Skip James

he was dying when they found him, eaten through with testicular cancer.  It took his balls and his already bell-high voice stretched into a shimmer.  He was a ghost; the D-bass drone of his three-finger picking, the banshee wail of his voice.  His playing was corvid feathers— ruffled and sharpened and blading in the wind; a flutter-flap of flesh on steel-string that carried him in a clean melodic line.