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DISGRACELAND
Skip James: A Sawmill Shootout, Pimping, Bootlegging, and the Son of a Preacher Man
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- [00:00]
Jake Brennan
Foreign Double Elvis heading up to Boston in a couple weeks for the holidays. See my family. Happy to report that I will be rocking my responsible down hooded parka from Quince. This is the perfect parka for that whipping winter wind. It's going to keep the cold weather off me. It's going to keep me nice and cozy, going to give me those holiday vibes to take care of me while I'm in New England and I'm going to look good while I'm doing it. You know, I didn't have to take out a loan to buy this parka like you do with some other parkas because as I've been saying to you guys, Quint's pieces are crafted from premium materials and built to hold up without the luxury markup. Now I'm one of these guys who historically spends days, weeks, months looking for a winter jacket. I don't know why it feels like such a commitment to me. Like I'm going to buy a winter jacket and then I'm not going to buy a winter jacket for a couple years. Quint makes it super easy and it's Quint so you can trust the fit, you can trust the quality and the price is right. Also, I want to look good head to toe while I'm up with my family. I hook myself up at Quints with cashmere trouser sock. Okay, these are fantastic. Also good for winter. Cannot go wrong. You can lock in your staples at Quints no problem. Whether it's socks, whether it's underwear, whether it's sleepwear, get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quints. Don't wait. Go to quints.com Disgraceland for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N c e.com Disgraceland free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com Disgraceland this.
- [01:45]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [02:00]
Jake Brennan
It flagged that message as a scam.
- [02:02]
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- [02:16]
Jake Brennan
Production of Double Elvis. The stories about Skip James are insane. One of the last discovered authentic Delta blues men of the 1960s blues revival, Skip James shot and perhaps killed more than One man. He was a pimp, a bootlegger and a preacher's son. Yet Skip James was celebrated, feted and embraced for his undeniable musical talent because Skip James made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Wiggle Waggle MK2. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to Ragdoll by Frankie Valli in the Four Seasons. And why would I play you that specific slice of Jersey Boy cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on July 26, 1964. And that was the day Skip James first played the Newport Folk Festival, an event that would mark the long overdue arrival onto the scene of one of the greatest blues men of all time and simultaneously mark the beginning of the end for the tortured and doomed blues singer on this episode. Sawmill shootouts, pimping, bootlegging, and the son of a preacher man, Delta blues singer Skip James. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. Belantus is a condition where the head of the penis becomes inflamed, causing pain, swelling, itching, a rash and a strong smelling discharge. Episodeus is what it is called when one is born without a fully developed urethra. So the opening that is normally at the top of one's penis ends up on the side of one's penis. This causes a shorter, wider penis that is abnormally shaped. Priaphism is an erection that lasts four or more hours, the result of which is extreme and constant pain that cannot be relieved by any normal methods. Manually draining the blood from the penis in a hospital room is, as of this writing, the only known cure. Fun. Parides disease is a condition where plaque forms within the penis, causing it to curve drastically. This leads to erectile dysfunction and makes sex impossible. Time and a vengeful God seem to be the only solution. Penile cancer is exactly what it sounds like. Cancer cells within the penis. If caught early, the penis can be saved. If not, the penis has to be removed in an amputation process known as a panectomy. Celebrated blues singer Skip James screamed in agony. The orderlies held him down. They were no match for him, even with his skinny frame. The sawmill camps have been far tougher than this. Skip James knew from tough. Skip bucked and the orderlies pressed him down by his shoulders and his ankles onto the hospital bed. It took four of them to do what the sedative wasn't doing, holding him down so the surgeon's job was tougher than it had to be. And this procedure, the panectomy, was already a tough gig. Amputating a penis was tricky business. It wasn't like offing an arm or a leg. Any butcher from a state medical school could handle that. But amputating a penis was a higher degree of difficulty. And even with the surgeon's private medical school education, this amputation in particular was proving more challenging than most. For one, the patient was not adhering