Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson
MadFeebles
"Father" (Creator, King, whathaveyou) of country blues but with his "Shake It
Brake It" he pretty much invented Rock and Roll. Not only that, but with his
life and flashy performance style, and his personal, visceral singing... He
was very much the image we have a a consummate "Rock and Roller".
And as performance style goes, Patton's ripple could be felt all the way into
Punk. He influenced the stage presence of Howlin' Wolf, who influenced Jim
Morrison, Who influenced Iggy Pop, who influenced people like G.G. Allen and
Johnny Rotten. His vocals influenced Howlin' Wolf, and Tom Waits (and probably
others I am ignorant of.) What I am saying here is that, in my not so humble
opinion, Patton was possibly the greatest figure in american music.
And yet, Robert Johnson is much more well known and revered. I'm sure many of
you might disagree, but I have to say I see Johnson as one of the most
overrated figures in the history of music. I will say that he did make a huge
contribution to "blues guitar" style, and the man was a great guitarist, but I
can't help but blame him for starting "Chicago style" blues, and leading to
among other things, Eric Clapton, Classic Rock, and horrid, racist, white folk
abominations like the god awful "house of blues".
Does anyone else feel this way? Is anyone else as horrified by The House Of
Blues?
Justin
"...-but I personally still do not accept this world. I refuse to accept it!
Even if I see the parallel lines meet myself, I'll look at them and say they
have met, but I still won't accept it!" - Bros. Karamazov
Allin Cottrell
> The more I listen to it the more I'm sure that Charlie Patton was not only the
> "Father" (Creator, King, whathaveyou) of country blues but with his "Shake It
> american music.
Right you are. The late John Fahey would have agreed. I take it you've
read the Calt/Wardlow book? They pretty much endorse that claim too.
I claim no expertise, but their argument that, rather than merely
"exemplifying" some pre-existing "blues tradition" (based on field
hollers or some such nonsense) Patton made it up himself, rings true
to me.
"mac"
Tribe
"MadFeebles" wrote:
> And yet, Robert Johnson is much more well known and revered. I'm sure
many of
> you might disagree, but I have to say I see Johnson as one of the most
> overrated figures in the history of music.
I don't know about the history of music, but I would agree that Johnson is
overrated. I wonder if the whole Johnson mystique didn't come from name
dropping by Jagger et al during the early 60s British Invasion.
Patton is something akin to God in my own personal pantheon.
>I will say that he did make a huge
> contribution to "blues guitar" style, and the man was a great guitarist,
but I
> can't help but blame him for starting "Chicago style" blues, and leading
to
> among other things, Eric Clapton, Classic Rock, and horrid, racist, white
folk
> abominations like the god awful "house of blues".
>
> Does anyone else feel this way? Is anyone else as horrified by The House
Of
> Blues?
I don't think it's racist (I'm not going down that thread again), but it is
somewhat gaudy and fake and simulated. Give it another hundred years and
there'll be school kids looking to House of Blues to find out what
Mississippi jook joints looked like.
Just as we look to Disneyland to find out what Main Street "really" looked
like.
Has anyone been to the Carter Family Fold? Is it something tacky?
Tribe
Paul Tyler
> The more I listen to it the more I'm sure that Charlie Patton was not only the
> "Father" (Creator, King, whathaveyou) of country blues but with his "Shake It
> life and flashy performance style, and his personal, visceral singing... He
> was very much the image we have a a consummate "Rock and Roller".
>
> And as performance style goes, Patton's ripple could be felt all the way into
> Punk. He influenced the stage presence of Howlin' Wolf, who influenced Jim
> Morrison, Who influenced Iggy Pop, who influenced people like G.G. Allen and
As far as I'm concerned Charlie Patton stands on his own merit. He doesn't need to be validated
by tying him to rock and roll, Iggy Pop, or Punk or any other inferior derivative. That's like saying
Johann S. Bach leads us directly to George Winston or Kenny G.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Paul "playing the devil" Tyler
Joel Shimberg
>like.
>
>Has anyone been to the Carter Family Fold? Is it something tacky?
>
>Tribe
>
old-time country people who are pretty conscious of what their culture
has to offer (both to each other and to outsiders). It's really pretty
much of a piece with music barns and jam sessions without famous names,
run by musicians and other music lovers for self-entertainment. Down
home, not tacky.
