Devil Got My Woman

Skip James's 'Devil Got My Woman' is the centerpiece of his 1931 Paramount sessions, built on his distinctive open minor tuning and an unsettling high vocal that hovers between lament and dread. Its sound is unlike anything else in the Delta canon, intimate and almost otherworldly. The song became James's signature and, after his 1960s rediscovery, a model for younger musicians drawn to its strangeness.