Topic: Charley Patton 75 Year Anniversary Edition CD/DVD box set

[oddenda]

Nice enough piece, but a bit difficult with what we now know about Broz.

pbl 

[iwbiek]

I love the Revenant set, but the fact that the notes are incorporated into the large "album" makes them a bit unwieldy to read for long periods of time (which you'll want to do, since they're around 150 pages).  Also the small size of the text, as well as the weird, metallic, pastel fonts and background colors can be hard on the eyes.  All in all, it's big on flash but somewhat lacking in practicality, which I guess is to be expected considering it was Fahey's last great labor of love.

But yes, it's everything it's cracked up to be.  Worth every penny.

As for Revenant itself, I'm pretty sure they're defunct.  Their website now lists everything as "out of print" except for the (supposedly) joint release of Paramount's catalog with Third Man records.  Now THOSE are some impressive looking sets, at $500 a piece!  Not sure how I feel about the digital format on the USB keys in lieu of CDs though.  Not surprisingly, JSP has large chunks of Paramount's catalog available for dirt cheap.

[Mr.OMuck]

I found the Brit earring guy rather obtuse in his insistence that Patton was the Beginning of Blues, "there's nowhere else to go"... well there was Blind Lemon for one. Also the "Faulkner-izing" of the Delta and Dockery's is a little interesting in a general way but seems to take the emphasis off the individual achievements of the musicians in question.
Yes watching Brozman is difficult I agree.

[iwbiek]

I personally can't stand this rubbish about "beginning" or "founder" or "father" or "mother" of the blues.  It doesn't exist.  If you want to go chronologically in terms of commercial records, of course the very first blues records were made by the so-called "classical blues" singers, the slick female vocalists often backed by jazz combos.  The "country blues" only came later, when labels like Paramount realized how lucrative the untapped rural market was and labels like Victor and Vocalion sent field recording units to Southern cities.  Patton had influences just like everybody else.  Blind Lemon could definitely be called seminal, as he was by far the most successful country blues artist of his time, rivalled only by Blind Blake.  His lyrical motifs show up constantly in other blues artists' work from all over the US.  Even as late as the '60s folk revival, blues artists were trying to connect themselves with Lemon in some way to earn credibility.  Many years ago, I read an article by a noted blues scholar--wish I could remember who--in which he demonstrated pretty convincingly, from biographical and discographical information, that Lead Belly's travels with Blind Lemon were more than likely a total fabrication, and a common one in that period.