Customer Reviews

Founder of Delta Blues

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Charlie Patton was of the first generation of blues artists and exerted a profound influence on the development of what we call the Mississippi Delta Blues. This Yazoo collection brings together what are genrally regarded to be his greatest recordings. Sound quality varies and Yazoo admittedly did not eliminate some of the clicks and pops in the original because it would muffle the music. This is as good a single disc colelction of Patton's music as one can get, although there are other single-disc collections that look quite good available from other labels.
Bear in mind that the British Catfish label has collected all of Patton's recordings on a budget priced three-disc set. As I write this (9/21/01), Revenant is about to release a seven-disc box that contains not only all of Patton's recordings but every other recording that was made at the recording sessions that Patton participated so this will include pioneering recordings by Willie Brown, Son House, Lousie Johnson and others. One disc will contain recordings by persons influenced by Patton and one will contain interveiws with Patton's associates about Patton. Also included will be a reproduction of the late John Fahey's long out-of-print Patton biography. This box set is likely to be the definitive Patton release.

Charley Patton is to Mississippi what Blind Lemon Jefferson is to Texas: its most important black rural artist of before WW2. If you have a taste for this sort of thing, it doesn't get better than this. A blazing performer whose singing and guitar work can still overwhelm you, seven decades later. But it's completely inaccurate to slam the disc's sound qualtity and accuse the label of "laziness." To the contrary, Yazoo Records has always had the very best in 78-reissue sound, disc after disc. Its engineers, far from being lazy, have always taken scrupulous care and a ridiculous amount of time in achieving their sonic results. The fact is that the old Paramount78s from which most of these tracks were taken were worn almost beyond recognition, from cheap manufacture and overplaying with heavy tonearms. Yazoo's audio philosophy is that you can't eliminate all the noise without eliminating the high frequencies that make the music live. If you can't take the noise, that's up to you; but the typical Yazoo CD will come closer than any other label's to the sound you'd get if you played these 78s on an antique gramophone: an entirely different, and genuine, sound experience. In the present case, this disc is a complete digital remastering, going back to the original source 78s, of a landmark Yazoo 2-LP set from about 30 years ago (and an earlier CD issue of same). This is no. 10 in Yazoo's "2000 series" of all- digital 78 reissues, and the only place you'll find Patton sounding this good is on its compantion, Yazoo 2001. Get ready to tap, no, make that stomp, your foot to one of the great American dance musicians.

Firstly,this bickering about 'laziness' is a bit neurotic,-as the other insightful reviewer pointed out these are Paramount 78s and no cheaper quality discs were ever manufactured and if they have survived at all their fragility rivals an old Renaissance painting SO take it easy with the conscientous engineers at Yazoo because these digital transfers are the very best that can be head with the notoriously cheapo Paramounts!
Musically this CD is a revelation AND an excellently balanced view of Patton as a performer,...not just red-hot Delta blues but also minstrel Rags and field hollers AND his eloquent percussive guitar work needs no qualifying introduction.
If the surface hiss trobules you then all I can suggest is that you take up the guitar learn these tunes then make your very own CD,...BUT you won't get anywhere tho' Patton Was (and always will be) One-of-a-kind!

I just want to echo the previous comment on the recording quality. The problem is obviously not "laziness" -- the recordings were made in the late 20's at the very beginning of recorded music. It's a miracle that this music has been preserved at all. If you feel like you have to, go ahead and turn on your "Dolby" switch, but I'll listen to it as it is on the original masters.

Patton is an absolute giant, and his voice will come through loud and clear to any true fan of American folk music, regardless of any so-called "noise."

This one was considered THE Charlie Patton-compilaton for many long years. And they spell his name right, too!
Originally released in 1969, "Founder Of The Delta Blues" includes almost all of Patton's best songs, from "Pony Blues" to "High Sheriff Blues", and it is still a very fine overview of Charlie Patton's recording career. But it has now been overtaken, fidelity-wise, by the magnificent JSP box set "The Complete Recordings 1929-34", and the single-disc retrospective "Pony Blues: His 23 Greatest Songs" from the Austrian Wolf label, as well as a couple of other recent compilations.

