Charley Patton

Charley Patton (born around 1891 — even his birth year is approximate) was the Delta blues’ first recorded star and its first teacher. Based for years around Dockery Plantation, the cotton operation often called the birthplace of the Delta blues, Patton was famous across the region long before he recorded: a small man with a huge, gravelly voice, playing the guitar behind his head and between his legs decades before rock guitarists reinvented the tricks (Palmer 1981).

His 1929–34 recordings — “Pony Blues,” “A Spoonful Blues,” “High Water Everywhere,” his two-part account of the catastrophic 1927 Mississippi flood — show a complete musical world: dance rhythms that swing and stomp, slide guitar conversation, topical reporting, sacred songs under a pseudonym. Wald notes that Patton was exactly what the marketing category hid: not a primitive folk artist but a professional entertainer with a broad repertoire (Wald 2004).

His students and disciples are the genre’s history in miniature: Son House played with him, Robert Johnson followed him around as a boy, and a young Chester Burnett learned so directly from Patton that his growl carried Dockery Plantation to Chicago under the name Howlin’ Wolf.