Introduction

ONE LAST TIME (1993)
1) Bad Blood; 2) She's Jail Bait; 3) Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door; 4) Give Me Flowers While I'm Livin'; 5) Hey Mary; 6) Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-Oo-Dee; 7) You Can Make It; 8) Big Leg Emma; 9) Early In The Morning; 10) School Days.
Nobody knows for sure when William Thomas Dupree was born, but at least there seems to be a happy consensus on when he passed away: January 21, 1992, in Hanover, Germany — one more European stop in one of the most mobile careers ever known by an African-American artist. He was approximately 82 years old at the time, and if not for a nasty case of cancer, he might have lived well into the 21st century, as unstoppable as ever. But I guess that at some point God must have taken pity on humanity, and, with an impatient yell of "oh no, not another recording of ʽDrinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-Oo-Dee!ʼ", summoned the Champion to his abode, where space and time no longer matter and new versions of ʽDrinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-Oo-Deeʼ may no longer be produced because there is no deviation from the golden Platonic standard.
On Earth, things remain dirty different, though, and thus, even after the Champion's passing, some of his recordings were scheduled for posthumous releases. The album title One Last Time might give the wrong idea, because, accordingly, Dupree never intended this album — or any album — to be his «last» one; the ten tracks here may be read in different ways, but certainly nothing like a musical testament. Instead, this is simply more of the same stuff that we'd already heard on the previous two albums: summarizing completion of a trilogy that is neither any better nor any worse than its predecessors. And yes, by all means, there is another version of ʽDrinkin' Wineʼ here, as well as another one of ʽEarly In The Morningʼ and ʽSomebody Done Changed The Lock On My Doorʼ. And ʽBig Leg Emmaʼ makes one last guest appearance.
That is about as much as needs to be said about the album, so let me just offer a general conclu­sion instead. Essentially, Champion Jack Dupree had said everything he ever had to say even before the war was over: the last fifty years of his life were spent in continuous repetition, slight revision, and occasional lyrical and stylistic updating of the first few years of his recording legacy. But there are lengthy musical careers where you simply keep wishing that the artist finally croak or at least retire — and then there are lengthy musical careers which command a certain degree of respect just because of the artist's sheer stubbornness and tenacity. At a certain point, the whole becomes transcendentally bigger than the parts: bands like AC/DC, for instance, whose career sags in the middle, but then, as they just keep going on, even the weakest of their albums get a second life as weak, but necessary links in an amazingly long and strong chain.
The same is pro­bably applicable to the Champ. Nobody needs to have more than a small com­pilation of his early singles, and perhaps that Mickey Baker album from 1967 for complete comfort — but everybody might get a kick from simply contemplating a career that guided him from the antiquity of acoustic urban blues all the way to the modern blues-rock era, not to men­tion the anabasis from New Orleans to New York to Copenhagen to Switzerland to London to Hamburg and finally back to New Orleans; and not a single time during all that anabasis has the man ever lost his cool, even if he never did all that much to diversify it. From this point of view, he has certainly deserved the «Champion» moniker, far more convincingly than he ever did with his boxing career (where, on the contrary, we do not have readily accessible records of his triumphs — Muhammad Ali he certainly wasn't). So let us simply take the man as he was and pass on the legend — something makes me doubt there will be any more like him in this century of rapidly passing careers.

CHARLEY PATTON



COMPLETE RECORDINGS: VOL. 1 (1929/2002)
1) Pony Blues; 2) A Spoonful Blues; 3) Down The Dirt Road Blues; 4) Prayer Of Death, Pt. 1; 5) Prayer Of Death, Pt. 2; 6) Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues; 7) Banty Rooster Blues; 8) Tom Rushen Blues; 9) It Won't Be Long; 10) Shake It And Break It; 11) Pea Vine Blues; 12) Mississippi Boweavil Blues; 13) Lord I'm Discouraged; 14) I'm Goin' Home; 15) Snatch It And Grab It; 16) A Rag Blues; 17) How Come Mama Blues; 18) Voice Throwin' Blues.
