Charley Patton

The first star of the Delta

Charley Patton stood about five foot five and weighed perhaps 135 pounds, but on a Saturday night in the Mississippi Delta he was the biggest man in the room. He sang in a rough, gravelly roar that carried over a crowd of dancers, beat the body of his guitar like a drum, and played it behind his head, behind his back and down on his knees. For a quarter of a century he was the most popular entertainer in the Delta, and when he finally recorded, in 1929, he became its first star.

His base for most of those years was Dockery Farms, a vast cotton plantation and sawmill between Cleveland and Ruleville. There he learned from an older guitarist, Henry Sloan, and there the next generation learned from him. Howlin' Wolf took guitar lessons from him. Willie Brown was his long-time partner. Tommy Johnson and Roebuck "Pops" Staples heard him, and Son House travelled with him to his first recording session.

In five years in the studio, from 1929 to his death in 1934, Patton made dozens of records: blues, ragtime, ballads, dance tunes and gospel songs, including "Pony Blues", "A Spoonful Blues" and "High Water Everywhere", his two-part account of the great Mississippi flood of 1927.

He died at about forty-three, unnoticed by a single newspaper. Today he is called the father of the Delta blues, his grave carries the first marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail, and he is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Worth knowing

Ten things about Charley Patton

1. His birth year is a ten-year guess.

   Mississippi issued no birth certificates before 1912. Proposed dates run from 1881 to 1891; the 1900 census points to April 1891, which most historians now accept.

2. Paramount sold him as the Masked Marvel.

   His second record was credited to "The Masked Marvel", with an advertisement showing a blindfolded singer. Anyone who guessed which Paramount star it was could claim a free record.

3. He was also Elder J. J. Hadley.

   At his very first session, in June 1929, he recorded the two-part gospel song "Prayer of Death", which Paramount issued under the name of a preacher, Elder J. J. Hadley.

4. His family story is tangled.

   His parents were listed as Bill and Annie Patton, but locally he was regarded as the son of Henderson Chatmon, a former slave whose sons later formed the Mississippi Sheiks.

5. Mixed ancestry, and mixed claims about it.

   He was of Black, white and Native American descent. Some accounts speak of a Cherokee grandmother; some historians argue for Choctaw ancestry instead.

6. A record man bailed him out of jail.

   In early 1934 Patton and his partner Bertha Lee were jailed in Belzoni after a fight. W. R. Calaway, a talent scout for Vocalion, got them out and took them to New York for what became his last sessions.

7. His death went unreported.

   When he died in April 1934, no newspaper carried the news. The cause on his death certificate is a mitral valve disorder of the heart.

8. John Fogerty paid for his headstone.

   The Creedence Clearwater Revival singer funded a stone for Patton's unmarked grave in Holly Ridge, through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund.

9. The first stop on the Blues Trail.

   When the Mississippi Blues Trail dedicated its first markers on December 11, 2006, the very first one was at Patton's grave.

10. A box set built like a 78 album won three Grammys.

    Revenant Records' seven-disc Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton (2001), packaged to look like an old album of 78s, won Best Historical Album, Best Boxed Package and Best Album Notes in 2003. Its co-founder, John Fahey, who had written a 1970 study of Patton, died months before it came out.

Life in brief

From Bolton to Holly Ridge

1. c. 1891Born in Hinds County, Mississippi, between Bolton and Edwards, probably in April 1891, though dates as early as 1881 have been proposed.
2. 1897Family moves to Dockery Farms, about a hundred miles north in the Delta, two years after Will Dockery founded it.
3. 1900sLearns from Henry Sloan, an older Dockery guitarist credited with an early form of the blues, and becomes the Delta's leading entertainer.
4. 1929First session, June 14, at the Gennett studio in Richmond, Indiana, for Paramount: "Pony Blues", "A Spoonful Blues", "Prayer of Death" and more.
5. 1929Grafton, Wisconsin, late in the year: "High Water Everywhere" and many more sides at Paramount's own studio.
6. 1930Back to Grafton with Son House, Willie Brown and pianist Louise Johnson.
7. 1933Settles in Holly Ridge with Bertha Lee, his common-law wife and singing partner.
8. 1934Last sessions, January 30 to February 1, in New York for the American Record Corporation, issued on Vocalion, with Bertha Lee singing on several sides.
9. 1934Dies April 28 on the Heathman-Dedham plantation near Indianola. He is buried at Holly Ridge.
10. 1991A headstone at last, paid for by John Fogerty and dedicated on July 20 with Pops Staples and Patton's descendants present.
11. 2006"Pony Blues" enters the National Recording Registry, and the first Mississippi Blues Trail marker is placed at his grave.
12. 2021Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence; Gary Clark Jr. performs "High Water Everywhere" in his honour.

