Even when you don’t have a job, Sunday is still an excuse to relax, have a few drinks and do very little. While I’m all for a lack of productivity, I am naturally restless, which makes this set of activities, or inactivities, difficult. This is where a soundtrack comes in. It completes the picture, hones the mood and carves out a comfortable piece of the day in which to settle.
For a Sunday soundtrack wisdom says something easy, something happy, but the energy is delicate, and capturing it complicated. Too fast and the music is passing you by. Too slow and it’s bringing you down. That’s why I turn to the blues, an art form of shifting tempos, ranging moods, soulful soliloquies and solo songsters. I pray to the master: Charlie Patton.
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The top photo is the only one of Patton known to exist. He is considered by many to be “the Father of Blues” (a title also extended to W.C. Handy, with whom Patton is thought to have briefly played), and his influence can be found in the work of every bluesman since his first recording in 1929.
At the age of nine, Patton moved with his family to the Dockery Plantation, the place where Robert Johnson would later receive his first guitar. It is here that Patton met his mentor, Henry Sloan. Sloan was known for a new, peculiar style of guitar, which today would be most closely related to modern blues. Patton learned everything he could from Sloan and later inspired such legends as John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf, both of whom lived at Dockery.
Patton was known for a booming voice, rumored to project upwards of 500 yards without amplification, and a flashy style that involved playing the guitar in numerous iconic positions such as behind the head and back.
In 1933, Patton’s throat was slit, almost killing him. This inspired one of most productive recording periods of his career. He died a year later of heart failure.
The 54-odd recordings he left behind are some of the most significant in recorded history and, without a doubt, some of the best I’ve ever heard. “Pony Blues”, a song Patton composed by the age of 19, is in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry and the first in a series of wondrous accomplishments. Patton’s technique and progressions have defined a genre of music for nearly a hundred years and, on these recordings, they still manage to sound fresh and surprising. Desensitize yourself to the strong hiss of tape and it falls away, revealing a smooth and sharp guitar sound that digs, digs, digs into your pleasure centers. Patton’s deep, gutteral voice shifts nimbly from a bellow to a howl to a hiss and whisper. Time dissolves and so does age.
Robert Palmer, musicologist, describes Patton as a “jack-of all-trades bluesman”, Tom Waits as “one of the pillars of the Delta Blues.” He goes on to say that Patton was, “clearly not only a blues man but a songster as well and a teacher to all who would follow”.
His guitar soothes. His singing saves. In the spirit of Sunday, he is a preacher and his songs a sermon for all time.
