Andrew Siegal

23 Jun 2003

Howie...the great Bluesman, Skip James appeared at Cafe Lena in about 1965-6 not long before his death. Skip had just been rediscovered by John Fahey who found Skip in a hospital in Mississipi, got him a guitar and brought him back up North where Skip wowed the Newport Folk Festival. Lena had the prescience to bring him to Saratoga.
Andrew Siegal

       [ That's impressive. Did you see him? - Howie ]

Howie, not only did I see/hear him perform, but I had gone up to sit in with Skip's permission and enthusiasm, when Lena shot up to the stage and informed me imperiously that there were no sit-ins and the Skip is a great artist, etc...He smiled and winked at me when she was talking, and I have to confess that I had never heard of Skip before and really knew nothing at all about the Blues which I had assumed as an eighteen year old jazz player referred to both a "feel" on jazz tunes and a specific set of chord progressions.
     When Lena finished her "discourse" Skip told me to enjoy the music and that he and I would "go in the back" during his break, which we did. Skip finished his set, and while I liked him personally his music didn't really make that much sense to me and it seemed awfully rough with a lot of jagged edges for a real professional. He sang in a high falsetto voice, kicked the piano when he played, rhythms were very irregular. Ironically, I had been impressed with his gentleness, soft spoken-ness, and with the politeness which he had shown toward me.
     The man, I should add, was a known murderer and was always discussed as being the supreme misanthrope in The Blues world.
     John Fahey not long after re-discovering Skip in 1964 found him so distasteful and misanthropic that he expressed his wish to bring Skip back to where he had found him and forget the entire interaction.
     I, of course, for whatever reason, always seem to enjoy the company of the foul and do very well with them and we seem to understand one another better, and for whatever reason I do have a particular affinity for murderers. I should add that Skip played with his hat on, wore a long woolen coat down to his mid calf even while on the bandstand in autumn and looked as though he had just walked out of the mensroom at Port Authority, so to guess that this was a great Blues artist and father of the discipline completely eluded me.
     When the break came, Skip walked off the bandstand with a guitar in hand, and we walked directly to "the back" where there was some kind of art gallery, as I recall it and we sat down on what I remember as a bench, as Skip handed me his guitar, a nice old Gibson flat-top, althought the action was set more as a folk player would have it than would a jazz player. Skip asked me my name, I said, "Andy"; he replied "Hello Mr. Andy, My name is Skip" and he asked me to play him something. I played a John Lewis jazz blues called Two Degrees East Three Degrees West, a very simple little tune and then soloed on it, and when Skip asked me to play a second tune, as he "Shhhhed" some onlookers in the gallery and waved them away, I played a Wes Montgomery blues as best I could.
     When I finished, Skip had a big smile on his face and said, "Mr Andy, I'm goin' to Philadeffia, PA in the morning, and I'm going to make a record there, and I'l like you to go with me and play lead guitar on it." I , of course thought to myself that this guy is going to make a record like I am going to play starting center for the Green Bay Packers tomorrow, so I very respectfully explained that "I went to college in Massachusetts and really had to get back to school, but thank you for your gracious offer."
     When I got back to the dorm at school I mentioned to two Blues-heads, a very rare commodity circa 1965 that "I met one of your Blues guys, who wanted me to make a record with him." They asked who, I told them that I really didn't remember his name and that he really wasn't very good, he just sounded like some old folk musician who sang in a funny voice, "weird." They pressed for his name and I suddenly remembered, "Oh, Skip..Skip something." They said, You don't mean Skip James, do you?" I said "Yes" and the next thing that I heard them say when they stopped laughing was "You expletive/derogation!" I asked whether he was "somebody" and they just kept laughing since they had attended Skip's rediscovery debut at the Newport Folk Festival that year.
     I usually tell that story, pretty much anytime that I play somewhere and if the audience seems as though they would be receptive, I have the band sit down for awhile and do a little homage that I worked out for Skip which is based upon his "Hard Luck Child" and always tell the story of my having walked through the Cross Roads, totally oblivious at Caffè Lena in Saratoga New York and that the young people should use that story as a reminder to keep their eyes and ears open to be, as Skip said in one of his tunes, "Be Ready When He Comes."
     I think the CD to which this story refers is Skip James "Live" Document Records DOCD 5149. Interestingly, the liner notes by an Austrian who had exactly the same impression upon first hearing Skip live had exactly the same reaction that I did and notes that after many years of trying, he himself cannot play any of Skip's tunes due to the music's complexity.