418 Elmore James (1918-1963) “The Sky Is Crying” 1960

“Without money and with only a fourth-grade education, he gravitated toward blues music. He constructed a one-string instrument using old broom wire and a lard can (a ‘diddley bow’) and practiced assiduously. By the time he was able to buy his first guitar, he had already become a skilled musician. By the age of fourteen, he was performing in juke joints, in roadhouses, and at catfish suppers, supporting himself during the week as a radio repairman….James was in the U.S. Navy, stationed in Guam during World War II and rising to the rank of coxswain. When he returned to the Delta after the war, he adopted the newly popular electric guitar” (Howard Bromberg, Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia, 2009). 

Elmore James “The Sky Is Crying”