Early Delta Blues

Charlie Patton is probably the quintessential blues artist of this early era; he recorded only between 1929 and 1934, though he had already been performing for years. Clearly of mixed blood - with his frail frame, light skin and wavy reddish hair, he looked little like his brawny dark father - Patton was an outcast from the outset, a key ingredient in the blues. He could never settle into life as a farmer, merchant or preacher, though he tried them all; music was what he did best.

His rough, almost harsh voice and dynamic guitar playing propel such influential tracks as "Pony Blues" and "Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues," though his repertoire was varied and at times light-hearted. Some regard "High Water Everywhere," a two-part epic about the Greenville Flood of 1927, as his greatest achievement, combining as it does social commentary with personal detail. Patton died in 1934, when he was probably in his early 50s.

Patton's direct disciple in the Delta blues was another former preacher who had actually served time for murder - Eddie James House, known as Son. Son House apprenticed himself to Patton in the late 1920s, and while his guitar playing was never as sophisticated as his mentor's, his voice is perhaps even more powerful and distinctive. House made his first recordings in 1930, among them "My Black Mama," "Preachin' Blues" and "Walkin' the Blues." Among his early acolytes was the teen-aged Robert Johnson, who heard House play the juke joints of Robinsonville, Miss.

Though House drifted into obscurity following his early recording career, he was rediscovered living in upstate New York (of all places) in 1965. His primal voice was perhaps even more compelling on his later recordings, especially the vocal-and-handclap track "John the Revelator".

Another rediscovered blues artist was Mississippi John Hurt, whose delicate guitar work and gentle voice seem to have been locked in a time warp between his 1928 recording of "Candy Man" and his 1966 remake, recorded the year he died at the age of 74. If anything, the maturity of his years made him a more appealing artist in his second career, during the folk music revival.

In fact John Hurt is more comfortably classified as a folk singer, as his range reaches into such pre-blue material as "Frankie and Albert" and "Praying on the Old Camp Ground." Though he remained in the musical backwater of Avalon, Miss. all his life, he continued to write and perform for his friends and neighbors, as his paean to Maxwell House, "Coffee Blues," humorously attests.

 Birth of the Blues

 Roots of Robert Johnson

 Sweet Home Chicago

 The Kings of the Blues

 Women, Texans and World Blues

© 2003 by Christian Kallen

Resources

Charley Patton, Founder of the Delta Blues

One of the original voices in Delta Blues, a man with influence over all who followed.

Son House: Original Delta Blues

These 1965 recordings show the undiminished power of this delta blues master.

Mississippi John Hurt: Avalon Blues

The 1928 Okeh sessions from this Avalon, Miss. native are as warm and technically skilled as his last.