The easiest way to get one's Charley Patton homework done is to pick up some nifty 1-CD com­pilation with around 20-25 tracks on it — the man only recorded for about a five-year period, and not each of his songs was stunningly original, to put it mildly (not at all atypical of pre-war bluesmen — or any bluesmen, for that matter). However, since we here at Only Solitaire despise easy ways, the alternate comprehensive road means getting your hands on this 5-CD boxset of Charley Patton's Complete Recordings that covers every single released A- and B-side of his, a few surviving alternate takes, and plenty of additional stuff by other artists where Patton is sitting in on the sessions as a guest vocalist or a guest guitar player — or even is simply thought to be sitting in, with musicologists around the world wrecking their brains over a definitive proof of the man's presence or absence on said tracks.
Indeed, the man is just as much of a mystery to this world as his slightly later, and far more «flashily» mythologized colleague Robert Johnson. Just as with Johnson, there's only one sur­viving photo of Patton; just as Johnson, there are but a handful of legitimate recording sessions that survive; just as Johnson, the man had a unique musical presence that resonates particularly well with the singer-songwriting crowd — an «authenticity» and «honesty» without an ounce of smooth gloss that was typical of «urban blues» performers. Plus, Patton's recording years (1929-1934) pretty much correlate with the darkest Depression years, so he's even more of an epitome of the black man's (or, in fact, any man's) struggle and strife with the world than Johnson, who always comes off as a more introspective, self-immersed fellow.
The first disc of the boxset (we will take them one by one, as if they were five different records) is arguably the best one, covering a lengthy record session that, apparently, all took place on one day (June 14, 1929), with most of the tracks subsequently released on Paramount singles. Only the last four tracks are not really Patton, but a little-known bluesman called Walter "Buddy Boy" Hawkins, who was decent enough but whose main talent, supposedly, was in adding a bit of corny ventriloquism to the sessions (ʻVoice Throwin' Bluesʼ); Patton is thought to be providing second vocals on ʻSnatch It And Grab Itʼ, but that's about it — the other tracks just provide some extra context for the day.
Anyway, what truly interests us are the 14 tracks that Patton cut himself, and their coolness still shines through despite the crappy sound quality (very typical of all Paramount recordings at the time — the Depression hadn't even started yet, and they were already using subpar material for most of their pressings). For some reason, musicians and critics alike tend to single out ʻPony Bluesʼ — one of Charley's best covered songs and the one to have made it onto the National Recording Preservation Board — and this is why it holds an honorable first place on the disc; but honestly, I am not quite sure what makes it so much greater than any of the other songs, other than being a little slower and more somber than the rest. Maybe it is a bit more straightforwardly «bluesy» — much of the stuff played by Charley veered towards folk- or country-dance, or to­wards traditional gospel — but that does not necessarily make it more haunting and spirited than the superficially «lighter» material.
In any case, thing number one that strikes you about Patton is the voice — the «gravelley» one, a direct predecessor to Howlin' Wolf (who actually interacted with Patton in his younger days and was much influenced by him), though not quite as hellishly sharp-cutting: Patton's strength lies rather in his versatility, as he was capable of excellent modulation, going from high-pitched, near-falsetto stabs to the proverbial gravelley roar and back at will. After a few listens, you will never want to confuse Charley with anybody else — most of his colleagues had softer, smoother, silkier vocal tones, and when people in 1929 heard the guy sing "saddle up my black ma-a-a-a-are" with that low, scrapy, creaky voice of his, quite a few of them, I'm sure, could feel the Devil's breath on their necks (so you gotta love the Library of Congress' penchant for retro-Satanism). It's made even more amusing if you put the voice together with the photograph, which pictures such a hand­some, clean-polished young man in a bowtie (with a rather sullen expression on his face, though — but black artists, unless it was a vaudeville thing, rarely smiled on photos those days in general, even when being relatively well paid).
Compared to That Voice, the man's guitar-playing style is somewhat underrated: like all famous pre-war Delta bluesmen, he has a free-flowing, inventive manner of handling the 12-bar blues structure, far less predictable than the strictly locked style of Chicago and post-Chicago electric bluesmen, but he never goes for «flashiness» like Blind Blake or Blind Lemon Jefferson: in fact, he never even takes a proper solo. He is, however, a master of quirky guitar licks — check out, for instance, the little high-pitched «smirk» that sums up each line of ʻMississippi Boweavil Bluesʼ, or the perfect synchronization of the up-down, up-down guitar and vocals on ʻA Spoon­ful Bluesʼ, or the percussive-tapping style on ʻDown The Dirt Road Bluesʼ. His bag of tricks is not limitless, and pretty soon they start repeating themselves, but Patton clearly paid attention to putting his personal musical stamp on those tunes, instead of simply using the guitar for basic accompaniment like so many B-level players of the era.
