Alex is correct. When researchers were working in the Delta in the 1960s, the people they talked to remembered two distinct "Willie" or "Will" Browns playing with Charley Patton.
The first, who played with Patton in the teens, was tall, "chunky and heavyset", with a "big round face". He had a good singing voice and sang a lot. He apparently moved to Memphis and died around 1940. He never recorded.
The second, who played with Patton in the late 1920s and early 1930s and then with Son House, was also known as "Bill" or "Little Bill". He was small, about 5 feet four inches in height and weighed "about 135" (pounds). This Willie Brown preferred playing guitar to singing. He died in 1952. This was the man who recorded "M & O Blues" and "Future Blues" and later "Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor".
Then, of course, there's the William Brown who recorded "Mississippi Blues", "Ragged and Dirty", and "East St Louis Blues" for the Library of Congress in 1942 and who is not known to be related to the other two.
