I'd Rather Be the Devil: Skip James and the Blues [Paperback]

Skip James (1902–1969) was perhaps the most creative and idiosyncratic of all blues musicians. Drawing on hundreds of hours of conversations with James himself, Stephen Calt here paints a dark and unforgettable portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in a life haunted by failure. And in doing so, Calt offers new insights into the nature of the blues, the world in which it thrived, and its fate when that world vanished.

[Calt] writes with a knowledge and intelligence that make even his most extreme statements interesting . . . His greatest virtue is his insistence on painting James as a real, albeit infuriating, person .   —Boston Globe

The appearance of a book on Skip James and his worlds as thorough, clearheaded, and insightful as Calt’s should be considered a gift of fate. To say I’d Rather Be the Devil is the best book on the subject of ‘country blues’ for the layperson would be an understatement on the order of  'Air is good for your body.'   —Village Voice

This is the real thing. I drink up every word. This and Calt’s life of Charlie Patton are the best books ever written on the subject of old-time blues.   —R. Crumb, author,R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country

Intimate, learned, trenchant, chilling, and true . . . This work surpasses its task with comprehensive research and insight suggestive of far, uncharted travels.   —Alan Greenberg, author,Love in Vain

An extraordinary work devoted to blues, and more specifically, to one of the true enigmas of country blues.   —Lawrence Cohn, edilS4