to the sedative. Local anesthesia was the wrong way to go. Turns out leaving a man awake while another man endeavors to sever his manhood isn't a smart idea. A guy tends to get possessive about such things. The surgeon regretted not opting for the general anesthesia, which would have knocked the patient out cold. But that ship had sailed. This patient was not taking to the procedure. He was resisting at every turn, but his strength was fading. He was, after all, an old man, 62. In between screams of agony, the patient spoke of an evil woman. With words cribbed from the Old Testament. The patient swore his penis malady, and this resultant amputation was her fault. His wrath consumed him. He was overcome. His strength drained, he faded off into sleep with the familiar knowledge that once again, his penis had done him in. When Skip James awoke, his penis was gone. In its place, a man sized pit in his stomach. A palpable absence. The feeling of a vacuum that would never be filled. Psychologically, he was horrified. It was worse than the pain of losing his wife. Worse than the stress of trying to keep in line the women he kept during his days as a pimp. Worse than the fear he felt when he dodged violent revenue men as a bootlegger. Worse than fending off murderers in the sawmill camps. Worse than the shame from his judgmental preacher father's eyes, and worse than the gossip from his father's parishioners. And even worse than the humiliation he felt as a failed musician. Despite his unique and undeniable talent. At least he could do something about all of that. He aspired. He identified opportunities where others couldn't, and he seized them. Skip's father got himself in trouble with the law and then got religion. He took off from the family in Bentonia, Mississippi, to set up shop in Plano, Texas, as a preacher. The abandonment stung as young Skip matured into a man. He suspected there was an opportunity preaching with his father if he could only find him. But where was the fun in that? Where was the adventure? And where was the freedom? It seemed to Skip that There were better opportunities like the one music presented, specifically the blues. In the 1920s, Skip James saw that blues music presented a path beyond the discipline of religion or the bleakness of the Mississippi Delta. And that he somehow, ironically, by the grace of God, had that necessary, necessary something to make words sing and juke joints swing. So Skip James put rhymes together in his head and then songs together with his piano and his guitar. He wrote specifically, he wrote the words I'd rather be the devil for the recording of his 1931 song Devil Got My Woman. Because as Skip James saw it, at least the devil had agency. At least the devil had a choice. The devil had options. And that was more than could be said for Skip James and most black people in the early 1930s when he sang those words in the Jim Crow South. A time and place of unimaginable hardship, injustice and deprivation for so called free black men. By the time the 1960s rolled around and white American and English kids started taking an interest in blues music, Skip James unique experience and his place in this flawed but unique experiment called America resulted in an authenticity that was and still is extremely rare in popular music and culture. It was the type of authenticity that caused young progressive white blues obsessives from the north to scour the Mississippi Delta in hopes of discovering the last great blues men. Emmett Till was murdered on August 28, 1955. The 14 year old black Mississippian was tortured and lynched for merely speaking to a married white woman. Sadly, Till's murder wasn't an uncommon event. To say that the state of Mississippi in early to mid 20th century was a largely lawless, violent place would be an understatement. But that didn't stop John Fahey, a 25 year old white guitar enthusiast from Maryland, from venturing into the heart of American darkness to seek out who he thought to be the last of the great undiscovered authentic blues men. Skip James Till's murder in 55 had in part given rise to sympathy and activism from northeast progressives who supported what had come to be known as the Civil Rights movement. The brutality of Till's lynching and the unjust acquittal of the men who admitted to killing the boy led to large groups of white liberal college students infiltrating the south from north northern universities in support of civil rights. They made strides to register as many unregistered black voters as possible and unfurl democracy across a largely undemocratic region of the not so United States. Needless to say, the effort was not welcomed. By local conservatives who aimed to keep their racist power structure untouched by the hand of these progressive interglopers. Violence, the threat of it, and the implementation of it as a tactic to keep meddling Northeasterners away from riling up the local black population and disrupting the way things were. None of that could be discounted by any white visitor to Mississippi in 1964. Young John Fahey saw the car in his rear view. The two good old boys following him in the beat up Ford smacked of menace and stupidity even at this distance. They weren't too far, though. Far enough to maintain deniability, close enough to intimidate. The good old boys knew why Fahey was in their state. At least they thought they did. Fahey slowed his car as he wheeled into the town of Bentonia, Mississippi. 