James ‘Kokomo’ Arnold (Gitfiddle Jim) was a Blues musician, his intense style of playing and rapid-fire vocal delivery set him apart from his contemporaries. Indiana. Most sources give the date his birth as 1901, but other research sources give the date as 1896

In 1930 he made his first recordings, Rainy Night Blues and Paddlin' Madeline Blues, using the name Gitfiddle Jim. Shortly after he moved back to Chicago, where after Prohibition ended in 1933 he was forced to make a living as a musician. 

From his subsequent first recording for Decca, in 1934, until his last, in 1938, Gitfiddle Jim recorded at least 80 sides, seven of which have been lost. Other notable songs include his 1934 recording of the sexually explicit, a track seldom played on radio because of its content Sissy Man Blues,  

In 1938 James left the music industry and began to work in a Chicago factory.  He was re-located by blues researchers in 1962, but showed no interest in returning to music to take advantage of the resurgence of interest in the blues among young white audiences. James died of a heart attack in Chicago on November 8, 1968, aged either 67 or 72, and was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois.   

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