A plantation and a school

The showman of Dockery Farms

Dockery Farms, founded in 1895 by Will Dockery, was a self-contained world of some 10,000 acres, with its own commissary, churches, schools and railway connection. Dockery had a reputation for treating his Black tenants more fairly than most planters, so families stayed, and musicians had a settled audience. Patton played at the commissary, at house parties, picnics and juke joints, and toured far beyond, but Dockery remained his most regular stop for nearly thirty years.

What made him the star was not just his songs but his act. He spun the guitar, played it behind his head and back, slapped it for rhythm and kept up a running commentary between verses. He moved constantly, and the younger players who watched him took away the whole package: the songs, the guitar sound, and the image of the rambling Delta bluesman that Patton, more than anyone, defined.

Among those watching were a teenage Chester Burnett, who took lessons from Patton and later, as Howlin' Wolf, recorded versions of his songs; Willie Brown, his partner for years; Tommy Johnson, who went on to rule the Jackson blues scene; and a young Roebuck Staples, who heard Patton in nearby Drew and took up the guitar, later leading the Staple Singers. Son House was already a player when he met Patton at Lula in 1930, but it was Patton who brought him to Paramount.

• The legend

  Dockery is often called the birthplace of the blues, and Patton its father: the man who, more or less, invented the Delta blues and handed it on.

• The record

  Patton learned from Henry Sloan, born around 1870, and absorbed older songs around Bolton and Edwards before he ever reached the Delta. The blues grew in many places at once. Even the Dockery marker is titled "Birthplace of the Blues?", question mark included. What is beyond argument is that Patton was the most important recording artist and entertainer in Mississippi blues in his lifetime.

Charley Patton has often been called the father of the Delta blues, and he deserves that title.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, inductee biography, 2021

1927

High water everywhere

In the spring of 1927 the Mississippi River broke through its levees and flooded the Delta in the worst river disaster in American history. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes. At Greenville, Black residents were herded into camps on the levee, kept there under guard and forced to work, while many white residents were evacuated by boat.

Patton recorded his response at Grafton late in 1929: "High Water Everywhere", in two parts, one on each side of a 78. It is a piece of reporting as much as a blues, following the water as it spreads from town to town across the Delta, with Patton's voice straining against a guitar he pounds as if trying to hold back the river. Many listeners consider it his masterpiece.

Bob Dylan paid tribute to it in 2001 with "High Water (For Charley Patton)" on "Love and Theft". Dylan's song shares the title idea and the flood, not the music, but the dedication made sure a new generation went looking for the original.

Start here

Songs to hear, and where they went

• 1929 Pony Blues One of the first songs he ever wrote, and the first he recorded. It is in the National Recording Registry and the Grammy Hall of Fame. Howlin' Wolf remade it as "Saddle My Pony" for Chess. Howlin' Wolf 1952Canned Heat 1968
• 1929 A Spoonful Blues A sly song built on a phrase Papa Charlie Jackson had recorded in 1925. Willie Dixon drew on the same tradition for "Spoonful", which Howlin' Wolf cut in 1960 and Cream carried into rock. Howlin' Wolf 1960Etta James & Harvey Fuqua 1961Cream 1966
• 1929 High Water Everywhere The two-part flood epic, often called his masterpiece. Bob Dylan 2001
• 1929 Banty Rooster Blues One of the Paramount sides his Blues Trail marker singles out, with his guitar doing as much talking as his voice.
• 1929 Prayer of Death Gospel from the first session, issued under the name Elder J. J. Hadley: proof that the Delta's wildest bluesman knew the church songbook as well as anyone.

Why he matters

The root of the tree

Follow almost any line of the Delta blues back far enough and it reaches Patton. Son House carried his approach to Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Howlin' Wolf took his growl, his showmanship and several of his songs to Memphis and Chicago. Willie Dixon's "Spoonful" grew from the same root as Patton's song, and through Cream it reached the rock audience of the 1960s. Pops Staples took what he heard in Drew into gospel and soul.

Patton himself was nearly forgotten until collectors and scholars, among them John Fahey, Gayle Dean Wardlow, Stephen Calt, Bernard Klatzko and David Evans, pieced his life back together from records, interviews and census rolls. The stone John Fogerty paid for was dedicated at Holly Ridge on July 20, 1991, before about a hundred people, among them Pops Staples and three generations of Patton's family. Its epitaph, written by the blues historian Jim O'Neal, sums him up.

The foremost performer of early Mississippi blues whose songs became cornerstones of American music

Epitaph on Patton's headstone, Holly Ridge, Mississippi, 1991

He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, and Mississippi Blues Trail markers now stand at his grave, at Dockery and near his birthplace.