The late Mr. Calt's biography of Skip James is a truly appalling piece of work, among the most off-putting books I've ever read, certainly on the subject of blues and blues artists. It reads like an endless settling of scores, a fevered effort to detail how many people are inferior, intellectually and morally, to Calt. One has the impression of a deeply unhappy man. It could not have been easy being him.

At least I survived the experience and still listen to James with pleasure. Not so with Barry Mazor's tediously quarrelsome Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, which is nearly as charm-deficient as Calt's effort. Arguably worse, since while purporting to celebrate Rodgers it made me never want to hear him again, and I haven't.