Patton’s a bit of a tough sell for the ordinary listener, most of his records were made for Paramount, which went bust in the Depression. The masters were sold for whatever the metal they were made of was worth. What Patton does still exist is exclusively taken direct from old 78s, and it sounds like it. Expect static, hails of static. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - I happen to like hails of static, I guess people who like this kind of music have to, but the noise can be exhausting. Have a listen to 'Pony Blues', his most famous track - you can barely hear it through the crackling. Just forget about the lyrics.
It’s something about a pony, but I have no idea what it is. About the only line it’s possible to pick out is Charley bellowing “and the blues come down, baby, like showers of ra-ai-in”, which is appropriate, because all the static sounds genuinely like a thunderstorm.Like I said, it’s a bit exhausting, but it’s not a bad thing. Think how much money some modern bands spend to sound this shitty. Charley Patton’s discography is the Earth A.D. of blues music.To get a good idea of what Charley Patton brought to the Delta blues, have a listen to ‘High Water Everwhere, pt. 1’. Stylistically it’s his most Delta track. Patton’s not a guitar technician – he’s one of life’s bashers. Everything about the song is propulsive and primitive and it’s loose as hell – in fact, it only takes him about ten seconds to start playing out of time. He’s sort of keeping time thoughout by banging his guitar while he plays and by stomping his feet, but neither are in time with each other so it just throws him off even more. In fact, the whole thing taken together is almost avant-garde when listened to on record. It’s like John Cage was in charge of the rhythm. There’s literally nothing sophisticated about it – it’s banging and stomping and bellowing. The subject matter gets Delta points too – the song’s about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which pops up all over the place in Mississippi Delta blues.
John Fahey, the 60s guitarist, had a way of describing the difference between his own music and that of the blues revivalists like Canned Heat. The theory was that they were after what he identified as “department store plastics”, whereas he was more into reptiles in the mud. Okay, so that’s not really a theory, it’s really a metaphor. But it really works for Charley Patton’s music. Listen to any of Patton’s songs – try a famous one like ‘Pony Blues’, or my favourite 'Jim Lee Blues, Pt. 1' – Charley Patton sounds like a reptile, splashing alone in the mud, howling to itself. It’s an enormous reptile, and it’s the last of its kind. The rest are all extinct. The reptile’s alone and knows it.
That’s what comes across with Patton, he’s an ancient lizard singing in the mud at the side of the road. Even songs like ‘A Spoonful Blues’, which is about cocaine, or ‘Shake it and Break It’, which is about sex, have the primordial misery welling up. There’s always that sad side to Patton’s music, and I don’t mean in the hackneyed ‘healing power of the blues’ sense. He just sounds depressed on almost all of his songs. The reptilian sadness, it’s there. Charley Patton is the blues Loch Ness Monster.Photos of Patton show that he was a funny little squirt wearing some sort of yokel approximation of a slick suit. He looks a bit disappointing for a bluesman - not big enough, and (big news for the revivalists with their ‘can white men play the blues?’ controversies) he’s not really black – people who knew him describe him as “yellow” (that’s charming old-time racist for very mixed race) or latino, and talk about his good (i.e straight) hair. He was actually a quarter Cherokee.
He doesn’t sound disappointing though. He had a voice that could apparently carry for miles and miles. It’s loud, and the recording equipment of the time just can’t deal with it. It just picks up the bass. He sounds like a bullfrog. It’s largely because of Patton that later bluesmen sing in that bass falsetto.Patton’s most famous for blues, but he also had a great way with gospel. Almost all bluesmen had fundamentalist Christian moments randomly interpolated into lifetimes of backsliding and reprobation, but Patton was a particularly depressing case. Whenever his lifestyle was getting him down he’d allow himself to get dragged to church and come out reborn, vowing to change his life, all of which would last about ten minutes. But you can still feel the personal need for salvation in that song in a way that you just can’t with most gospel music. His version of 'Prayer of Death, Pt.1' has a particular kick.
Patton was very popular in the twenties, and a lot of his music found its way into later blues, especially the bellow. But as a person he was pretty much good for nothing; a cokehead alcohol wife beater. He got into a lot of fights too, and eventually got his throat slit in one after he’d lost his fame and got desperate. Pretty much any money he earned (and at one point in his life he really was wealthy) was sniffed straight up his nose. Cocaine, shitty whiskey and the injury to his throat would have killed his career even if the Great Depression hadn’t made him into a musical footnote overnight. He didn’t cope very well with not being famous anymore either, and his later life is just a protracted car crash of misery. He recorded his last sides in 1934, shortly before his death, and they show a man who’d lost almost all his powers. He can barely even sing. 'Poor Me' is good though, if you want the sound of a man who is totally broken.
Patton introduced a lot into the blues. Almost every later bluesman has taken it as written that blues should be sung with in a bass falsetto.
Stylistically he also defines the earliest period of country blues, and his success helped to ensure that other elements of his sound, like his propulsive use of the slide, spread throughout Mississippi and came to form the bedrock of all later blues. But his real legacy is a whole load of ancient-sounding cryptic blues songs of the highest quality.One of the great things about Charley Patton is that he’s just obscure enough that mentioning his name to a serious blues fan will convince them that you know what you’re talking about. You’ll sound like you’ve done your homework, which you wouldn’t if you try talking about Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters.
Charley Patton was the earliest artist to obtain success playing Delta-style blues, and he opened the gates for other artists to follow. One of the most famous bluesmen to use Patton’s fame as a springboard for his own career is Patton’s touring partner Son House: the next stop.
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