Mick Hartley

A surprisingly young-looking Skip James – until you see his eyes right at the end:

From 1967, two years before his death.

One of the classic cases of the rediscovered bluesman: he'd basically given up on music in the early 30s with the Great Depression, before John Fahey and fellow blues enthusiasts tracked him down in 1964. A high lonesome tenor voice with an extraordinary finger-picking technique.

From Wiki:

He seldom socialized with other bluesmen and fans. Like John Fahey, James loathed the so-called "folkie" scene of the 1960s. He held a high regard for his own work and was reluctant to share musical ideas with other performers. Though the lyrical content of some of his songs led to the characterization of James as a misogynist, he remained with his wife Lorenzo (niece of Mississippi John Hurt) until his death….

James often played his guitar with an open D-minor tuning (DADFAD), resulting in the "deep" sound of the 1931 recordings. James purportedly learned this tuning from his musical mentor, the unrecorded bluesman Henry Stuckey. Stuckey in turn was said to have acquired it from Bahamanian soldiers during the First World War. Robert Johnson also recorded in this tuning, his "Hell Hound On My Trail" being based on James' "Devil Got My Woman." James' classically-informed, finger-picking style was fast and clean, using the entire register of the guitar with heavy, hypnotic bass lines. James' style of playing had more in common with the Piedmont blues of the East Coast than with the Delta blues of his native Mississippi.

Here he is with Devil Got My Woman at Newport in 1966.