511 the good old boys in the rear view peeled off. Fahey breathed a sigh of relief. He curbed his car at the local post office, entered, asked about a black man who was rumored to be local, a man named Skip James. The postman grunted off to the town clerk. Same question. No response. Over to the drugstore again, nothing. Fahey then hopped back in his car and began cruising with his eyes wide, scanning for elderly black residents of Bentonia, men and women who would be roughly skipped James, age early 60s. They weren't hard to find, but they wouldn't talk. The fact that no one was saying anything was a tell to local Bentonians. Skip James was trouble. T R O U B L E and trouble. Any trouble for black residents of Mississippi in the early 1960s was a tough road, a hoe. And if it was tough in the 1960s, it was a lot tougher in the 1920s. Skip James was a hard man to find, either because he didn't want to be found or because no one wanted him around.
- [14:09]
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- [14:44]
Jake Brennan
In 1919, at the age of 17, Skip James left his home in Ventonia, Mississippi, to find work elsewhere. Staying in Ventonia meant one thing. Sharecropping. And sharecropping, or what some called slavery by another name, meant death. Skip could handle the hard work, but handling the hard reality that the landlord effectively owned Skip was unacceptable. When Prohibition became the law of the land. Skip, not unlike other young enterprising black men in the Delta, found work as a bootlegger. Bootlegging had its perks and the product for one. And of course, the freedom it afforded Skip. But at the end of the day, Skip still had to answer to the man who put up the cash for his. Still, Skip was still hustling someone else's property, just like a sharecropper. And making matters less than ideal, bootlegging was more dangerous than sharecropping. Bootlegging could get you killed, End you up on the wrong side of a revenue man. Shotgun revenue men, corrupt federal men in league with the local white authorities might as well have been in league with Satan. Revenue men, government men, they weren't to be challenged. A black man in a white man's crosshairs was no place to be for young Skip James. So he put bootlegging down and set out for the road camps. Manual labor crews organized throughout the south in the teens and twenties, funded by the federal government to build highways and roads. The work was harsh. From there, Skip moved on to become a dynamite blaster. More hard work. And finally he settled upon the job of log cutter at a sawmill camp in Yazoo County, Mississippi. Life at the sawmill camp was harsh, but at least Skip had some sort of freedom. Long days and deadly working conditions aside, Skip did not have to deal with corrupt and violent sharecropping landlords or revenue men. Instead, he had to deal with his co workers, Men who were far less refined and far more vulnerable, violent than Skip, who had grown up in a Christian home. But unlike the landlords and G men, these men were black, which meant Skip was allowed to defend himself against their transgressions. And there were many transgressions. Familiarity does indeed breed contempt. And these men worked together, lived together, ate together, and eventually fought together. The sawmill camp's communication style relied on the practice of playing the dozens or hurling insults at one another mercilessly to grab attention or to motivate. On one of Skip's first days, he saw how brutal life on the sawmill camp could be. Two workers broke out into a fight over something or another. No one intervened to break it up. And one of the men worked his way over to an oxen yoke, a heavy wooden beam strong enough to yoke together two three thousand pound oxen. And the guy picked it up. He then heaved it down upon the head of his brawling co worker. The unlucky coworker's brains literally blasted out of his nostrils from the impact of his Skull Skip saw him die instantly. It was a culture of only the strong survive. The weak got sorted out quickly. If some worker wanted something from another, they just took it. And there was no moral code. There was hardly any social order at all. As long as the workers showed up on time for their shift in the morning and worked the whole day through, the boss man couldn't care less how they treated each other. Cheap labor was bountiful. Of the 300 man crew, two armed guards were stationed on site round the clock to shoot and kill any worker who stepped out of line. Each sawmill camp had a makeshift cemetery nearby to handle the inevitable body count. Black on black crime was almost entirely ignored in the South. And this