Skip James - Hard Times Killing Floor Blues, American Folk and Blues Festival, Cologne Oct. 9, 1967 

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2018: please enjoy my new VintageBlues4K version of Skip's original 1931 recording of this song: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PHENJ1rgj1Q.html

"The blues don't sound like sadness. It sounds like suffering through something. And suffering through something ain't sadness. It's fighting the sadness off with strength. That's what the blues sounds like. It's a tougher sound than sadness. It's the sound of carrying on somehow." - Buddy Guy (1982)

Im glad the Europeans appreciated this music. No wonder so many blues players stayed over in Europe

Relevant song these days.

Damn we’re in a tight spot!

His voice is proof that his soul has felt hard times.

Mankind would be nothing without the magic of blues.

One of the best songs ever made in the history of music

I’m from The Mississippi Delta, and I regret never seeing him. 💙

That voice is every bit as brilliant as the guitar playing

This song is how i feel when i drink alone

Looks like we don't really need another awestruck comment here but I can't help it. Skip James just blows me away. One of the great, great originals of the 20th century. This music gets inside the sorrow of the entire Black experience in America and it just stays there but it is not depressing. Haunting, disturbing, unmooring even but not depressing. It is art (and from what I have read of him he knew that). I am grateful that we have this! Amen.

Skip James is the most haunting and unique blues figure ever. This song specifically is my all time favorite blues song. It's just on another level.

I was born in 1965 and was into rock music late 70s 80s and I think I know where big rock groups got sound inspiration 😮🤔

You have got to admire and respect the old black bluesmen. They had style and class that you dont see anymore

His voice cuts me to the core. Absolutely beautiful.

Music so real it pierces right through your heart and sou5

Crazy how someone from such a different time and life as my own can make such a great impact on me.

Fantastic that this was preserved for us to enjoy today!

How these hard times just keep coming back around.

What a voice!? The sound of an angel with the humility of a saint! How can words possibly describe? Such temperance in the voice. ❤❤❤❤❤❤

This is unquestionably my favourite blues song - but this man's voice is a thing of such haunting beauty it mesmerizes you completely

Holy shit that's a quality recording

Dude passed away about 2 years after this... Had a voice of an angel who'd been through it all...

God what a beautiful voice.

I've listened to this quite a bit lately, and this man's voice always gives me chills. Sounds downright haunting and I love it.

this is so amazing, i love seeing the man behind the voice and the song in action, HISTORY, thank you!

The intro makes it even better

Wow what a voice! Its high and melodic, smooth as honey but with a little gravel underneath.

This is one of the greatest live performances of all time.

Whoa, what a voice!!

This is the spiritual blues.

One of the first songs I ever learned on the guitar as a boy in West Virginia, a few years ago now. My neighbor was an old drunk, and he drank himself to death, but not before teaching me a few old blues, Hank, and Johnny Cash songs. You can hear a classic Appalachian folk influence in the blues, and a heavy delta blues influence in old country artists like Hank Williams, and it is so interesting to follow their progression into modern country and rock today, something that could have only happened right here in America. This song reminds me that we are all interconnected in so many ways, this song speaks to me on a deeper level than anything I hear today, white black or otherwise. Surrounded by poverty, drugs, and despair all of my life the blues resonates within my soul. Thanks for taking the time to read.

This has the weight, the gravitas, of someone who lived through the Great Depression. Yes, there have been covers of this song, but none that resonate with such desperation and melancholy.

I had heard of Skip James and always loved anything blues. This means I have attended a lot of concerts and purchased a lot of music. The vocals (especially) and guitar expertise of this performance from 1967 is absolutely magical.

Skip can make that guitar sing and cry.....now that music is heavy on the soul....it must be the blues

That's the real deal. A true bluesman.

Heard a story about Skip once. Seems when he would play on the corners for money in the 1930s; the store owners would pay him to go away. Not because he was bad at it, but because his eerie voice would haunt them and their customers, and lower business. He stopped performing because of that, for something like 30 years. Lived a whole other life. He only came back to it because blues aficionados begged him to, in the early 1960s. They were just in time. He'd already contracted the stomach cancer that eventually took him, in 1969.

Love all the black bluesmen from the 30's. 40's and 50's they had style and class that you dont see today. And eve though they were living in hard times to be black they had a certain dignity about them. And nobody's going to tell me lighnin hopkins is not the coolest mutha to walk the earth

One of the greatest songwriters in popular music.. fragile like a flower in the wind, and haunting like a moan in the dark

Spine tingling... Skip was incredible. That voice... wow. Never seen this live footage.

His voice is horrifyingly haunting. He was different than other blues guitarists.

this guy literally pulls the mystery, the cosmos and eons of old time with this song. The truth in this piece of music should make us all very humble

Absolutely beautiful..................

This is why I love Skip James. The -skill-. He sings so beautifully, and it's like fingers were made to find their way perfectly on those frets. His skill doesn't turn him in a pompous direction either, but rather his style is just through and through cool.

You can hear the field holler skeleton in the structure of this song, but Skip’s voice gives it such subtleness that it just borders on the ethereal! His guitar work is so in sync with his singing as well. Listening to his lyrics, you could see how his songs( as well as other blues musicians’ ) would appeal to European audiences. Even in the early 60’s there were plenty of people still dealing with hardships brought on by a post-war recovery.