Before Robert Johnson there was an older generation of Delta blues musicians of which Charlie Patton was a part. Patton, with his rough voice and primitive sound, may take getting used to for some. But I find him to be among the most poweful of all the bluesmen. His music is rhythmically charged and his lyrics are funny, emotional and very smart. He cleverly takes on the role of a bo weavil addressing his wife in "Bo Weavil Blues" and the desperate voice of a drug addict in "A Spoonful Blues". But my favorite has to be "Down The Dirt Road Blues", where he travels with his woman to the "Indian Nation" in Oklahoma. Patton was apparently 1/4 Cherokee and hoped to obtain a place on the reservation. But instead he ends up alone and full of despair.

Every day seem like murder here
My God, I'm no sheriff
Every day seem like murder here
I'm gonna leave tomorrow, I know you don't bid my care

When it comes to the blues no one is more passionate and intense than Charlie Patton. This is definitely a must for anyone that loves soul filled blues music.

If you are looking to begin a pre-war blues collection, this should be one of the first cd's (if not the first) you should buy. There are many other great pre-war blues artists, but Charlie Patton is one notch above them all. "Founder of the Delta Blues" collects all of Patton's best recordings, and unlike many of his contempories who created new songs by simply changing the lyrics of a recycled melody, most of Patton's work was varied, giving the listener something new to hear on each track.

Patton was a fantastic slide guitar player, showcasing these skills in Mississippi Boll Weavil Blues, Spoonful Blues, and I't Won't Be Long. You'll hear him slapping the guitar body on "Down the Dirt Road Blues" to create his own percussion section. He teams up with Willie Brown on second guitar (the Willie Brown of Eric Clapton and Robert Johnson's Crossroads Blues) and old time fiddle player Son Sims on a number of tracks as well. The music is as honest and as raw as it gets, providing a good feel for the music scene in rural black America before the Great Depression.

As a singer, Patton's gravelly and often uncomprehensive voice may scare some first time listeners away. Stick with it, though. Listen to him 4 or 5 times; you'll get past the scratches/pops of the lousy original 78's and learn to love the music. If I was stranded on a desert island and could choose only 5 pre-war blues cd's to take along, I think this one would be at the top of the list.

If you had never heard the blues before and needed a "top five" to go on, this CD would not only be on it but would probably be first on the list. Now, Patton was not the first bluesman to record, and he may or may not have been the "best", or the most popular, or influential, or talented, and he did not have the posthumous show-biz connections (read Clapton,Stones)of Robert Johnson (although John Fogerty did buy him a fitting headstone and Rolling Stone's five stars do appear on the front). The point is that he was, indeed, the founder of the delta blues; the most famous and influential strain of the blues. One can draw a line from Patton to Son House (his contemporary) to Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters and it doesn't get much more decicive than that! Patton, though, is much more than history; he is a powerful artist that stands on his own, that can be enjoyed solely on the basis of the music. Charley Patton is not a footnote in the blues, and any history of blues that does not mention him or state his significance is not a history and and blues collection without him is not a collection.

Charlie Patton has been described by some as probably the first artist to record and popularize the delta sound. Whether that's true or not, this CD still contains the most amazing collection of musical styles and techniques - Patton attacks and taps his bass strings like a fusion jazz bassist, plays rhythmic sections that can later be heard in '70s dance music,and of course prepares the listener for the emergence of rock, country and folk styles. This is really pre-blues, and is an absolutely critical album in understanding the roots of everyone from Son House to Taj Mahal. If I had been wearing socks when I first listened to it, you can bet they would have been knocked off...

I checked this out from the library, listened and thought "What is he saying?" After checking it out 20 times, I finally bought the thing ... still haven't figured it out. But these recordings are priceless - the way "When Your Way Gets Dark" floats in the stratosphere, the harsh intricate rhythm of "Pony Blues", the left-out syllables in "Spoonful Blues." The lyrics are virtually unintelligible, but the emotion is crystal clear. An essential recording.