Delta Force
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Delta Force How Charley Patton made the blues. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES Every black living in the Mississippi Delta during the 1920s knew of Charley Patton, and many of the whites did too. A slight...
...Booker Miller in a 1968 interview...
...Patton was probably the best-known, best-selling Delta blues musician in the late 1920s and the 1930s...
...Adding to the difficulty is Patton's pronunciation—or lack of it...
...Patton seems to have pulled together in advance a melody, a guitar part, and one or more key verses, which would give the song a certain identity, and then added the other verses at the time of performance...
...Patton still receives serious mention in blues histories, a paragraph in blues encyclopedias, and a song or two in blues anthologies...
...So I always did want to play a guitar, so I got him to show me a few chords, you know...
...Patton often uses his guitar to mimic his vocals, sometimes dropping a syllable, a word, a phrase or even a verse into the guitar line...
...He rolls through his lyrics, articulating almost nothing...
...enough that Paramount execs figured some fans would recognize him, even if Paramount didn't use his name...
...The most likely explanation—and the one listed on his recently discovered death certificate— is that Patton died from heart trouble...
...He could endure, you know what I mean...
...The song was Patton's not entirely accurate recollection of a 1927 flood of the Mississippi River: Back water at Blytheville, back up all aroun' / Back water at Blytheville, done struck Joiner town / It was fifty families an' chil'ren (some of them sink and drown...
...Several Patton songs make direct references to local figures: "Tom Rushen Blues," named for a local sheriff's deputy...
...On many songs, he alternates the growl with his trademark high-pitched, falsetto wail...
...Initial guesses had Patton living to fifty, though more recent accounts suggest he died at forty-three...
...A slight man of mixed ancestry, he traveled with his guitar from plantation to plantation, juke joint to juke joint, across the dusty roads of the Delta, earning a reputation as an innovative musician and an extraordinary and tireless entertainer...
...Now, Charley Patton was just a guitar man," said Miller, who knew Patton for four years and played with him regularly...
...But no one is quite sure when or how Patton died, or what might have contributed to his early passing...
...There are other tensions in his work...
...Patton's father— if it was indeed Bill Patton—was a minister, and religion played an important role in the struggles of southern blacks during Patton's lifetime...
...His vocals have the slurred, imprecise quality of a drunk sloshing his way haphazardly from sentence to sentence...
...He didn't get tired and lay his box down and walk out like many musicians do...
...And so, every night that I'd get off of work, I'd go over to his house and he'd learn me how to pick the guitar—Seein' the people's went for what I was puttin' down—So I asked my father to get me a guitar...
...Son House, a contemporary who recorded with him, explains that the lack of articulation may have come as a result of the fact that Patton and his contemporaries were often "lickered" when they performed, even in the studio...
...Pat-ton's right hand slide vibrato is sublime, accurate and fast as lightning," writes Fahey...
...While his own experience was carefree, reckless, and often distinctly unreligious, many of his songs feature traditional words of Christian spirituality...
...When Patton slows down, his distinctive, throaty growl emerges...
...Revenant's effort is the most exhaustive and compelling account of Patton's life and work...
...Patton had so many liaisons with so many women that in the biography Charley Patton, John Fahey used quotation marks whenever he referred to a Patton "marriage...
...Other accounts say 1887...
...His live performances were legendary...
...Howlin' Wolf described Patton's influence in an interview included with the collection: How did I start to make records...
...An easily identifiable word is a rarity, and the thorough transcription of Patton's songs is just short of miraculous...
...recalled Reverend Miller...
...Patton, according to those who played with him, would play all night as long as there was a crowd to hear him...
...Patton had fun playing the blues...
...And then there was the guitar work...
...David Evans, a blues historian from the University of Memphis...
...All sources agree that it was in the country between Bolton and Edwards, Mississippi, two communities that are themselves about midway between the cities of Vicksburg and Jackson...
...Or maybe a jilted lover slipped him some poison...
...Perhaps the only aspects of Patton's life consistent from account to account are that he drank constantly, snorted cocaine, spent time in jail, and beat women...
...Patton sometimes just doesn't make sense...
...According to blues historian Edward Komara, "The social wrongs and racial violence done to blacks are implicit only in a few songs, like 'High Water Everywhere.'" That song, included with Patton's 58 others in the Revenant collection, is considered his "magnum opus...
...There is no uncertainty about his place of birth...
...Patton sang almost exclusively about people and events in his own small neck of the woods," wrote Fahey...
...Such impulsiveness helps explain the curious linkages in Patton's lyrics...