It's moments like this that I love youtube

Skips voice is haunting, it's like he's singing from the actual legendary crossroads the blues folk actually spoke about where Robert Johnson they say made a deal with the devil. Creepy

This video is so precious, we are all so lucky that it even exists. Thank you for posting this integral piece of American Civilization. Skip James is surely up in heaven now, resting from all his labors. Where would the blues be without him and Son House and Charley Patton and all the other giants?

Skip James is bad ass. Man is that some soul !

Put this in a box, and label it "Severe Spine Chill Inducer".

Didn't they find him cleaning streets after 40 years same with McDowell they found him pumping gas, and mississippi John hurt, working odd jobs out in avalon - walked up to these cats and said - hey, did you know your famous - yep finally made it. Crazy.

Hauntingly beautiful

His angelic voice sends shivers up my spine.......smooth, beautiful and tortuous. Combined with his haunting guitar playing it's just so beautiful.

Thank you German guy with subs

Gossebumps inducing. Takes an outstanding artist to capture the feelings of an ordinary human being during an era so that the coming generations can feel it in their hearts.

his voice is like a low whispering wind in a cemetery...

he worked in the mines in the 1920's and farmed dirt during the dust bowl? i hope i never know that kind of blue

To me I think this is greatest blues song ever recorded.

Why is the audio quality so fantastic? Them damn Germans. On point

Years ago I read that he use to sell bootleg liquor and when the law got hot, he'd have to skip town. ...henceforth the name "skip"...

Tough time never last. Only tough people last. Ridlusklupiqo.

My life just changed

Hard Time Killing Floor Blues are coming around again...

It’s crazy growing I was told blues was sad music but given what I had been fed it never felt so until I heard this and frankly, it’s haunting

He's bonafide

What gives me the blues are the horrible commercials on RU-vid!

Skip James gives me goosebumps every time I listen to him. That man right there is a legend.

I had a friend named Ramblin' Bob. He used to steal, gamble 'n' rob.

As we get older the stones of blues wash on the seas of time. We are left with a rock, and the rock has nothing but time.

Anyone who found their way to Skip James is alright in my book.

The blues sounds so much better from someone who has lived the blues

I mean it just had to be the Germans with the cleanest recording of Skip James. Telefunken had to get it's reputation somewhere I guess.

Thank you , it does not get much better than this

Imagine if he could see the impact he'd had, and all od listening to his incredible music nearly 100 years on!

what a voice, what a song, wow

this must be one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. His music is like wind. It floats straight through you. Catches your inner side like a gust can.

The Bentonia Blues style, from Bentonia, Mississippi; Skip James was its greatest exponent. I don't think I've ever heard anything in the blues more hauntingly beautiful than this man's voice, or guitar playing more sophisticated. Amazing to think that hard times drove him to give the guitar up virtually for nearly thirty years. In 1964 he was discovered in a hospital in Tunica, Mississippi, being treated for the cancer which would kill him five years later, and while in remission that same year, they put him up before an astonished audience at the Newport Folk Festival. He was virtually unknown.

Just pure musicianship golden artists from a golden era

First notes from his vocal pierce right to the soul. Instant connection with deep spirituality and the vicissitudes of the human condition.

yup, we've come full circle. bust out the blues again, it's gonna be a long decade

Some 50 years ago I met and befriended Skip James, and I can testify that this was one of his finest performances - maybe his best. He was fighting cancer at this point, and he knew that his days were numbered. It was a truly hard times killing floor for Skip and you "can feel it in your deep down" - as he would say. Skip was more than a blues singer - he was a musical genius. It is lucky for us that he had a chance to go to Europe, and to be recorded in such a dignified manner. This video is a treasure....

"And the people ,are driftin' from door to door Can't find no heaven, I don't care where they go".

Beautiful and haunting at the same time

I don't know what makes me want to cry more, his unearthly voice or his perfect guitar.

Now that’s how it’s done!

Hard times is here and everywhere you go Times are harder than ever been before You know that people, they are are driftin' from door to door But you can't find no heaven, I don't care where they go People, if I ever can get up off of this old hard killin' floor Lord, I'll never get down this low no more When you hear me singin' this old lonesome song People, you know these hard times can last us so long You know, you say you had money, you better be sure Lord, these hard times gon' kill you, just drag on slow

This performance was in October 1967, when I was 9. And now I’m the age Skip James was then, and this song is as up-to-date as ever. The Blues are eternal.

Sounds spooky in 2019, must have scared the shit out of people back in the 1930s.

The algorithm works in wonderful ways

Hard times is here and everywhere you go Times are harder than ever been before You know that people they are drifting from door to door But they can't find no heaven, I don't care where they go You know you say you have some money, but you better be sure Y'know these hard times goin' kill you, just drag on slow You know when you hear me singing this old, lonesome song People you know these hard times can stay here so long Now if I can ever get up off of this old, hard tiring floor People I'll never get down this low no more

Blown away by this post...how did you produce so much QUALITY in this post..just saying Thank you.

Skip was crazy talented. We need a new wave of blues players who's fingers bleed for their blues.

So evocative , melancholy and haunting....

This song is a god damn masterpiece

He don't shred. I very like it . To say the truth it's one of my favourite bluesman. You don't need to roar to sing the blues

The narrator doesn’t mention that the tune is not specifically ‘about a time when people were queuing up for soup’ but is specifically referring to the workers in the Chicago stock yard slaughter houses, the ‘killing floors’. Many travelled to Chicago to take up this work but found it worse than where they had come from.

What a voice! Incredible! Unique. Passionate. Authentic. Emotionally deep. What a gift to humanity!

This man knows how to tell a story !!!!

A Voice like cold winter wind.