Topic: Charley Patton Day Tue. 4/28/09

[Dom Boggs]

So this tuesday will be 75 years since the passing of Charley Patton.

I will be celebrating this mans life all day this tuesday.
He is and will always be my favorite performer.
The voice, the rhythm, the man.

Im thankful that we have his music and a photo of him and alot of great stories. I see this man everyday, every morning and every night (i have the poster right by my bed)

He is a huge inspiration to me.

So join me on Tuesday and play some Charley Patton

[doctorpep]

I will join you on Tuesday by playing plenty of Patton!

[Richard]

What a good idea 

[Norfolk Slim]

I will endeavour to learn some by tueday :-)

Working on down the dirt road as I type.

[lindy]

I?m moving back to the Pacific Northwest for a while, so the weekend before last I thought I?d do one last trip to Mississippi to revisit spots that touched something in me on my first trip six years ago. I went to Holly Ridge to check on Charley Patton?s grave, and sorry to report, no one?s making sure that it?s kept clean. Compared to the rest of the little cemetery, his plot was the most overgrown.

Kind of sad for one of the most important musicians to come out of that state, but there?s good news, too. On my first delta trip in 2003 there weren?t any Mississippi Blues Trail markers up yet. Now they?re all over the place, and the state tourist board is spending some money promoting them. After seeing ten markers on my latest trip, I can say that if you?re at all in tune with blues history, they got enough meat to trigger the imagination. Along with Cheseborough?s guide, they?re great for pointing the way to some of the most important spots. The marker for Charley Patton?s gravesite was the first marker to be installed, rightfully so.

The ones I stopped at and read were in Holly Ridge, Bentonia (two of them, for the Blue Parrot Caf? and Jack Owens), Belzoni (Pinetop Perkins), Avalon (guess who), Greenville (Nelson Street), Leland (Highways 10 and 61 junction), Dockery Plantation, Greenwood (WGRM), and Rosedale. Most of those markers mention Charley Patton as the leading force in Mississippi blues, so even if his final resting place is in some serious need of mowing, there?s people who recognize his importance and who are trying to share that with people who might otherwise just pass through Mississippi without ever hearing Charley Patton?s name.

In some cases the markers sneak up on you, you?re doing 65 and one suddenly appears without any warning or any space to park. So you pull over and back up and stand next to a four-lane highway with tractor-trailers screaming past and read about how Pinetop got his gig with Muddy Waters. In other cases there?s a little brown sign saying ?Blues Marker Site? with an arrow pointing down a little side road to a place like Holly Grove. When you see cars parked at those sites, you can be pretty sure you?re about to meet someone in the fraternity.

At the Dockery plantation I watched five guys just barely on this side of 20 who were visiting a holy site and who understood what that meant. They took turns taking each other?s pictures playing guitars under the Dockery Farms sign. They told me they had driven all the way down from St. Louis because they heard that Honeyboy Edwards was headlining at the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale the next day. I preached the Gospel of Weenie to them, and they were easy converts. I asked them what they thought about Charley Patton, and they gave me the feeling that Charley?s legacy is safe for another generation.

I don?t know what they had in their CD player, but I know that I had one of the Catfish ?Definitive Charley Patton? CDs for the drive from Avalon to Holly Grove, no better place to listen to his growl. For the drive from Belzoni to Avalon I had the Smithsonian recordings of John Hurt, and later in the day I had some Robert Pete Williams to listen to as I went through Cleveland and Merigold on the way to Rosedale.

It?s a bit of a shock to be listening to that happy heavy rhythm coming out of John Hurt?s thumb and then pull up to the house that he lived in for many years, which now sits on his granddaughter?s property on a dirt road off of a side road off of a two-lane highway. Ramshackle. It?s on a real pretty piece of land, but the thought of one of our greatest musicians living in that building for much of his adult life sure is sobering. I?d been inside it a couple of times before, so I didn?t bother calling up the caretaker to unlock the place for me. I just sat on the porch and played Hey Baby Right Away, Spike Driver?s, and Frankie, then got driven off by a swarm of wasps getting into every little crack and crevice in John?s house, of which there are hundreds. I left feeling a lot more reserved than I did when I pulled up.

Robert Pete?s music is so much sadder. He had a real storyteller?s approach to his lyrics, singing about being turned down for the third time by his parole board, singing about how bone-tired he was at the end of a long day doing fieldwork, with not much to look forward to but another long day doing fieldwork. Good stuff to chew on while driving along Mississippi county highways and seeing how impoverished that part of America still is. Shotgun shacks like John Hurt?s have been replaced by trailer homes for farmworkers. Downtowns in places like Rosedale are lifeless?a couple of burned-out buildings in between former jukes, at the end of the street there?s a shiny new Blues Trail marker telling travelers that there used to be lots of life and music there.

On Saturday I went to Clarksdale for the Juke Joint Festival. The Mississippi Tourist Office had a booth, with a state employee handing out little white plastic bags with maps and brochures and post cards and hand fans in the shape of Blues Trail markers and little blue plastic harmonicas (key of C). I got there at 10 in the morning, since I?ve come to learn over the past few years that 10 in the morning is when most of these little festivals schedule the acoustic players. For the next couple of hours I hustled between three stages to hear four Port Townsend faculty alumni: David Evans, Robert Belfour, Eddie Cusik, and Terry Bean. I ran into the five young St. Louis blues fanatics, who looked like they?d just found the mother lode.