practice of injustice extended of course, to the sawmill camps. It was a lawless existence for Black Americans in 1920s Mississippi. Nearly as lawless as America's wild, wild west some 50 years prior. Skip James kept his head down while he worked toiling under a merciless sun. He weaved rhymes together in his head. Violent rhymes. The thought of his gun, his.2220, gave him some sense of security. All your.38 special, buddy. Maybe it's too late, but my.2220 will make everything all right. The gun was the answer. There were lots of questions, but the gun. The gun answered them all. What do you do when the big man busts into your tent at night looking to steal your kitty? The answer is the gun. And what about the other big man bent on taking your chow at lunch? The answer is the gun. And that mountain of a man who only speaks in grunts? He wanted to. He doesn't pay his gambling debts and eyes your poker winnings. The answer is the gun. The. 2220. In or out of the sawmill camp, there was no straight path to adulthood. For Skip James. The only road in life that he saw was crooked. And the alternative was a life under the thumb of someone else. So Skip James traveled that crooked road. And he traveled it with his gun. I was stranded on the highway with my.2220 in my hand. They got me accused for murder. I declare I never harmed a man. But that would change. Skip heard the angry footsteps stamping the ground outside of his tent. Skip was in no position for what was coming next. And he knew who it was. The husband of the little local bitty he lent some money to. He knew her husband would be upset. He wasn't surprised. He wondered why sometimes that he did the stupid things that he did. His dick. Mainly his dick. That's why he did the stupid things that he did. Not sometimes. All the times Skip's little King James was constantly getting him in trouble. And now that trouble had come home to roost. This man, the husband pulled back the opening to Skip's tent. Skip sat naked, submerged in water in his cowboy barrel bathtub. The husband was barked out an angry verse at Skip. Skip sat quiet. And as the husband let his emotion get the better of him, Skip slid his hand outside of the tub and down to the table at its side. He grabbed his gun and the husband went for Skip in the tub to wring his neck. Or worse. Skip drew his pistol, aimed and pumped six bullets into his attacker. What became of the man? Skip James perhaps smart enough to know that no statute of limitations exist for murder. Never admitted in his recounting of this story. Years later, we can assume that the man ended up in the sawmill cemetery. And that man wouldn't be Skip James last victim. Skip carried his pistol everywhere. At another sawmill camp in northern Mississippi near Tupelo, Skip blasted two bullets into the shoulder of a CO worker who attacked him with a club. And the only regret Skip had was not setting his aim straight and blasting the man in the neck. The violence was ratcheting up. Skip James was no dummy. He knew it was only a matter of time. There had to be another way. So Skip James took to his music with a little more intention than just piecing rhymes together in his head. He'd given the piano and guitar passing attention for as far back as he could remember. But he never threw his backbone into it. Until life on the camps. The camps had their own juke joints. At the jukes, you could drink, dance or engage a working girl to take care of you for the night. Those were your options. And all of them cost money. Or you could make money by being the entertainment. You could play the music that made people want to drink, dance and make time in the arms of a paid professional. And you could make money to boot. Skip James smelled opportunity. Skip James went to work whenever the trip jukes hired piano player would go on a break. Skip would steal time on his bench and bang down with a fury his take on whatever blues song he could remember that he could make up on the spot. Bessie Smith's tunes always went over well. Skip learned from a man named Crabtree. Crabtree could command an audience. Crabtree made the house swing. Crabtree made the women swoon. Crabtree didn't have to pay for it. In fact, before long, Skip realized that not only was Crabtree getting paid for playing music and getting it for free from the ladies. But Crabtree was also running the ladies. Crabtree was a musician and a juke joint pimp. A light went off and skipped James's head. Music Pimping or sporting as it was called then. Twin professions to relieve drunken juke patrons of their hard earned cash. It was the side hustle to beat all side hustles. In fact, with enough time in the jukes at night, Skip James could eventually work his way out of his days in the sawmill camps. It was a crooked path. Sure his preacher father no doubt would disapprove, but at least it was a path, a way out. But something funny happened along the way from the sawmill to the sporting man's life, Skip James realized he was one hell of a blues musician. We'll be right back after this. Word, word, word.
