Charley Patton - Complete Recorded Works (LP)

Label: Third Man Records – TMR154

Series: Document Reissues – Volume 1

Country: US

Released: 2013

Genre: Blues

Style: Delta Blues

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Charley Patton (April 1891 (probable) – April 28, 1934), also known as Charlie Patton, was an American Delta blues musician. Considered by many to be the "Father of the Delta Blues", he created an enduring body of American music and inspired most Delta blues musicians. The musicologist Robert Palmer considered him one of the most important American musicians of the twentieth century.

Patton (who was well educated by the standards of his time) spelled his name Charlie, but many sources, including record labels and his gravestone, use the spelling Charley.

In 2017, Patton's story was told in the award-winning documentary series American Epic. The film featured unseen film footage of Patton's contemporaries and radically improved restorations of his 1920s and 1930s recordings. Director Bernard MacMahon observed that "we had a strong feeling that the music of Patton and his peers reflected the local geography, and I was struck by the extent to which that belief was already shared by people who were living in the Delta back then, when it was a center of musical innovation. Listening to interviews with H. C. Speir, who owned a furniture store in Jackson in the 1920s and was responsible for virtually all the recordings of early Delta blues, he clearly linked the music to its surroundings." Patton's story was profiled in the accompanying book, American Epic: The First Time America Heard Itself.

In May, 2021, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Patton into the 2021 class as an Early Influence.