And he was quite versatile, too: there is no single overriding theme or mood that would unite these 14 tunes, all of them recorded on the same day. There's your basic ramblin'-man blues (ʻPony Bluesʼ, ʻDown The Dirt Road Bluesʼ), there's sex-crazed blues (ʻA Spoonful Bluesʼ, melo­dically quite far removed from the Willie Dixon version, but lyrically far more straight­forward; ʻBanty Rooster Bluesʼ, a distant predecessor to ʻLittle Red Roosterʼ), there's gospel spirituals (ʻPrayer Of Deathʼ, ʻI'm Goin' Homeʼ), comical dance numbers (ʻShake It And Break Itʼ), and folk chants with a social underpinning (ʻMississippi Boweavil Bluesʼ). That Voice is the one thing that ties it all together, reigning over all the themes and moods like some bulky, brawny Earth Elemental, potentially dangerous but also capable of being your friend if you make all the right moves. Like giving the record a well-deserved thumbs up, for instance, regardless of the generally awful sound quality (which is reflected most badly on the guitar sound, but no crackles or pops can do away with The Voice).
COMPLETE RECORDINGS: VOL. 2 (1929/2002)
1) Hammer Blues (take 1); 2) I Shall Not Be Moved; 3) High Water Everywhere, Pt. 1; 4) High Water Everywhere, Pt. 2; 5) I Shall Not Be Moved; 6) Rattle Snake Blues; 7) Going To Move To Alabama; 8) Hammer Blues (take 2); 9) Joe Kirby; 10) Frankie And Albert; 11) Magnolia Blues; 12) Devil Sent The Rain Blues; 13) Runnin' Wild Blues; 14) Some Happy Day; 15) Some Happy Day; 16) Mean Black Moan; 17) Green River Blues; 18) That's My Man; 19) Honey Dripper Blues No. 2; 20) Eight Hour Woman; 21) Nickel's Worth Of Liver Blues No. 2.
Patton's second recording session dates back to October 1929 and was so huge that it had to be spread over two CDs — granted, unlike the June session, this one is not officially tied to particu­lar dates and could have been stretched over several days of recording. It was also recorded in a different place — Grafton, Wisconsin, which might explain the notoriously evil difference in sound quality: most of the tracks are so choked with crackle and hiss that it is downright impos­sible to listen to them for anything other than pure curiosity.
Still, this is where you will find one of the man's most classic numbers, the two-part ʻHigh Water Everywhereʼ, commemorating the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, but also, in some mystical way, sounding like a grim harbinger of the troubles to come (as the first wave of the Depression would hit the country at the very end of the same month in which the sessions were held). The two parts are just a technicality that allows the 6-minute epic to be spread across two sides, and much of that 6-minute period is spent beating the crap out of the man's guitar (literally), as Mr. Patton gives us his most primal-tribal sound and atittude so far — the percussive aspect is not about dancing, it is all about communication with the spirits, in the general direction of whom the man is registering his formal complaint. I wouldn't call this sort of thing haunting or mesmerizing for the modern listener's ear, of course, but it does not take much of an effort to try and carry yourself back to the time when it was — just play the whole thing back to back with some Bing Crosby from the same year, and it'll be all right.
On six of these tracks, Patton is accompanied by Henry Sims on fiddle, predictably lending the sessions a bit of a country air — particularly effective on ʻGoing To Move To Alabamaʼ, a swag­gery country-dance tune that would be perfect for Jimmy Rogers or even Hank Williams, except here it's being sung by Mr. Black Devil In The Flesh himself. Actually, listening to this track and then listening to some of the bluesier tunes by Mr. Rogers from the same years makes it glaringly obvious how flimsy and arbitrary the borders between «blues» and «country» were at the time, and how ridiculously more pronounced they would become over time. It's a doggone shame that most of the tracks are in such awful quality — Sims plays some fairly sensitive and technically tricky passages on ʻMean Black Moanʼ, but you will have to get yourself a couple of dog ears to truly appreciate them.