Joel
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Ken Jackson
"greatest figure in American Music" stuff? Was he the "greatest" simply
because he influenced later rock 'n rollers? There is, and has been, a whole
lot more to American Music than rock 'n roll, which in itself has been
over-rated. I disagree that it is necessary to dis Robert Johnson (I still
get the chills listening to his stuff) in order to give Charlie Patton his
due, while at the same time I recognize that the rock culture's
mythologizing of Johnson is overblown.
And yeah, the House of Blues is a pretty phony context, no doubt about that.
Ken Jackson
"MadFeebles" <madfe...@aol.communist> wrote in message
news:20010502172411...@ng-cm1.aol.com...
Paul Tyler
> >Just as we look to Disneyland to find out what Main Street "really" looked
> >like.
> >
> >Has anyone been to the Carter Family Fold? Is it something tacky?
It's tacky in a really authentic way. It's an barn with an auditorium seating addition. The seating
area is enclosed, The seats are benches installed right into the mountainside. The dirt floor is
covered, to some extent, with carpet remnants randomly tacked down.
It's downhome authentic. Might not fit some purists visions of how it oughtta be. If there is any
resemblance to Disneyland, I couldn't find it.
Worth a visit.
Paul Tyler
John Garst
madfe...@aol.communist (MadFeebles) wrote:
> The more I listen to it the more I'm sure that Charlie Patton was not only the
> "Father" (Creator, King, whathaveyou) of country blues but with his "Shake It
> Brake It" he pretty much invented Rock and Roll. Not only that, but with his
> life and flashy performance style, and his personal, visceral singing... He
> was very much the image we have a a consummate "Rock and Roller".
>
> And as performance style goes, Patton's ripple could be felt all the way into
> Punk. He influenced the stage presence of Howlin' Wolf, who influenced Jim
> Morrison, Who influenced Iggy Pop, who influenced people like G.G. Allen and
> Johnny Rotten. His vocals influenced Howlin' Wolf, and Tom Waits (and
probably
> others I am ignorant of.) What I am saying here is that, in my not so humble
> opinion, Patton was possibly the greatest figure in american music.
>
> And yet, Robert Johnson is much more well known and revered. I'm sure many of
> you might disagree, but I have to say I see Johnson as one of the most
> overrated figures in the history of music. I will say that he did make a huge
> contribution to "blues guitar" style, and the man was a great guitarist, but I
> can't help but blame him for starting "Chicago style" blues, and leading to
> among other things, Eric Clapton, Classic Rock, and horrid, racist, white folk
> abominations like the god awful "house of blues".
>
> Does anyone else feel this way? Is anyone else as horrified by The House Of
> Blues?
>
> Justin
You sound like a rock music critic.
Kerry Blech
>
> I agree that Charlie Patton was something incredible. But what is this
> "greatest figure in American Music" stuff? Was he the "greatest" simply
> because he influenced later rock 'n rollers? There is, and has been, a whole
> lot more to American Music than rock 'n roll, which in itself has been
> over-rated. I disagree that it is necessary to dis Robert Johnson (I still
> get the chills listening to his stuff) in order to give Charlie Patton his
> due, while at the same time I recognize that the rock culture's
> mythologizing of Johnson is overblown.
>
> And yeah, the House of Blues is a pretty phony context, no doubt about that.
>
> Ken Jackson
> > The more I listen to it the more I'm sure that Charlie Patton was not only
I greatly enjoy Patton, like R. Johnson, see no need to bring in
"popular culture" to "validate" anyone from other forms of music.
So I concur, with Ken on these points. But why hasn't anyone mentioned
my personal favorites, Skip James and Son House?
Also, I haven't the faintest idea what "House of Blues" is. I remember
a good record store by that name in the late '60s/early 1970s, I think,
maybe in
Akron? I wouldn't think many readers of this n-g would know about it.
Best,
kerry
John Garst
...
> Also, I haven't the faintest idea what "House of Blues" is....
It is a national (international?) chain of night clubs that feature acts
with some, often loose, claim to being blues. A greater accomplishment
has been the issuing of CDs - I think the label itself is House of Blues -
some of which are excellent blues compilations.
