Customer Reviews

King of the Delta Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton

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

 

 

This book is fairly essential to those interested in the music of Patton and his contemporaries, as it is based on the comprehensive research on the subject by Gayle Dean Wardlow, research which is largely unavailable elsewhere. Unfortunately, Calt's presentation of this information is poor at best, and downright malicious at times. His writing is typically peppered with ad homien attacks at his subjects, and this book is no exception. The book is also in desperate need of thorough editing... one sometimes wonders how it got published at all.

Calt denigrates almost every other bluesman of that time and place--except, perhaps, Robert Johnson. Still, the book contains invaluable information about an elusive subject. Anyone who admires Patton's work and is interested in the period should be able to tolerate Calt's excesses. His bile is put to better use in his bio of Skip James--whom Calt knew personally. That very quirky (and sometimes fascinating) book becomes as much a study of the author as of his subject. And they deserved each other.

Calt and Wardlow detract from an otherwise spellbinding read with over-the-top invective and demeaning comments about Patton's blues playing contemporaries and rival blues scholars. I see their attack on Evan's work is perpetuated by a reviewer of this book. Oh well, it says more about them than it does about their subject matter. Never mind, it's very much worth reading anyway. Patton is, along with Robert L. Johnson, and perhaps Skip James, an absolute one-of-a-kind musical genius and personality who could be copied but never surpassed at his own game.


This book will be expensive now, but it's well worth the investment for those with an interest in Charlie Patton, his life and times, and the music that he and his peers produced during the first decades of the 20th century. Be sure and balance it against the work of others (I would suggest Evan's "Big Road Blues, which I find a bit arid and pointy-headed, too)) just to get other views and to better appreciate the needless bile Calt and Wardlow let spill in pursuing their personal musical jihad.

According to Stephan Calt, Charlie Patton could walk on water, invented sliced bread, and would have single handedly won WWII for the Americans if he had lived long enough....

However, if you can get past Calt's tiring badmouthing of anyone who was not Patton, you are in for a fascinating read. The research done by Gayle Wardlow is excellent, making the reader feel as if they have been transported to 1920's-1930's era Mississippi. Interviews with Patton's contemporaries are very interesting, and accounts of other blues muscicians (including Memphis Minnie and Willie Brown to name but a few) complete questions about their lives that CD liner notes leave out.

This "bible" of Charlie Patton's life would have received 5 stars, were it not for Calt's amateurish writing style.

This book is the final word in the elusive character known as Charley Patton. Gayle Dean Wardlow's exhaustive research and Steven Calt's vivid presentation create a text which I have read and re-read dozens of times. Unlike biased hacks such as David Evans , the two authors give a balanced , even handed portrait of "Papa Charley" , the greatest blues artist the Mississippi delta has ever produced....and that's saying something.