Nehemiah "Skip" James was twice presumed murdered by the people of his Mississippi hometown, disappeared from music for 33 years, and was found alive in a Tunica hospital bed in 1964 by young fans who refused to believe the rumors. In this deep dive we trace one of the core architects of the Delta blues from his 1902 birth near Bentonia, Mississippi, where his mother Phyllis, a plantation cook, bought him a $2.50 guitar and his father Eddie ran illegal liquor before reinventing himself as a preacher, through brutal levee camps and road crews, gambling and bootlegging, and the surprising fact that by the late 1920s he was running a music school in Jackson teaching guitar, piano and violin.

We examine the eerie open D minor tuning, rolling bass lines and spectral high vocals that scholars call the Bentonia School, the debate over whether Jame ...