TeachRock

people:
Charley Patton

(died 1934) Though some of the details of Charley Patton's life are not definitively known, like his race and the exact year of his birth, what is agreed on is the impact he had on American Blues music. Often called the "Father of the Delta Blues," Patton influenced bluesmen from Robert Johnson to Howlin' Wolf; the Blues writer Robert Palmer went so far as to call him one of the most important American musicians of the 20th century. Born in Mississippi to sharecropper parents, Patton was raised in part at the Will Dockery Plantation in the Mississippi Delta. A huge operation, the plantation employed...