BackAlleyBlues

Born James Arnold in Lovejoy's Station, Georgia, Arnold received his nickname in 1934 after releasing Old Original Kokomo Blues for the Decca label; it was a cover of the Scrapper Blackwell blues song about the "Kokomo" brand of coffee. A left-handed slide-guitarist, his intense slide style of playing and rapid-fire vocal style set him apart from his contemporaries.

Having learned the basics of the guitar from his cousin John Wiggs, Arnold began playing in the early 1920s as a sideline while he worked as a farmhand in Buffalo, New York, and as a steelworker in Pittsburgh. In 1929 he moved to Chicago and set up a bootlegging business, an activity he continued throughout Prohibition. In 1930 Arnold moved south briefly, and made his first recordings, Rainy Night Blues and Paddlin' Blues, under the name Gitfiddle Jim for the Victor label in Memphis, Tennessee. He soon moved back to the bootlegging center of Chicago, though he was forced to make as living as a musician after the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution ending Prohibition in 193