Charley Pennell
pedestals according to which important people became their apostles and
how civilization developed in their wake. I suppose this is natural,
but it lends more weight to those artists whose wake included the more
popular artistic trends, like Rock 'n' Roll and less to those whose
sphere of influence was more constrained. I share the popular
attraction to Robert Johnson--he did record lots of nice sides, was
relatively well-recorded by present standards (which Patton was
definitely not!), and is a strong guitar-player and singer. This
doesn't make him a better or more important artist than Patton any more
than Fiddlin' Doc Roberts or Arthur Smith are better or more important
artists than Ed Haley or Edden Hammons, simply because they were better
recorded or more accessible via appearances or recordings. Fortunately
for us, none of these fiddlers led directly to a G.G. Allin (now there's
a world-class example for our civilization!) or Jim Morrison (it
certainly is interesting who we put up on our pedestals), so we can
still judge these guys on their own merits. Anyway, Charlie Patton did
not likely stand alone out there, his claim to fame is based on our
ability to examine his recorded output seventy or eighty years later,
something we cannot do with those from whom Patton learned. This is
another truism, that we tend to think of those who recorded early in the
history of recorded sound as the pioneers of their genre, not their
medium. Surely, Charlie Patton learned from others before him who were
never recorded for posterity and hence have lost their standing in this
meritocracy.
_______________________________________________________________________
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Charley Pennell mailto:cpen...@unity.ncsu.edu
Head, Cataloging Department voice: (919)515-2743
NCSU Libraries, Box 7111 fax: (919)515-7292
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7111
Adjunct Librarian, Memorial University of Newfoundland
World Wide Web: http://www.ibiblio.org/hillwilliam/chuckhome.html
Cataloguer's Toolbox: http://www.mun.ca/library/cat/
_______________________________________________________________________
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Tribe
"John Garst" wrote:
> You sound like a rock music critic.
I knew that was comin'.
Tribe
Lyle Lofgren
Apropos of what you say is the following quotation from W.C. Handy's
autobiography, quoted in Norm Cohen's "Long Steel Rail -- the
Railroading in American Folksong," (University of Illinois Press, 1981
& 2000), p. 442:
"... one night (in 1903) at Tutwiler (Mississippi), as I nodded in the
railroad station while waiting for a train that had been delayed nine
hours, life suddenly took me by the shoulder and wakened me with a
start.
A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me
while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his
shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he
played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner
popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect
was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly.
Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog.
The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the
guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard. The tune stayed in
my mind. When the singer paused, I leaned over and asked him what the
words meant. He rolled his eyes, smiled with a trace of mild
amusement. Perhaps I should have known, but he didn't mind
explaining. At Moorhead the eastbound and the westbound met and
crossed the north and southbound trains four times a day. This fellow
was going where the Southern cross' the Dog, and he didn't care who
knew it. He was simply singing about Moorhead as he waited."
The book goes on to explain that the "Dog" is the Yazoo Delta
railroad, also known as "Yellow Dog" for its initials. Notice that
Charlie Patton would have been 12 years old at this time.
LukeHiNite
my personal favorites, Skip James and Son House?
(sez kerry)
And this raises by far the most interesting
phenomenon of the noveau-hep-writing
craze we are all being inundated by these
days. Patton was at first lionized by
jazz collectors of the 1940s as a hidden
gem in the pantheon of jazz history-
"primitive" jazz from a rural artist, when
blues and jazz were interchangeable terms.
That Patton was deemed "accessible"
by outsider white scholars a generation
too late was sort of a precursor of what
was to again happen by the late 50s
with Little Robert J.
Patton was one of the few actual delta
artists to record at all, and with some
success, in the 1920s. Johnson was
nearly about to carry the torch in Post
-Depression South- but both should be
seen in context with Son House, who
was a contemporary of Patton and the
main inspiration for Johnson. Had he
not been jailed throughout the 1920s,
there might have been an entirely different
repetoire brought to light as "American
Primitive" Music. We should always
remember that one of the greatest informants on Patton was indeed House.
Also, Skip James was not part of this
golden age of the 1920s. He too was
"covered" by Johnson, but the essential
point is that both House and James
are remembered for an intensity of
mood, introspection, raw power and
even (to some) limited mechanical
ability in terms of their instrumental
skills (House as a very pointed strong
player in simplicity; James as some
introverted experimenter with his own
tunings that circumvented the mastery
of the "standard" guitar repetoire and
left few disciples in that style.)
In a way both House and James presented
what we could have termed "absolute
music"- to use a term for classical heads-
whereas as Patton played for the people,
sparked many imitators, made a decent living and enjoyed some measure of
stardom in his albeit limited sphere. Along
the way he honed a craft that left many in
awe for it's acrobatics, and was ho-hummed by others (including House)
as just "clowning" with the guitar.
Few contempories had much to say
about Skip as he was in fact, just plain
weird. (and of course beautiful).
www.secretmuseum.net
wfmu.org
David Lynch
<lukeh...@aol.com> wrote:
> But why hasn't anyone mentioned
> my personal favorites, Skip James and Son House?
Or Garfield Akers, Ishman Bracey, William Harris, Tommy Johnson...
and the list goes on.
