CHARLEY PATTON. Father of the DELTA BLUES.

Many people have asked about my ''colorful bio'' in the 'about me' section of my blog. Questions like, ''What the heck are you talkin' about'' and ''where you high when you wrote that'' are some of the typical responses. The most common question is who is ''Charley Patton?'' Sacrilegious!!! Who is Charley Patton they say...he was the father of modern music. Without him there is no Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, ROCK and ROLL, Rolling Stones, ELVIS, Jerry Lee Lewis, BLUEGRASS, COUNTRY MUSIC, Led Zep, or any classic rock/pop music from the last 50 years or more. Blues is the bedrock, the foundation of what we consider modern music. But lets turn back the clock for a second. Lets go back in time about...say 120 years. The first and second generation of African Americans born after the Civil War and Reconstruction in the southern states find themselves in new form of 'slavery' called sharecropping. Working the land for rich ( almost always white ) landowners, they raise the crops, supposedly to share in the profit of the harvest. Of course it never turned out quite like that. The sharecroppers had to borrow the tools, food, seed, and other materials to work the land, and would often end up owing the landowner at the end of each season, in a never ending spiral of debit, ( sort of like MY SCHOOL LOAN!! ). One of the ideal places to sharecrop was the rich bottom lands of the Mississippi Delta ( not a true Delta, but a alluvial plain, sort of like a huge old riverbank that has build up over time ) whose soil proved most satisfactory for growing crops like Tobacco and Cotton. There where huge ''Plantations'' in the Delta and in 1881 ( there is some dispute about the actual date ) near one of them in Hinds county, Charley Patton was born. To be continued....