- [23:53]
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- [24:29]
Jake Brennan
The warmth from the vinyl wrapped itself around young John Fahey and focused his attention. He was nearly 20 years old and almost immediately brought to tears by the sound of the man's voice that followed the record's opening crackle. Charlie Patton, the father of the Delta blues. Charlie sounded unlike anything Fay had ever heard before, unlike anything most people had ever heard before, Fahey reckoned. Nothing the young man had heard previously had been so compelling. Fahey packed up a suitcase and his recorder and headed south to find Charlie Patton to introduce him to the world. Why not? Others have done it. Dick Spotswood and Tom Hoskins discovered Mississippi John Hurt. Why not Fahey? Why not Charley Patton? For John Fahey's efforts, though, he discovered nothing. Charley Patton was dead. But Fahey made another discovery. There was talk of another unknown, at least to white audiences. Another undiscovered Delta bluesman. And his name was Skip James. The sporting life looked good on Skip James. There wasn't a finer looking gentleman in any Mississippi Juke. Sporting or being a sport was another way of saying pimping or being a pimp. And Skip James was all about that big pimping shine Florsheim shoes, neatly pressed, high waisted pants A proper jacket, a gold watch and a Stetson hat. Pimp chic by way of the Southern outlaw. Skip James looked the part and he walked the walk with his pistol at his side and switchblade in his pocket. Skip needed that switchblade too, and the pistol he ran a girl named Bruno Mary who was nothing but bad Bruno Mary tricked, but she hustled men blind and was rumored just as Skip James was to have killed a man Mary carried a Bowie knife between her breasts. Mary gave Skip long looks, not the kind he wanted, the kind that kept him up at night. Mary was scheming. Skip worried about where the knife might end up, what it might end up taking off of him. So Skip took off in the dead of night, left Bruno Mary in her Bowie knife and pimpin behind. But once again, his instincts told him it was only a matter of time. Hustling women was over. Hustling music was to be his new gig. After Bruno Mary, Skip washed up out of the Delta into Memphis, Tennessee and found work in Hernando street whorehouse. As an entertainer, Skip's job was to quote, unquote, hold the floor for two to three hours. He played whatever music he could muster on piano and guitar and did his best to work the place into a good time. Frenzy dance songs, traditional blues like Heel to Toe, the Shimmy, She Wobble, Foxtrot, follow the log, drinking tunes Skip play, men gamble, women worked the room and eventually the upstairs bedrooms. Skip James craft blossomed. As a blues musician, Skip was wholly unique because he began learning his craft on piano and eventually moved to guitar. It meant that his approach was completely different from contemporaries like John Hurt or even his predecessors like Charlie Patton or Blind Lemon Jefferson. Skip James's fingers flew over his guitar neck and his hands furiously splash across his piano's keyboard. He saw both as instruments to be manhandled violently bent into submission like a sawmill oxen yoke. Skip applied an open minor key tuning to his guitar playing. And it was darkness incarnate in the character of his songs because of the world he inhabited. A world of violent hard labor, gambling, prostitution and bootlegging was darker than most of his blues contemporaries. Skip Skip James music was as nasty as the men and women he surrounded himself with. Skip James music was haunted because Skip James was haunted. And eventually Skip's haunted talent was discovered by H.C. steyer, who owned a music store in Jackson, Mississippi. A recording engagement was set at a studio all the way up in Grafton, Wisconsin. In February 1931. Skip James entered the studio and recorded 26 songs by his count, 18 of which would see releases on the Paramount Records label. The songs tell a bleak story of low down women, men messed up in the head and an almost complete lack of hope. With a couple of half hearted gospel hymns thrown in for good measure. He's on a drunken spree, as one of the song titles explains. He's on the hard time killing floor. He's got the 2220 blues. Skip James got the inspiration for his best known song, Devil Got My Woman from his short lived marriage to the 16 year old daughter of a minister. She left him for a friend and that gave the finished version of the song its bitter potency. I'd rather be the devil than to be that woman's man, he moaned. Seriously. Fuck em both. He'd go his own way, consequences