Kerry Blech
Hey, that was my quote, not the Major's.
And, they are not my personal favorites...
--Kerry
Tribe
"LukeHiNite" wrote:
> Patton was one of the few actual delta
> artists to record at all, and with some
> success, in the 1920s. Johnson was
> nearly about to carry the torch in Post
> -Depression South- but both should be
> seen in context with Son House, who
> was a contemporary of Patton and the
> main inspiration for Johnson. Had he
> not been jailed throughout the 1920s,
> there might have been an entirely different
> repetoire brought to light as "American
> Primitive" Music. We should always
> remember that one of the greatest informants on Patton was indeed House.
Didn't House also sort of abandon the blues during the twenties in some sort
of ongoing struggle with preaching? Also, was House as bitter about
Patton's fame as Wardlow makes him appear in his Patton bio?
> In a way both House and James presented
> what we could have termed "absolute
> music"- to use a term for classical heads-
> whereas as Patton played for the people,
> sparked many imitators, made a decent living and enjoyed some measure of
> stardom in his albeit limited sphere. Along
> the way he honed a craft that left many in
> awe for it's acrobatics, and was ho-hummed by others (including House)
> as just "clowning" with the guitar.
Do we know what Patton played for his audiences? I've been wondering if
Patton's recorded legacy represents what the record people wanted to hear,
as oppossed to what he was actually playing at juke joints and parties and
the like. It certainly seems that he knew plenty of non-blues songs.
Tribe
Jpjm206
>the
>"Father" (Creator, King, whathaveyou) of country blues but with his "Shake It
>Brake It" he pretty much invented Rock and Roll. Not only that, but with his
>life and flashy performance style, and his personal, visceral singing... He
>was very much the image we have a a consummate "Rock and Roller".
>
>And as performance style goes, Patton's ripple could be felt all the way into
>Punk. He influenced the stage presence of Howlin' Wolf, who influenced Jim
>Morrison, Who influenced Iggy Pop, who influenced people like G.G. Allen and
>Johnny Rotten. His vocals influenced Howlin' Wolf, and Tom Waits (and
>probably
>others I am ignorant of.) What I am saying here is that, in my not so humble
>opinion, Patton was possibly the greatest figure in american music.
>
>And yet, Robert Johnson is much more well known and revered. I'm sure many
>of
>you might disagree, but I have to say I see Johnson as one of the most
>overrated figures in the history of music. I will say that he did make a
>huge
>contribution to "blues guitar" style, and the man was a great guitarist, but
>I
>can't help but blame him for starting "Chicago style" blues, and leading to
>among other things, Eric Clapton, Classic Rock, and horrid, racist, white
>folk
>abominations like the god awful "house of blues".
Well, Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson are at 2 ends of the folk blues stick.
Robert Johnson, like JS Bach before him, was the culmination of his idiom. And
likewise, the style pretty much died when he did. If Robert Johnson is more
popular, which he is, it's because he stood on the shoulders of Charlie Patton,
Lonnie Johnson, Elmore James and the like. It's hard to beat the intensity and
spirituality of Robert Johnson. Even though he was certainly not a blues
trailblazer, he is certainly deserving of the adulation he gets because of his
musicality.
As far as being one of the most overrated figures in the history of music, he
doesn't come close to Neil Diamond.
As far as his influence on the development of a new music style, he had
something that others could draw on and develop. I see no shame in contemporary
blues. It's a means of someone's expression. You certainly don't have to listen
to it.
Yes I blame Tommy Jarrell for starting city and suburban old time revivalists
and leading to among other things, Bruce Molsky, Young Fogies and Clifftop.
Bitch, bitch, bitch.
John Mahony
ChAlDavis
Robert Johnson!
--Alan
Chris Berry
<johnc...@sprynet.com> wrote:
>Didn't House also sort of abandon the blues during the twenties in some sort
>of ongoing struggle with preaching? Also, was House as bitter about
>Patton's fame as Wardlow makes him appear in his Patton bio?
>
Actually, because of his "churchy" (his word) inclinations, House had
nothing to do with blues until the late 20s, which is when he learned the
guitar. He had only been playing for a year or two when he recorded for
Paramount in 1930. I'm not sure if House was bitter about Patton's fame or
not, but certainly in the 60s House was more famous than Patton ever was.
--
Chris Berry
banjo...@earthlink.net
"People, when Columbus discovered this country, it was plum full of nuts
and berries, and I'm right here to tell you, the berries is just about all
gone." -- Uncle Dave Macon