I read the book and found that i really enjoyed it, I found the blatant dislike towards the "folk revival" scene which was showed by Calt (who was part of it?) in the latter half of the book to be a bit irrelivent to me when I read it. Though I did find that alot of the theories which he put forward were quite interesting, I found it almost reasonable to make the assertion that James was involved in numerous incidents of violence considering the dangerous occupations (the death of Am?d? Ardoin kept coming to my mind when I read this book)
As for Skip James' recordings in the 1960's I find that their quality varies alot, I have two versions of hard times in mp3 and I have to say one sounds rather bland and he sounds a bit bored singing it, the other version sounds much better and seems as though he is putting alot more effort into it. Generally I really like the post war recordings, more so than Mississippi John Hurts' or Son Houses. Especially Crow Jane he plays that really well.
As for Skip James' recordings in the 1960's I find that their quality varies alot, I have two versions of hard times in mp3 and I have to say one sounds rather bland and he sounds a bit bored singing it, the other version sounds much better and seems as though he is putting alot more effort into it. Generally I really like the post war recordings, more so than Mississippi John Hurts' or Son Houses. Especially Crow Jane he plays that really well.