Amazon.co.uk Review
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues contains all the 50-odd recordings made between 1929 and 1934 by the Mississippi singer and guitarist
Charley Patton. Deep, dark and rich as Mississippi mud, these blues of dirt roads and high waters, of roosters, rattlesnakes and railroads, are delivered with an intensity that at first seems crushing but is finally uplifting. But these extraordinary performances are only the beginning. Also included, all expertly transferred from the best original 78 rpm discs, are recordings by Patton's associates--Son House, Willie Brown and fiddler Henry Sims--and even by people who merely shared a studio with him, such as Buddy Boy Hawkins and a gospel group called The Delta Big Four. That gets you through five of the seven CDs. Still to come is "Charley's Orbit", two dozen performances that influenced or were influenced by him, or were just in the air at the same time, by artists such as Tommy Johnson, Booker White and Howlin' Wolf. And then a disc of interviews with men who knew him, among them Wolf again and Roebuck Staples. The CDs are mounted on cardboard replicas of old 78s, slipped into replicas of the original paper sleeves and bound into a sumptuous book-like album. Also included are impossibly copious notes, sticker-reproductions of the original 78s' labels and a facsimile of a 1970 book on Patton by the late guitarist John Fahey, the moving spirit behind Revenant. It's not just a record album but a costly and magnificent tribute--the Charley Patton Memorial. No blues artist deserves it more.
--Tony Russell
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See all 18 tracks on this disc
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