A special highlight is Charley's rendition of the gospel hymn ʻI Shall Not Be Movedʼ, available here in two different takes, only the second of which is properly listenable — what's fun about it, though, is that the first take is consistently slow and stately, whereas the second one starts exactly the same way and then, one minute into the song, suddenly speeds up almost to the same merry tempo with which it would later be performed by Johnny Cash. Both approaches, the more intro­spective and prayer-like slow one and the more energetic and passionate fast one, have their merits, but it is the «experimental» transition that is the main point of interest.
Just as it was on the first disc, the last several tracks have little, if anything, to do with Patton: four piano-led urban blues tunes with a lady called Edith North Johnson on vocals. She's okay, but she ain't no Bessie Smith or Alberta Hunter (in fact, it seems that she really gained access to the studio only through her marriage to the St. Louis record producer Jesse Johnson), and the only reason for the inclusion of these tracks is an almost-disproved rumor that Patton may have played guitar on the first of these, and to be perfectly honest, I don't even hear any guitar on it. Maybe he was just strumming something outside the studio while the recording was on... anyway, no harm in choosing this manner of preservation of a per­fectly harmless batch of generic second-rate urban blues tunes riding the coattails of a major legend, right? That's one generous way of helping the name of Edith North Johnson, at least for a brief while and for a small audience, to escape the clutches of total oblivion. Besides, something like ʻNickel's Worth Of Liver Bluesʼ is well worth salvaging for the awesome title alone.
COMPLETE RECORDINGS: VOL. 3 (1929/2002)
1) Some Of These Days I'll Be Gone; 2) Elder Green Blues; 3) Jim Lee, Pt. 1; 4) Jim Lee, Pt. 2; 5) Mean Black Cat Blues; 6) Jesus Is A-Dying (Bed Maker); 7) Elder Green Blues (take 2); 8) When Your Way Gets Dark; 9) Some Of These Days I'll Be Gone (take 2); 10) Heart Like Railwood Steel; 11) Circle Round The Moon; 12) You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die; 13) Be True, Be True Blues; 14) Farrell Blues; 15) Tell Me Man Blues; 16) Come Back Corrina.
The third disc of the set essentially covers the second half of the extensive October 1929 sessions, but does not contain as many highlights. Patton's tracks here are the same volatile mix of blues, pop, gospel, folk, and country — pure blues forming a minority, in fact, as the disc opens with a lively and sentimental pop tune (ʻSome Of These Days I'll Be Goneʼ), the kind that always sounds more authentic and heart-tugging when sung in Patton's grizzly tone than in crooner mode (by the way, how often do people acknowledge Patton's influence on Tom Waits? it must have been a more direct one than simply Patton influencing Howlin' Wolf and Wolf influencing Waits). The two takes captured here are practically identical (except that the officially released second one is in better sonic shape), but the second one is just a tad faster and more danceable, so I sup­pose the good people at Paramount were really craving for some «commercialism» here.
Of the more curious tracks, the cover of ʻJesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bedʼ is worth noting, with Patton playing slide and wailing in the same style as Blind Willie Johnson, although, gran­ted, neither his slide playing skills nor even his earthy voice is a proper match for Blind Willie's gifts when they are fully activated (actually, he sounds a little too rushed and uninvolved singing this stuff — almost as if it did not agree too well with him, yet for some reason he found himself obli­gated to record Blind Willie's material. Maybe Paramount wanted to use him as their chief com­petitive asset against Columbia; I really have no idea). There's also ʻYou're Gonna Need Some­body When You Dieʼ, which he recorded before Blind Willie cut it as ʻYou're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bondʼ a year later — of course, all these tunes and words were pretty much dangling in the air at the time, belonging to nobody in particular, but it is still interesting, when possible, to go back and trace their relative trajectories.
The last four songs on the disc are not credited to Patton at all, but he is probably playing guitar to the fiddle of Henry Sims, who also sings lead vocals (and, vice versa, Sims is contributing his own fiddle parts to several of Patton's songs). They're nothing special, but there's... uh... one of the earliest version of ʻCorrine, Corrinaʼ here, though you might miss it if you have not paid attention to the printed titles because Henry has a nasty habit of mooing his words instead of sin­ging them. Anyway, don't shoot the fiddle player and it's always pleasant to have a bit of histo­rical context — this "Charlie Patton and Friends" thing should not bother you in the least.