According to one of the brochures in the little white plastic bag, ?Mississippi is a destination for seekers of authentic experiences.? Clarksdale is doing its best to accommodate them in the form of juke joints where white tourists feel safe, and where it?s OK to drink out of bottles that have already been opened. A lot of the people who travel there because they hear it?s a good blues town don?t know who Charley Patton was. The Delta Blues Museum is Muddy Waters and B.B. King-centric, very little mention of Patton beyond the fact that he played a Stella like the one they have on display. They also have one of Big Joe Williams? 9-strings, really cool. The guitar that one of the guys from ZZ Top made out of a piece of wood taken from the cabin where Muddy Waters was born always attracts a lot of oohs and aahs.

That?s all OK, at least Clarksdale is making some money from the blues tourism thing, putting some cash into the pockets of local musicians and folk artists, and that?s a good thing. And on my little four day drive-about I found small but sweet museums dedicated to the blues in Greenwood and Leland, in Avalon too if you want to count the time I spent on John Hurt?s porch. I also revisited the labor-of-love museum dedicated to the 1927 Flood in the back of McCormick?s Bookstore in Greenville, Hugh McCormick loves to talk about Greenville history and Mississippi literature. He knew enough about Calt and Wardlow?s biography of Charley Patton to know that it is out-of-print (3 new copies on Amazon, from $140, paperback). 

The Blues Trail markers aren?t going to turn too many people?s money green, but I?ll take them over more casinos. If you haven?t made the Delta pilgrimage yet, please do so, it?s a good way to honor Charley?s life and music. If you?re into the history of the blues, the markers are good places for you to stop and walk around and use your imagination to think about what Mississippi was like during Patton?s lifetime, and to see how some things are still like they?ve always been. I know that some people like spilling a bit of whiskey on the graves of bluesmen. Be my guest if that?s what you like to do with your whiskey, but if you?re heading toward Holly Ridge, you might think of bringing a weed eater, too.

Lindy

[Rivers]

Nice! Thanks Lindy, that was a great read.

[waxwing]

Okay, it's after midnight here, so it's Tuesday for most of the world. I guess I'll be the first to post a few tunes. I've actually just broken a long dry spell of working on new material by diving into Charley's music. It has been a real lesson in using the right hand.

These are all still pretty rough, but in the spirit of the Back Porch and Charley's day, I'll put up a few that I've worked on more than others. Nothing is really flowing yet, having to remember lyrics and which lick when, but they're already a lot of fun to play.

I seem to be getting that shimmering sound in the treble from all the compression, too. Don't remember that before?

First up is Pea Vine Blues, in Spanish.

Let's hear from some other folks. Links to YouTube or Sound Click if you got'em, or make a quick and dirty Back Porch post (I'll move this over).

Wax

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[waxwing]

Next up, Some of These Days, for Riv. UB and I got started on this in a thread over on the 'Shed. Gotta get that strumming/left hand damping thing in the IV chord. Don't really have it at all, yet.

Wax

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[waxwing]

Now this one, Green River Blues, I don't really have the lick. I'm trying to get the middle note on the E string with a frail, i.e. back of the index nail on a down stroke, at the same time as hitting the G string with the thumb pick for the hammer on. Sometimes it really happens, sometimes hardly at all, like this one. The weird thing is that I can't play it at all slowly. Has to be up to speed to get the wrist loose.

Wax

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[waxwing]

Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues is last. This one is half decent and I've actually played it out a few times. What a great little arrangement.

These all need a lot more listening and a lot more work, but here's to Charley.

Wax

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[Dom Boggs]

I wish i had some recording equipment, ive been playing versions of It Wont Be Long, Frankie and Albert, Hang It On The Wall, Bird Nest Bound, some of these ill be gone.

I want to try out the tough jesus is a dyin bed maker,

it is 2:22 am and im still listening to Charley, and right when i wake up it will continue.

[Mike Brosnan]

Charley's one o' the guys that intimidates me so much I haven't even tried to get close to his playing.  He was the first ol' CB guy that made me cry. 
I ain't got nothin' new to offer for CP day, but here's some o' my old dumb-downed stuff that some o' y'all have seen before:

[uncle bud]

Here's a shot at Magnolia Blues. A little while ago, I bought a modest (but stylish!) square-neck Oahu 65M from Tom W. at vintagebluesguitars.com, aka onewent here on the Weenie site (who is a pleasure to deal with, BTW), and I've slowly started learning to play lap style. I'd taken a stab at this song a while back and failed, so picked it up again today - for Charley Patton Day  - and feel it's hanging together a bit more -- though still old school Back Porch, warts and all. I find it's tricky in its minimalism. I reserve the right to delete it later if I come to my senses. 

[waxwing]

Yeah!

I was hopin' we would hear something from your quarter, right along those lines, Andrew. Another cut from Say Uncle!

I hope you don't lose your senses, and take it down.

Wax

[waxwing]

Hey, this was a great idea, Crump. Give us more warning next year and maybe more folks could post tunes. Maybe we could do the same for some of our other favorites through the year? I bet we'd get a lot more postings on an MJH day.

It would be great if the Back Porch got back to the way it was, a place where folks would post quick and dirty takes of songs they are working on, for encouragement and criticism, not stuff they've polished off and then posted the best take of a night's bedroom recording on youtube, hoping for nothing but 5 star ratings. Leave that for the "Pros" in the Performance Corner. (Just kidding, just kidding!) But let the Back Porch be about folks having fun getting to know each other playing music, not an online cutting contest.

And I kinda like just hearing the music without all the visual distraction.-G-

Thanks for getting the ball rolling, Crump.

Wax