skip recorded his first tracks for 33 years in late 1964, but these would not be released until 1993. A session in December was released the following year as his first full length LP titled “Greatest of the Delta Blues Singers”. Two tracks dealt with his illness. The record proved to be moderately successful, but somewhat disappointing after the wild success of John Hurt’s rediscovery recordings, and they allowed Skip and Mabel to move into their own home in the suburbs of Washington. Unfortunately this didn’t last long – Skip left Mabel for a woman he had met whilst in Philadelphia by the name of Lorenzo Meeks. Tired of his “rough”, country wife – the woman who had stood by him for 20 years – he had found an uptown, urban woman to take her place.

Skip’s tumour grew worse through 1964 and 65, and in great pain he had most of his penis amputated in an effort to stop the cancer spreading. The rest of the year was spent recuperating, but he was back in the studio in January 1966 to record another album titled “Skip James – Today”. Very poor, almost destitute, Skip moved in with Lorenzo in Philadelphia. The lease was up on the Washington house, leaving Mabel out on the street.

In December 1966, Eric Clapton’s new band ‘Cream’ had massive success with a cover of Skip’s “I’m So Glad” on their debut album. Finally Skip was seeing some money come in from his music, even if it was performed by someone else, but most of it went to pay his ongoing medical costs. In 1967 Skip recorded his final album “Devil Got my Woman”, but, again, although critically acclaimed it had poor sales. Late in 1968 he returned to hospital, where the remainder of his penis and his testicles were removed as a last ditch measure to halt the spread of the cancer.

On October 3, 1969, Skip finally succumbed to the disease that had turned his ‘rediscovery’ years into a hell most men could barely imagine. He married Lorenzo on his death bed, and it is said that it was true love. Skip James is buried in Merion Memorial Park, Bala-Cynwyd, just on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Lorenzo died in 1977, and is interred next to Skip.

Skip James was inaugurated in the Blues Hall of Fame in 1992. He remains one of the most original and influential masters of the blues ever to have lived.



The Song

If there is one song, out of the tens of thousands recorded, created for the sole purpose of playing blues on a guitar then “Catfish Blues” is it.

The first recorded version is Robert Petway’s masterpiece recorded in 1941, but the lyrics can be traced back to at least 1928 and Jim Jackson’s “Kansas City Blues Parts 3 and 4”. Petway set the tone for all other versions – it is played entirely in an E chord, never changing, and each bar is very different from the bar that preceded it. The song is pure Delta – just a jam featuring very few changes if any; it tests the creativity and imagination of the guitarist.

In 1950 the great Muddy Waters took Delta blues, added electricity and renamed “Catfish Blues” as “Rollin’ Stone” and launched a new era of the blues (and gave the Rolling Stones their name). Like Petway’s, it is all in E until the solo kicks in. In the late 60’s Jimi Hendrix performed it regularly, and in 1968 used it as the basis of “Voodoo Chile” and turned it into an epic slow jam. The next day, he did a faster, rockier version featuring a wah pedal called “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” which became his signature song. In short: this song inspires the greats playing at their greatest.

Skip’s version is no different. It’s very fast, it has very complex finger picking, and it is very, very good. There are more ideas and sounds in here than 20 other songs by a lesser player. Needless to say, it is also very difficult to play. (It’s also impossible to tab out, but I’ve tried my best).

Skip utilises alternate bass lines throughout, his thumb hits on the beat and changes strings every second beat. It is nearly entirely in E, adding a B7 towards the end of each verse, and very occasionally adding notes from the A blues scale. There is some similarity between the verses in overall structure; starting in open position, moving up to the 12th fret, a few bars around the 7th fret and the B7 but it really it goes where ever Skip wants to take it.

The melody lines follow the voice; it really pays to sing while you are playing. Skip uses the guitar to ‘double’ his voice, playing in a highly emotive style, and like a voice he does different things each time to accentuate the emotion he is trying to put into that particular measure. As a result, the concept of “bars” really is loosely applied. He adds beats, subtracts beats, and adds and subtracts entire bars in different verses.

All I can say is use the tab to try and learn what he is doing, then incorporate the ideas into your own version of the song. Good Luck!



The Lyrics

E I would rather, be a little catfish So I could swim way down In the sea-ee I would have somebody, somebody E B7 Settin' out hooks for me E B7 Settin' out a hook for me A hook for You know I went To my baby's house She told me to sit down On her step 'Sir, you can come right on in Because my Husband just now left He just now left He just now An I, asked my baby To let me sit down 'Side her bed Turn on yo' heater, baby 'Till it turn cherry red Cherry red Red an cherry red That's the reason I rather Be a little catfish So I could swim way down In the sea-ee I would have netted Some of these women Settin' out a line for me Settin' out their line for me A line for - You know I went To the church house And they called on Me to pray-ay I got down on my knees But I didn't, no Have no word to say Not a word to say No word to say That's the reason I rather Be a little catfish So I could swim Way down in the sea-ee I would have somebody, somebody Settin' out a line for me Settin' out a line for me A line for I don't wanna Be no tadpole And I don't want ta be No bullfrog An if I can't be Be your catfish I won't swim at all No, I won't swim at all No, swim at That's the reason I want ta Be a little catfish So I could swim way down In the sea-ee I would have these good lookin' women Settin' out a hook for me Settin' out a hook for me A hook for

The Intro



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The Progression



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The Outro

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Biography More about Skip James

The outro is more of an ending, and comes after the B7 section at the end of the last repetition. Play the B7, hammeron into the 2nd fret E from the open D string, then play this: