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Blues |
Charlie Patton was born in April 1891 in a time of racism, despise, and indentured servitude, and many of his songs echoed these themes. He was the scrawny child of sharecropper parents Bill and Anny Patton. The American south had not solved its problems some forty years after the civil war set blacks "free." Land was rented out to blacks for them to farm and in turn hand over a hefty portion of proceeds to landowners who found shifty ways of driving blacks into inescapable debt. This sharecropper's lifestyle of despair and mentality of oppression is what bred Charlie Patton, is what bred the ...read more
Charlie Patton was born in April 1891 in a time of racism, despise, and indentured servitude, and many of his songs echoed these themes. He was the scrawny child of sharecropper parents Bill and Anny Patton. The American south had not solved its problems some forty years after the civil war set blacks "free." Land was rented out to blacks for them to farm and in turn hand over a hefty portion of proceeds to landowners who found shifty ways of driving blacks into inescapable debt. This sharecropper's lifestyle of despair and mentality of oppression is what bred Charlie Patton, is what bred the blues.
Around 1900 he moved with his parents north to the Mississippi Delta, Will Dockery Plantation. At this time Patton developed an interest in music and took up playing guitar during his teenage years, blues followed. He became a travelling musician and played in parts of Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Tennesse, and Illinois. By 1910 and two decades before he would even get the chance to record, he was a proficient performer and songwriter already having composed notable tracks such as "Down The Dirt Road Blues," "Banty Rooster Blues," and his theme song "Pony Blues." Patton traveled around the enormous Dockery plantation in the Mississippi Delta and gained considerable fame, eclipsing the small fame of other musicians.
In June of 1929 Patton went through an audition at Dockery for a certain record store owner named H.C. Speir, and won. Patton recorded forty-three songs in the span of one year over two session, more than any blues musician preceding him. Shortly thereafter Patton became a minor celebrity and relocated to Holly Ridge, Mississippi, where he stayed in various plantation towns. Patton had played dance halls and gatherings for the majority of his life, and at one Holly Ridge dance in 1933 his throat was slashed right down to the vocal chords. This incident severely affected Patton's singing and along with his poor heart condition, marked the beginning of the end.
Charlie Patton died on April 28, 1934, having recorded his third and final session eighty-five days earlier, just in time to secure a place in the blues collective mind forever and influence the music of generations whether they know it or like it, or not. Luckily, in 1926 a young man by the name of Chester Burnett, better known as Howlin' Wolf, had moved to the Dockery and at the Drew town square not far from the plantation he saw Patton perform, the rest is history. « hide |
Similar Bands: Robert Johnson, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt Contributors: John Paul Harrison, A Spoonful Supreme,
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