Chords for Skip James Talks Songwriting and His Music

Carambol Blues, that's one of the ones you recorded way back in the old days, wasn't it, Skip?
I recorded part of that, but I put in new rearrangements.
_ All I play is my own version.
I don't play copycat after nobody.
I just play [N] my own Skip.
Tell me something, Skip.
How do you go about writing a song?
Well, I compose a song on these terms and this way.
_ Sometime I'll be laying down through the night and [Ab] there are things that come to me.
And I'll get up and jot it down, maybe just a title of a song.
Skip, you could make a song out of some such a thing.
I do cigarette blues, paper bag blues, or Coca-Cola bottle, or most anything.
And then I get up and jot that down.
[Eb] Perhaps, maybe, the next morning I say,
this title I suppose should [Bb] compose a song of. _
In my [N] leisure time I'll sit down and just look like things that come to me.
I don't know why.
Just genes that affect us.
That's something I don't know what I can fathom that out.
But yet still things that just come to me.
And [Ab] I can get up through the night sometimes and jump up and start playing something I never would.
[Bm] _ Well, you take it, it's just like that.
When I get the words composed, then I put my own music to it.
[B] That will be fitting to my composing.
_ My rearrangements are just like I've arranged a song, a [C] composed a song.
[Bb] And since it's just a [Bb] tune, I get to [B] get to our piano someplace.
[B] I say, well, I'll play this in this [Bb] key, I'll play this in this tune,
and I'll put this to it and play it in this order.
And that's, excuse me, [Bb] that's the way, mostly, that my music is.
_ _ [N] Now, the devil blues, when I made that, that [Bm] blues there when I made the cherry bowl, this thing.
_ [Ab] And I recorded that in Grafton, Wisconsin, with a tall, slender girl standing right behind my back.
[Bb] She had two bunch of cherries, right over each shoulder.
And I [B] dedicated that _ to that cherry bowl.
Because I haven't seen, [Ab] she's very glamorous, all right,
because I didn't know which one I liked best, her or the cherries, but still.
I haven't seen her since.
But [Bm] anyway, now, Illinois blues, when I made that blues,
it was a red pocket kerchief around my neck and a big [Bb] cowboy hat.
And I was sitting on the side of [B] a railroad.
At least they had a railroad running through, you know, just like I was going,
I was in the Illinois and was catching the Illinois train or something.
You know, before into that.
[Ab] And the devil blues, there was a devil in the shape of a devil with a fork and a long [B] forked tail.
_ And that was the devil blues.
_ And all the other blues that I made, Cypress Grove, I was in a grove, nothing but little trees there.
That's why I was supposed to rather be buried there.
Crow Jane, she was standing behind me, she's a tall, glamorous girl.
And all night long blues, when I made that, I was laying there kneeling at least,
which I was on my way lying down, but I was kneeling when they snapped it, I guess.
And that was all night long.
Make me one pallet on your floor, so close to the door nobody never know.
[Bb] All that, you know, which is wood in the rime, but the title of it was All Night Long.
_ [Ab] And other records, most every record that I made, it was something that, you know,
was pertaining to the initiative, the title of the record.
Make it more comical, I guess, put more emphasis to the _ advertisement, the [Bb] publicity or whatever.
They used to do a lot of that back then.
[Eb] Yeah.
A lot of advertisements.
Tell me, how many songs do you think you've written all told?
[G] At that time?
Well, up until now, say.
Up until now, well, I have no idea.
That many?
Sometimes I have so many requests that people like, and if I can play them, I play them.
But just my own version, [Ab] I have pretty well about 30 or 40 already arranged,
but still there is more, there's always improvement.
Music is never completed, and then composing either in case [B] if you are inclined to that effect.
That's where I see it, because I can just, maybe.
Today I say, well, I got 40.
You see me, today week, I'll skip a year, I got in more.
So maybe I have 10 or 12 more.
That's just the way that go.
[Gb] Depends, whatever I see that will fit in [Dbm] or be befitting for [B] occasion.
That's where I try to rhyme my music.
Well, now you mentioned Illinois blues.
I don't think I've ever heard you do that.
Could you do that now?
Oh, whether you have or not.
Well, I know I have it.
Could you do that now?
Sure.
If you'll accept it. Sure