While watching a performance of Six Strings Down by Jimmie Vaughan it got me thinking and I was also reminded of an article I was reading on a web site I 'stumbled' upon about Sean Costello and I thought I would compose a series of posts for this blog about other blues artists whose lives were also tragically cut short.This is the second in the series of these posts and please check back in with this blog regularly as I will be composing a further posts on this subject.
Charlie Pattonb. Hinds County, Mississippi: 1 May, 1891
d. April 28, 1934
Charlie Patton, (also known as Charley Patton) is considered by many to be the "Father of Delta Blues".
He was one of the first mainstream stars of the Delta blues genre and lived most of his life in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta.
Most sources say he was born in 1891, although the years 1887 and 1894 have also been suggested.
In 1900, his family moved to the Dockery Plantation sawmill and cotton farm.
It was here that both John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf fell under the Patton spell.
It was also here that Robert Johnson played his first guitar.
At Dockery, Charlie Patton was taught guitar by Henry Sloan, and by the time he was about 19, had become an accomplished performer and songwriter in his own right, having already composed "Pony Blues," a seminal song of the era.
He was extremely popular across the Southern United States and Robert Palmer describes Charlie Patton as a "jack-of all-trades bluesman" who played "deep blues, white hillbilly songs, nineteenth century ballads, and other varieties of black and white country dance music with equal facility".
Charlie Patton played scheduled engagements at plantations and taverns which is in contrast to the itinerant wandering of most blues musicians of that time.
Charlie Patton was also a showman often playing with the guitar down on his knees, behind his head, or behind his back and his gravelly voice was rumored to have been loud enough to carry 500 yards without amplification.
His bellowing was a major influence on the singing style of a young Howlin' Wolf.
Charlie Patton died on the Heathman-Dedham plantation near Indianola from heart
disease on April 28, 1934.