...The familiarity of those lyrics com-plemented—or perhaps helps ex-plain—Patton's proclivity for spontaneous composition...
...He just could handle his guitar—he could pick it, set it up on his lap, or on his shoulder, anywhere he wanted to...
...Paramount records, in a gimmick to boost sales, sponsored a contest featuring Patton's music...
...Most blues historians seem to have settled on "Charley," though some still use "Charlie...
...It's the aural equivalent of an impressionist painting—only there's no isolating the reverberations...
...It was a life of drinking, carousing, and womanizing...
...Earlier box sets—including one last spring called The Definitive Charlie Patton—have been less definitive and met with little success...
...Patton is widely believed to be the son of Bill and Anney Patton, though John Fahey reported years ago, in a matter-of-fact manner, that "Patton was the son of Henderson Chatmon and Anney Patton...
...It's worth the effort...
...Fahey finds this parochialism odd, given Patton's professed aspirations of worldwide fame...
...Blues historian David Evans writes, "Many of his songs seem only minimally planned or rehearsed, particularly in their texts...
...His words frequently head in one direction, only to switch inexplicably in mid-song...
...Patton was killed in the early 1930s, when a "bar-relhousing" woman slit his throat...
...The few things we know about his life frequently show up in his recordings...
...The one thing everyone agrees on is where it started, writes Dr...
...Similar uncertainty surrounds most every aspect of Patton's life and music—from his treatment of women to the meaning of his lyrics...
...Jim Lee," named for a popular Mississippi riverboat...
...He didn't just speak clear, like you or me, he had a growl and he talked like that, too...
...His percussive guitar-playing and his growling vocals were familiar Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...His brilliant guitar playing seems undamaged by his drinking...
...Things are different today...
...Patton's "I Shall Not Be Moved," for example, was an "inspirational hymn— known all over the south...
...Just as his audiences would identify with local references, so too would they appreciate borrowed phrases and even melodies from traditional religious songs...
...Even if they are no longer giving out free records for identifying the Masked Marvel, he is well worth unmasking...
...Such local references were more likely used for their entertainment value—to offer his audiences something familiar—than for imparting deep socio-political meaning...
...Even the spelling of his first name is a subject of some disagreement...
...He inspired dozens of young musicians during his lifetime and many others after his death, including blues innovators Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, folk guitar legend John Fahey, and the indefatigable Bob Dylan, whose latest CD features a cover of Patton's "High Water Everywhere...
...I was plowin'— plowin' four mules on the plantation...
...Previous attempts have been made to resurrect Patton and restore his proper place in American music...
...Patton's influence was vast...
...Either way, Patton was clearly of mixed race...
...In "A Spoonful Blues" he sings: I'm about to go to jail about this spoonful / Says aw that spoon, aw, that spoon / Yes, I'm goin' crazy every day of my life...
...Evans says that birth "almost certainly" took place in 1891...
...But sadly, like its predecessors, this new collection will likely do little to stir interest in Patton or advance understanding of his contributions outside the blues world...
...It's a glottal moan—thousands of independent, consecutive staccato sounds that combine to produce a continuous, gnarling tone...
...The title of the new Revenant collection, Screamin' and Hol-lerin' the Blues, is taken from one of Pat-ton's songs and is an apt description of Patton's own vocal style...
...Now, with the release of Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton—a handsome, photo-album-sized boxed set that includes CDs, biographies, audio interviews, reproduced legal documents— the Revenant record label has made one last attempt to reintroduce Charley Patton...
...Each of these was at some point the accepted explanation of Patton's death...
...Patton's unique voice and innovative playing—as reflected on these recordings—were not the only things that made him a larger-than-life presence in the Delta...
...If not booze, then perhaps it was the mumps, or a lightning strike, or syphilis, or rheumatic fever...
...Just like you hear him singing," said Rev...
...The posters read: "Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, by the Masked Marvel—Guess Who He Is...
...Either that, or he drank himself to death...
...But his influence on early acoustic blues —and, thereby, on the whole of American popular music—has done little to keep him from fading away...
...The number of his wives—best guess these days is eight—remains a mystery...
...And a man come through there pickin' a guitar called Charley Patton and I likeded his sound...
...That such imprecision represents "certainty" says much about the difficult task of piecing together details of the life of a black man in the post-Reconstruction South, even if that man was relatively well known throughout the region...
...Joe Kirby," named for the owner of a plantation of a Patton paramour...
...1928, the fifteen day of January...
Vol. 7 • February 2002 • No. 20
