Topic: Skip James' Guitar Style--Queries and Tips

[deltaslim]

Skip James has been a personal favorite of mine since high school (only long playing albums then).  But I never really bothered to learn his signature tunes like Hard Time Killin Floor, Cypress Grove, Devil Got My Woman on his original Dm tuning.  Instead I try to approximate them in regular tuning (playing in key of Em) or Vastapol/open D.  I get by enough (especially in regular tuning) to get that sad minor key vibe but I often get conscious-stricken and ask myself, "Why not stay true to the original... the way Skip did it?". In a way, it's like preserving that specific art form he also learned from Bentonia region.

Any of you guys make do with regular tuning or Vastapol and don't mind NOT doing it in Dm?

[Prof Scratchy]

Why not learn straight from the man himself?

[uncle bud]

I've never tried playing any of Skip's minor tuned songs in standard tuning myself. But I could imagine it being done to a certain degree. As an example of the reverse of this, for quite some time, I was trying to figure out All Night Long in cross-note (minor) tuning, since it has much of that "sound", standard riffs Skip plays in cross-note etc. Well, it turns out All Night Long is in standard tuning out of E position. And it's going to be a helluva lot easier as well, since stuff he does on the IV and V chord is complicated (and getting right down to it, unnatural) in cross-note, straightforward in standard. Doh.

[Rivers]

Definitely better to work them out in Em/Dm tuning IMO. The differences are huge between Em and Vestapol, personally I don't think you can sound as close to Skip without the third string flatted that extra semitone to give you the minor 3rd ringing out open. Besides that there are some exceedingly cool chords and partials all over the place on the neck in this tuning. For such a small difference tuning-wise it's surprisingly unlike Vestapol when you get going with it, I find.

As for doing Skip songs in standard tuning, I learned to play Special Rider that way and I'm attached to my arrangement of it, complete with octave runs in the breaks. It doesn't have that Skip sound but I like to do it that way.

You should come to Port Townsend and hang out with John Cephas, he inspired me to explore it with an amazing version of Illinois Blues he and Phil played at a concert that gave me goosebumps.

I seem to remember Alvin Youngblood Hart saying he plays Skip's minor-ish tunes in Vestapol, killing or fretting the open 3rd, I may have misremembered that, must dig out the tape.

[waxwing]

Well, when you think of it, Standard could be said to be closer to Crossnote than Vastapol is, since it contains the minor 3rd (and in addition you get the dom7 on the open 4th). And with the top three strings identical in both tunings, all the treble licks are the same. In a way, the primary diff between Blues in E and Crossnote, aside from various bass licks at the nut, is that the latter affords you an alternating bass, over the usual monotonic, when licking up the neck in the treble on the I, but leaves you high and dry looking for a bass for the IV.

This has probably been said somewhere else around here.-G-

All for now.
John C.

[Rivers]

But it sounds very different though Wax, very airy, lot of space, when you do fret something the contrast can be intense. The changes can also be made pretty subtle. Illinois Blues is my favorite, it's great for working with on the main licks, bass part and changes. After toiling with it for a while you really start to appreciate how great a musician Skip James was. Depressing though, I have to retune and launch into some ragtime foolishness after playing that stuff for a while.

[uncle bud]

I seem to remember Alvin Youngblood Hart saying he plays Skip's minor-ish tunes in Vestapol, killing or fretting the open 3rd, I may have misremembered that, must dig out the tape.

Well, from the looks of this youtube video below, from the tribute to Skip James show in NY, I'd say your memory is serving you right, at least for Illinois Blues. Alvin looks like he's playing it out of Vestapol here. Love the intro: "I don't know why they called me for this, I know nothing about Skip James."

[Rivers]

Yes I agree, the IV chord is the giveaway. Those Dano formica-topped semi acoustics are pretty good for plugged-in low down country blues. I keep bumping into them around here.

[Slack]

What a voice.  Hard to appreciate the sheer power of his vocals until you are sitting in the same room with him!

Those Danos are cheap and have a unique bonky sound - I currently have a baritone, a ton of fun.

[Johnm]

Hi John C.,
I agree with the point you made a little ways up there--E standard is much more like cross-note than is Vestapol, for the very reasons you say.  It is not for nothing that in his cross-note pieces, Skip James avoids IV chords about as assiduously as Dr. Ross and Sam Collins avoided V chords, because the IV chord is quite weak in cross-note, as you observe.  Thanks for the cogent analysis. 
Mark is right, too, that despite the similarities, cross-note sounds different, I think mostly because it is so root and fifth heavy and third light.  There are lots of open intervals there.   
I think the tuning that has it all is standard with fourth string high.  It has no more simple name that I know of, but is the reputed mystery tuning that Furry Lewis used for "Mistreatin' Mama" and a couple of other tunes.  You can either simply raise the fourth string up to E in standard so that you have E-A-E-G-B-E, or tune down everything but the fourth string, D-G-D-F-A-D, which is what I do.  This tuning really has huge possibilities:  the top three strings are the same as in standard (and cross-note) so that everything on those strings transfers over intact, and the bottom two strings are the same as in standard, so you have a low root for the IV chord (unlike cross-note), as well as all of the traveling V chord options that are available in standard, as in Lemon's "One Dime Blues", Luke Jordan's "Church Bells", et al.  Clifford Gibson's "Don't Put that Thing On Me" works like a charm in this tuning.  In addition to which, you can use it to play in keys other than that of the sixth string.  I did "Deceiving Blues", on the CD with Orville and Grant in that tuning in the key of the fourth string, really an eerie sound.  I like the tuning because everybody and his brother have not already played great stuff on it, so you can find sounds that have not been so heavily mined before. 
All best,
Johnm     

[banjochris]

The only cross-note tunes I can think of where James even suggests IV chords are "Hard Luck Child" and "Yola My Blues Away" -- I can't remember him doing that in his postwar recordings.
Chris

[uncle bud]

Veering off topic here but the Vestapol/Cross-Note question touched on in the discussion of how Alvin Youngblood Hart plays Illinois Blues (and perhaps others, Rivers?) in Vestapol and not cross-note caused me to do a double-take on a tune I'd been fooling around with. I initially figured out Alvin's tune If Blues Was Money in cross-note. It has quite a minor, open sound to me, very Henry Townsend more than Skip James. Anyway, I went back and relearned the song in Vestapol yesterday, and I'm 99% sure Alvin does it that way as well. It didn't take long since in both cases the third string was being muted mostly (with a minor third occasionally being played on the fourth string and bent towards a major third). There was almost no mental adjustment required aside from needing to be more careful in muting or fretting that third string.

[Rivers]

I think AYH said he played all his Skip / Bentonia tunes in Vesatapol, the workshop was 10 years ago so I could be wrong.

Re. the IV, it shows up in Special Rider in the break, on the way down to a flat third but I agree it's the exception that proves the rule, more often it's implied rather than a full chord. I was incorrect in saying Alvin's playing a IV, it's got to be the V as you point out. They look pretty similar in Vestapol. Been a while since I had a Skip phase, is my excuse.

IV in Catfish Blues too, don't know what tuning he's in. In fact I hear one in I'm So Glad too. So I guess I disagree, unless they are in Spanish or standard! 

[waxwing]

Been a while since I had a Skippy phase, too, but IIRC, Special Rider is in Spanish, no?

All for now.
John C.

[uncle bud]

And you would of course recall correctly...