COMPLETE RECORDINGS: VOL. 4 (1930/2002)
1) Some Summer Day; 2) Bird Nest Bound; 3) Future Blues; 4) M&O Blues; 5) Walkin' Blues; 6) My Black Mama, Pt. 1; 7) My Black Mama, Pt. 2; 8) Preachin' The Blues, Pt. 1; 9) Preachin' The Blues, Pt. 2; 10) Dry Spell Blues, Pt. 1; 11) Dry Spell Blues, Pt. 2; 12) All Night Long Blues (take 1); 13) On The Wall; 14) All Night Long Blues (take 2); 15) By The Moon And Stars; 16) Long Ways From Home.
This fourth disc takes the idea of «completeness» to a whole new level — only the first two out of sixteen (!) tracks here are actually by Patton, the rest of them divided between blues guitarist Willie Brown; the legendary Son House; and a gifted, but completely unknown singer and pianist by the name of Louise Johnson. Allegedly, Patton may be sitting in on second guitar on a couple of the Son House tunes, and apparently, he also contributes some «response vocals» on several of Johnson's tracks, but mostly his presence on all this stuff is in spirit — he just happened to be sharing the recording studio with all these guys on one or more sunny (or not so sunny) days in June 1930, in the same old studio in Grafton, Wisconsin. (For the record, many of these tracks — but not including Patton's — were previously released on an obscure LP called Legendary Sessions Delta Style: The Famous 1930 Paramount Recordings In Chronological Order, at least one European pressing of which is said to date back to 1973.)
Which means that there is not that much to review here: Son House is awesome, but he should be talked about on his own page in his own time — although we might use this as a pretext to men­tion that, despite all the obvious similarities, Son House's playing and singing style, being the direct predecessor to and major influence on Muddy Waters, is much closer to the familiar Chicago patterns than Patton's playing or singing, and gives the impression of being more con­cerned about «tightness» and «showmanship» at the same time. Louise Johnson is a rare example of a lady singing and «tinkling the ivories» all at once, and she is fairly powerful at the piano, and it is fun to discover ʻOn The Wallʼ, a newly lyricized version of Charles Davenport's ʻCow Cow Bluesʼ, one of the earliest examples of New Orleanian blues boogie that would later go on to become Ahmet Ertegün's and Ray Charles' ʻMess Aroundʼ. But there's just not enough material by her, really, to get to know her real proper. And Willie Brown? He's just another attempt at a Blind Willie Johnson clone (vocal-wise, at least) that probably went for a dime a dozen back in 1929-30 — sorry, Willie.
Which leaves us with the two Patton songs, one of which (ʻSome Summer Dayʼ) is just a cover of ʻSittin' On Top Of The Worldʼ, following on the heels of the success of the Mississipi Sheiks' original version; and the second one, ʻBird Nest Boundʼ, with Brown on guitar, is just a run-of-the-mill example of the man's singing, with nothing particularly exciting about it.
Curious, too, because the backstory goes that Paramount were actually after Patton in 1930, and that he'd arrived in Grafton from Lula, Mississippi, with Brown, Louise Johnson, and Son House in tow — he'd just befriended House at the time and put him under his patronage, as the latter was an unknown nobody at the time; yet somehow, in the end, Paramount ended up recording his retinue instead of the Big Man himself. (Furthermore, none of the commercially released Son House records managed to sell well at the time, and the man did not record commercially again for several decades after that!). One can only guess why Charley was not in the mood to cut a significant number of sides that summer. Regardless, taken together, the whole thing is still a classy many-faced document of the times — and, besides, sometimes the «tell me who's your friend» principle goes a long way towards a better understanding of the artist himself.