be damned. When Skip James emerged from the studio, what he put down onto record was one of the most significant recordings ever captured in the blues idiom. But it didn't matter. No one cared. Skip James's music completely failed to catch on. He knew what his preacher father would say. For we live by faith, not by sight. Skip James had no faith and he couldn't see much of any future. Skip James was nowhere after all that. After trekking it up all the way to Wisconsin, after suffering the injury dignity of bearing his greatest failure, losing his woman onto record, after trying and failing to make something of himself. And for what? For nothing. He'd thrown away each of his previous lives as a bootlegger, as a sawmill laborer, as a sport. Each just another stepping stone down the crooked path. And they all led him here. Nowhere without options, still under the thumb of Jim Crow, the work camp, sawmills and worse, the sharecroppers. And they all waited for him in the not so distant future. Skip thought hard. He couldn't believe where his mind went. He heard his preacher father's voice. It was Psalm 1:1. Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked. The crooked path was a dead end. Again his father's voice. Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out. His old man preacher. That was it. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. The elder's voice boomed in his son's heart. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline. Do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father, the son he delights in. And there would be no more sporting for all have sinned and fall Short of the glory of God. No more gambling. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. No more killing, put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed. And the path of the righteous was pure. Direct my footsteps according to your word. Let no sin rule over me. Skip James abandon any thoughts of life as a blues musician and headed out to Texas to find his father. And when he did, Skip pledged to him and to his Lord, his life first in his father's congregation, then in his father's seminary. Skip James, it seemed, had finally found his way. Skip James went and got religion. Skip James reconnected with his father, a Baptist pastor, at the end of 1931. Music had proved to be a crooked road to nowhere, a sinful dead end. His father, Reverend Ed James, welcomed Skip into the seminary he founded. Skip renounced the blues and embraced the good Lord. He also embraced the many fine females who filled out the pews of his father's congregation. Skip never quite gave up completely on his past life. Some things were harder than others to put down, despite the fact that Skip's God, like his father, was angry, wrathful, mean. The turn toward religion lasted long enough for Skip to settle into some sort of security. But it wasn't long before that crooked road found its path to Skip James's front door. Baptist fundamentalism was a strict religious discipline, one that Skip, in the end, couldn't truck with. Especially when his vanity was stoked. When one of his father's female congregation members recognized Skip for the blues man who was Skip eagerly turned his back on God for the arms of a new woman. Temptation was too strong. Soon Skip was back in the jukes, if not playing music, then listening to it, vibing on it, drinking the devil's juice and frolicking with whichever women would have him. Religion didn't take. God wasn't the answer. Skip James would rather be the devil. The devil had a better go of it. Better who? Hooch better women, A better life. Dangerous, but better. More exciting. After his stint at his father's church in Dallas, Skip rambled over to Birmingham, Alabama, where he made a new living again with hard labor as a quote, unquote, surface man loading timber and steel. Skip had resigned himself to the working man's life. He put down the blues. He put down religion. He took a wife. He was, for him anyway, settled. No more sporting, no more violence, or so he hoped. It may now have been the 1940s. But the work environment was hardly any less dangerous than it was when Skip was working the sawmills back in the 20s. Skip felt that danger in the air. Walking home from work, he could hear the two men coming up on him from behind, talking loud, dipping into the dozens to get his attention. Skip knew where this was headed. It was because of situations like these that Skip continued to carry his gun, this one a post war P38. The men were drawing nearer. Skip didn't give them the opportunity to take him down from behind. He turned quick, drew his firearm, and fired two shots over their