tributary

Charley Patton

Charley Patton hollered, thumped, and growled his way through the Mississippi Delta a full generation before anyone thought to write the blues down as a genre — a rowdy showman who slapped and beat his guitar like a drum, and whose fingerprints are all over practically every Delta bluesman who came after him.

the sound in question
1929
Pony BluesCharley Patton

we haven’t charted Charley Patton yet

this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.

downstream