COMPLETE RECORDINGS: VOL. 5 (1930-1934/2002)
1) Dry Well Blues; 2) Moon Going Down; 3) We All Gonna Face The Rising Sun; 4) Moaner, Let's Go Down In The Valley; 5) Jesus Got His Arms Around Me; 6) God Won't Forsake His Own; 7) I'll Be Here; 8) Where Was Eve Sleeping; 9) I Know My Time Ain't Long; 10) Watch And Pray; 11) High Sheriff Blues; 12) Stone Pony Blues; 13) Jersey Bull Blues; 14) Hang It On The Wall; 15) 34 Blues; 16) Love My Stuff; 17) Poor Me; 18) Revenue Man Blues; 19) Troubled 'Bout My Mother; 20) Oh Death; 21) Yellow Bee; 22) Mind Reader Blues.
Fortunately, the final volume of the boxset once again manages to focus on Patton himself rather than friends — although not before making us sit through eight tracks by the Delta Big Four, a vocal quartet that just so happened to get captured in the tin can sometime in May 1930 in the same Grafton, Wisconsin studio; and no, Patton is not playing with them and he certainly is not contributing guitar. If you are a fan of pre-war barbershop quartet music, these recordings are of mildly passable quality, and the four guys harmonize fairly nicely, but personally, I'd rather sit through eight different takes of ʻStone Pony Bluesʼ instead.
Almost everything else is Patton: two more tracks from the June 1930 Grafton sessions (ʻDry Well Bluesʼ and ʻMoon Going Downʼ), and a batch of his final recordings in New York City, produced during a three-day session (January 30-31 and February 1, 1934); Patton died three months later, on April 28, in Indianola, allegedly from heart problems; it is probably a coinci­dence that one of the last songs he'd recorded was a duet with Bertha Lee on a spirited version of ʻOh Deathʼ, since he was probably used to performing these spirituals on a regular basis, but still a little eerie. (There are also two solo tracks by Bertha Lee appended at the bottom).
There's nothing particularly revealing about that last session, and, in fact, quite a few of the tracks are just rehashes of older recordings (ʻStone Pony Bluesʼ is, obviously, a new take on ʻPony Bluesʼ; ʻHang It On The Wallʼ is ʻShake It And Break Itʼ, etc.), but there's one piece of good news: the quality of the recordings is tremendously superior to the 1929-30 recordings, with very little hiss and crackle to obscure the singing and playing — and given that Patton remained in top performing form until the very end, this probably transforms the 1934 batch into the finest intro­duction to the man's talents. ʻ'34 Bluesʼ, with its wonderful superimposition of rhythmic strum and melodic lead lines, perfectly illustrates his mastery of the six-string; and ʻPoor Meʼ may be his best (or, at least, best appreciated) vocal performance, with heart-tugging overtones of sadness and melancholy emanating from the ragged-rough crust of his croaky vocals (and once again reminding the modern listener of how much Tom Waits owes to these pre-war moans).
So, is it really a historical accident, caused by the timing of the re-issues, that Robert Johnson had gone on to become a household name, and Patton has to limp in his shadow? At least with this 1934 session in your hands, it is hard to make an argument based on sound quality — these tracks sound as discernible as anything Johnson would go on to record several years later. A more likely theory is that Johnson sounded far more «modern» in the 1960s, when he was «rediscovered» by British and American bluesmen, than Patton — with his cleaner vocals and a sharper, more understan­dable guitar style that was also easier to relate to Chicago electric blues than Patton's original wild Delta style, where chord strumming, crude bass «pings», whiny high-pitched leads and percussive stomps could replace each other so unpredictably. And that voice, too — of all pre-war blues players, there probably isn't one other (with the possible exception of Blind Willie Johnson) capable of giving you the illusion of taking you back even further, at least into the dark depths of 19th century slavery, if not into the even darker depths of ancient tribal Africa.
So, you could imitate Robert Johnson to a certain degree, but as for Patton, he could only remain a source of admiration and reverence, rather than an active influence. Even Howlin' Wolf, who clearly was influenced by his one-time senior partner, does it a different way — his vocal style was all about, um, carnality, whereas Patton's style could hardly be described as «sexy»: more like something with a direct connection to Mother Earth herself. There may have been others like Charley, walking American highways in the pre-war years; but there hasn't really been another one like him ever since, and there certainly never will be. Which, allegedly, makes this 5-CD set a must-have in your collection, even if it means throwing out extra money for all of Charley's colorful retinue of fiddle players, lady pianists, and barbershop quartets.

Part 2. The Early Rock'n'Roll Bands Era (1960-1965)

CARLA THOMAS