heads. It was a civilized thing to do. A younger man would have blown them away. But Skip James was no longer a younger man. He'd grown, matured, given up the baptism of fire that was the Holy Ghost. Life was now about taking it easy. He had that agency. He'd earned that choice. He'd be damned if two hotheads in a back alley were going to take it away from him. But women. Women were another story. Try as he did, Skip James couldn't leave the women alone. Despite his advanced age. His wife was none the wiser. But that little local girl, the one in the delta where by the early 1960s Skip and his wife had settled, that young girl wouldn't keep from coming around his back door. She was wise beyond her years, and Skip was caught up in her web. After they met and had their fun, Skip tried moving on. But the young girl wouldn't have any of it. She told Skip if he left her, she'd see to it that that big stick of his would never bring him any more pleasure. She'd fix him so that he'd never be able to fix himself. She'd fix him with a hex that would forever change Skip James. John Fahey found his man despite the fact that Mississippi locals didn't want Skip James around, and despite the fact that Skip James didn't want to be found, and despite the fact that Skip James hadn't played music in years, John Fahey found him. And John Fahey brought his discovery with a guitar in his hand, Norris to show him off at the only place in the world where Skip James would be given the proper reception that an authentic bluesman of his stature warranted. The 1964 Newport Folk Festival. Skip could not believe the turn his life had taken after all those years under the white man's thumb. It was another white man who pushed him out onto the stage in front of a sea of white faces all dumbstruck by his talent. Skip hadn't played in years. His form was rough and ragged, but as always, true, authentic, heartfelt and wholly unique. He ripped through a short, powerful set as was usually the case at the many jukes Skip performed at in his past life and on record. His song Devil Got My Woman with it's impossible to ignore a lyric I'd rather be the devil was the highlight. Skip James scared the shit out of everyone. And backstage after his set, Skip was feted even among blues greats like Muddy Waters and Sun House and youthful contemporary folk and country stars like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Johnny Cash. Skip James was the toast of Newport. Skip James world had finally turned towards something resembling a life worth living. His talent, his gift was finally recognized and about to earn him the living he deserved. 1964. Freedom had finally arrived and so too did Skip James. The spoils of success, money, adoration, respect, women were all there for the taking. And Skip, The orderlies were doing their best. But the patient kept bucking, screaming in agony. The surgeon had that post op Manhattan on his mind. It was only natural and the wasn't worth it. But it was necessary. The penis had to go. If it didn't, the cancer it housed would spread and kill the patient. The patient was 62 year old Skip James. Barely a year after his debut at Newport and the subsequent fame that followed, Skip James was felled by the anger of a young Delta woman's hex. She warned him if he left off on some other road without her, she'd fix him so he couldn't fix himself no more. And that's exactly what happened. Soon after Skip's Newport debut, he noticed the growth on the side of his penis. And in early 1965 at D.C. general Hospital, Skip James, to his great horror, was castrated four miles from the Washington Monument. The Washington Monument was built in 1854. Its architecture takes its inspiration from ancient Egypt's monolithic obelisks. Obelisks were large, four sided, narrow, tapering monuments consisting of a single stone and designed to symbolize strength, power, virility. There is no mistaking the phallic symbolism of the obelisk. And that was no accident. Obelisks like the ones of ancient Egypt and the one in our nation's capital, were also meant to symbolize freedom. And there is perhaps no greater American tribute to freedom than the Washington Monument. Skip James, a man who sought freedom on his own path his entire life and who finally found it at the age of 62, lost his freedom under the shadow of that American tribute. And that is a disgrace I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland Ad Free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube at@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's.
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Jake Brennan
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