Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues The Worlds of Charley Patton Revenant, 7 CDs, $169.98 EVERY BLACK living in the Mississippi Delta during the 1920s knew of Charley Patton, and many of the whites did too. 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. It was a life of drinking, carousing, and womanizing. Patton was probably the best-known, best-selling Delta blues musician in the late 1920s and the 1930s. Paramount records, in a gimmick to boost sales, sponsored a contest featuring Patton’s music. The posters read: “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues, by the Masked Marvel–Guess Who He Is?” His percussive guitar-playing and his growling vocals were familiar enough that Paramount execs figured some fans would recognize him, even if Paramount didn’t use his name. Things are different today. Patton still receives serious mention in blues histories, a paragraph in blues encyclopedias, and a song or two in blues anthologies. 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. 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. It’s worth the effort. Patton was killed in the early 1930s, when a “barrelhousing” woman slit his throat. Either that, or he drank himself to death. If not booze, then perhaps it was the mumps, or a lightning strike, or syphilis, or rheumatic fever. Or maybe a jilted lover slipped him some poison. Each of these was at some point the accepted explanation of Patton’s death. But no one is quite sure when or how Patton died, or what might have contributed to his early passing. (Initial guesses had Patton living to fifty, though more recent accounts suggest he died at forty-three.) The most likely explanation–and the one listed on his recently discovered death certificate–is that Patton died from heart trouble. SIMILAR uncertainty surrounds most every aspect of Patton’s life and music–from his treatment of women to the meaning of his lyrics. Even the spelling of his first name is a subject of some disagreement. (Most blues historians seem to have settled on “Charley,” though some still use “Charlie.”) The number of his wives–best guess these days is eight–remains a mystery. 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.” The one thing everyone agrees on is where it started, writes Dr. David Evans, a blues historian from the University of Memphis. “There is no uncertainty about his place of birth. 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.” Evans says that birth “almost certainly” took place in 1891. Other accounts say 1887. 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. 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.” Either way, Patton was clearly of mixed race. 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. 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.” The few things we know about his life frequently show up in his recordings. “Patton sang almost exclusively about people and events in his own small neck of the woods,” wrote Fahey. Several Patton songs make direct references to local figures: “Tom Rushen Blues,” named for a local sheriff’s deputy; “Joe Kirby,” named for the owner of a plantation of a Patton paramour; “Jim Lee,” named for a popular Mississippi riverboat. Such local references were more likely used for their entertainment valueto offer his audiences something familiarthan for imparting deep socio-political meaning. 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.” 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).” FAHEY FINDS this parochialism odd, given Patton’s professed aspirations of worldwide fame. There are other tensions in his work. While his own experience was carefree, reckless, and often distinctly unreligious, many of his songs feature traditional words of Christian spirituality. 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. Just as his audiences would identify with local references, so too would they appreciate borrowed phrases and even melodies from traditional religious songs. (Patton’s “I Shall Not Be Moved,” for example, was an “inspirational hymn–known all over the south.”) The familiarity of those lyrics complemented–or perhaps helps explain–Patton’s proclivity for spontaneous composition. Blues historian David Evans writes, “Many of his songs seem only minimally planned or rehearsed, particularly in their texts. 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.” Such impulsiveness helps explain the curious linkages in Patton’s lyrics. His words frequently head in one direction, only to switch inexplicably in mid-song. Patton sometimes just doesn’t make sense. Adding to the difficulty is Patton’s pronunciation–or lack of it. He rolls through his lyrics, articulating almost nothing. His vocals have the slurred, imprecise quality of a drunk sloshing his way haphazardly from sentence to sentence. An easily identifiable word is a rarity, and the thorough transcription of Patton’s songs is just short of miraculous. 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. (His brilliant guitar playing seems undamaged by his drinking. “Patton’s right hand slide vibrato is sublime, accurate and fast as lightning,” writes Fahey.) When Patton slows down, his distinctive, throaty growl emerges. “He didn’t just speak clear, like you or me, he had a growl and he talked like that, too. Just like you hear him singing,” said Rev. Booker Miller in a 1968 interview. It’s a glottal moan–thousands of independent, consecutive staccato sounds that combine to produce a continuous, gnarling tone. It’s the aural equivalent of an impressionist painting–only there’s no isolating the reverberations. On many songs, he alternates the growl with his trademark high-pitched, falsetto wail. (The title of the new Revenant collection, “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” is taken from one of Patton’s songs and is an apt description of Patton’s own vocal style.) And then there was the guitar work. 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. “Now, Charley Patton was just a guitar man,” said Miller, who knew Patton for four years and played with him regularly. “He just could handle his guitar–he could pick it, set it up on his lap, or on his shoulder, anywhere he wanted to.” Patton’s unique voice and innovative playingas reflected on these recordingswere not the only things that made him a larger-than-life presence in the Delta. His live performances were legendary. 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. “He could endure, you know what Imean?” recalled Reverend Miller. “He didn’t get tired and lay his box down and walk out like many musicians do.” Patton’s influence was vast. 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.” Howlin’ Wolf described Patton’s influence in an interview included with the collection: “How did I start to make records? I was plowin’–plowin’ four mules on the plantation. And a man come through there pickin’ a guitar called Charley Patton and I likeded his sound. So I always did want to play a guitar, so I got him to show me a few chords, you know? 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. 1928, the fifteen day of January.” Previous attempts have been made to resurrect Patton and restore his proper place in American music. Earlier box sets–including one last spring called “The Definitive Charlie Patton”–have been less definitive and met with little success. Revenant’s effort is the most exhaustive and compelling account of Patton’s life and work. 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. Even if they are no longer giving out free records for identifying the Masked Marvel, he is well worth unmasking. Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
