As far as I'm concerned, this is the most awesome photograph of a musician ever taken. Besides it's visual perfection it's loaded with hope and meaning.
It was taken by Dick Waterman at the Newport Blues Festival in 1964. That festival marked the beginning of a rebirth of blues during a time when many of the blues masters whose music gave birth to rock and roll were still alive.
Skip James had recorded some amazing songs in 1931 that did not sell well because of the depression. He was rediscovered in the early 1960's as part of a rush to monetize old blues singers, along with Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, and others. Yes, it was exploitation, but it was a win-win because these old blues guys were living like beggars and this gave them money for the first time in their lives.
Skip was poor like all the rest, never having received a penny from his 1931 recordings, despite the fact that the 60's blues renaissance saw them selling rapidly.
He had to re-learn everything about how to play the blues, because he was busy living them.
His first song at Newport was one of the best blues songs ever recorded, Devil Got My Woman. I listen to the original '31 recurring all the time. Just as Skip opened his mouth to sing the first verse "I'd rather be the devil, than be that woman's man…", Waterman pressed the shutter release and in a very real way captured the first notes of the resurgence that saw blues change the course of music for the second time.
Waterman sells prints of this photo but they are very expensive - printed by hand from the original negative. I wish I could afford one.
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