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have done much of the actual writing here, has a style full of a puzzling mean-spiritedness and pomposity. For some reason the authors rely on Son House’s negative evaluations of Patton’s musical abilities, which were transparently motivated by professional jealousy. Calt’s own musical analyses verge on gibberish. For example, he calls “When Your Way Gets Dark” a “12 and 1/4 bar” song that “begins with an amputated six beat vocal phrase that is followed by an unexpected instrumental measure. . . . An unorthodox eleven beat bottleneck figure, capped with a conventionally fretted six beat bridge, follows a repeating of the tonic riff.” Huh? There is worthwhile material to be had in this book, just as there is nutriment to be had in a plate of fish that is filled with tiny bones. Eat carefully, and swallow nothing whole.
    The good news is that the late John Fahey’s remarkable record company, Revenant, which has put out landmark collections of Dock Boggs, Charlie Feathers, the Stanley Brothers, and others, has released a seven-CD set dedicated to Patton, entitled Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton ; it includes every note Patton played, as well as recordings by his closest associates, recordings of interviews with those who knew him, a full reprint of Fahey’s 1970 book, essays, lyric transcriptions, reproductions of ads for Patton’s recordings, and photos of every Patton record label. This set is the definitive word on Charley Patton and his surroundings.
    The best single-disc collection, for both tune selection and sound quality, is Yazoo’s Founder of the Delta Blues , which contains “Down the Dirt Road Blues,” “A Spoonful Blues,” “When Your Way Gets Dark,” “Stone Pony Blues,” “Devil Sent the Rain,” “Moon Going Down,” and twenty other tracks. Yazoo’s other Patton CD, King of the Delta Blues , is not quite as consistent, containing several lesser tracks, as well as a few of his religious recordings. There’s a nice 3-CD set from the British Catfish label, called The Definitive Charley Patton , which contains a handsome booklet and neat individual jackets for the CDs on which are reproduced old 78 sleeves. The Patton sets on the Wolf and Document labels, while better than nothing, are carelessly remastered.
    A final remark: When you acquire Patton’s music today on CD, you face an array of at least twenty tracks, back-to-back, ready to go. But putting the CD on and letting her rip may not be the best way of listening to these recordings.
    The music of Patton’s that we now have comes down to us not from pristine masters that have been sitting in a record company’s vault; they have been transferred from extremely rare and worn old shellac discs, each of which once belonged to someone for whom that disc was a very important possession. These recordings were acquired mostly by very poor people at what was to them a significant cost, one by one, just as they were conceived and recorded. They meant so much to the original owners that they would often be played until the grooves disintegrated. We have these performances now because they were collected—one by one, and often from the original owners—by collectors who went out into neighborhoods and knocked on doors to find them.
    The performances were not assembled digitally in a modern studio, with overdubbing and multitracking. Patton walked into a room and sat in a chair; a light went on, and he sang. Then the light went off. Charley Patton opened a window in time for himself. And the real meaning behind that voice and that guitar reveals itself only over time. Be glad.
    From the Oxford American ’s Fifth
    Annual Music Issue, Summer 2001

 
    In 2003 PBS presented a series of films, produced by Martin Scorsese, about the blues. Each film was auteured by a different director, among