Charley Patton by John Fahey

Author:John Fahey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2020-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

* See use of asterisk in Table 1, p. 30.

II.Blues-Ballads

These are characterised by a description of external events, frequently with references to the singer’s involvement in the events and his attitudes towards them. The narrative is more implied than stated. Patton assumes that his audience is already aware of the sequence of events on which he comments. This assumption was quite correct in four, possibly five of his ballads. Delta blacks were quite familiar with the invasion of their land by the boll weevil (which Patton describes in Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues) and with the fight which Frankie and Albert had, or at least many of them have told the author that they knew all about it. Patton’s text of Frankie And Albert is aprocryphal and to some extent confused. Delta blacks had experienced the 1927 flood of the Mississippi River and probably found Patton’s description of his involvement in it quite entertaining. They had experienced the drought of 1928 and 1929 and again were probably entertained by Patton’s description of what he and the other ‘citizens ’round Lula’ (in Dry Well Blues) did about it. Perhaps some of them knew about the ‘railroad strike in Chicago’, described in Mean Black Moan.

It is quite unlikely that many of Patton’s audience were aware of the events described in Tom Rushen Blues and High Sheriff Blues, both of which describe Patton’s imprisonment by small town law-enforcement officers. The tunes of these two songs are the same, and a few of the stanzas are identical. By listening to the texts one may easily determine that the songs are about Patton’s imprisonment on two separate occasions. But it is most difficult, if not impossible, to determine what the events were which led up to his imprisonment, not to mention their sequence. Thus either Patton made a wrong assumption that his audience was familiar with these events, or the songs perhaps are an indication that Patton was only familiar with narrative songs which do not give a straight-forward journalistic account of the events which the songs discuss. He thus made up these songs using other songs such as High Water Everywhere as models. Or perhaps he was simply incapable of making up or singing a song whose text was journalistic. This seems to be the case with his singing of Frankie And Albert, a song which he did not write. Patton’s version is most confusing. The last stanza indicates that Frankie’s mother came to the grave of Albert, broke down crying, and said,

My only son is dying.

In most variants of this song Frankie and Albert are lovers. But for Patton’s text to be construed as coherent, it must be assumed that Frankie and Albert were sister and brother, and that Albert was not already dead when placed in his grave.

Commentary regarding Elder Greene Blues should wait upon comprehension of the two unintelligible stanzas and a comparison of these stanzas with stanzas in other texts of Elder Green.

15211 Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues

15222 Tom Rushen Blues

L-38 Elder

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