CHARLIE PATTON
Charlie Patton summarized in many ways the musical and social models that comprise the Delta blues of the time.
His role as a precursor of Delta blues is fundamental. Of European descent, was a small and friendly man with a strong voice.By 1905, Charlie's father, Bill Patton, took his family to the Dockery plantation huge Delta.
They were devoted to farming and timber business.He tried to preach to achieve social status and greater freedom of movement in a situation of rampant racism in the Delta. He devoted himself to this intermittently throughout his life.Was shot for unknown reasons and soon left Dockery (though still their main home).Toured the Delta for about twenty years performing in all conceivable places and for all audiences of all kinds. He won a lot of money, married at least eight times, had countless girlfriends and usually lived quite well.
Between 1929 and 1934, Patton recorded over fifty songs among which include spiritual, traditional ballads, dance tunes ...His style was formed by listening to blues singers aged around Dockery, probably belonged to the first generation of blues musicians.
Went beyond the usual blues themes on love relationships and he sang about events they had witnessed or in which he had participatedFor some years a partner Charlie Patton tube called Willie Brown, one of his disciples, with whom he made one of his best recordings, "Moon Going Down.
"Patton's growing fame led many bluesmen of the time would come to listen and learn to Dockery, this issue stands out above all its main successor, with whom he performed and recorded on several occasions, Son House.
The demand for their music services and the hard pace of your hectic lifestyle, along with a chronic heart condition and subsequent sequelae of rheumatic fever he suffered in his childhood, h is life ended at age forty-three years .
GERTRUDE MA RAINEY
If Bessie Smith became the empress of the blues, the title of the mother of the blues belongs to Gertrude MaRainey.
In fact, MaRainey was also a mother figure to Bessie Smith to ten years younger than her-as it was she who introduced her to the office and taught him the intricacies of blues.MaRainey began to climb to the stage when he was only 14 years and began his career as an actress, dancer and singer in vaudeville shows were small stories involving numbers, acrobatics, juggling, comedy shows and songs.
The type of blues singers who interpreted these had little to do with the rural blues guitar, it was a blues with piano accompaniment and wind instruments more typical of jazz that made up a model of urban blues.
In 1904 she married William Ma PaRainey, actor and dance with which form the duo dancing and singing "Pa & MaRainey." Participated in several successful vaudeville as FootMinstrel or Tolliver'sCircusMaRaineyy Rabbit.
BESSIE SMITH
Bessie was the most popular blues singer of the 20 and 30 and the most influential singers who followed. Singers like Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson and Janis Joplin acknowledged his influence.
In 1923, when the blues begins to sell records, signed with Columbia Records, and quickly grew. His biggest hit was "Down Hearted Blues," a song written and previously recorded by Alberta Hunter.
Working hard in the theater during the winter months and traveling the rest of the year (he had his own railroad car), Smith became the highest paid black actress of her time. He made recordings with the most important artists of the moment, as Louis Armstrong, James P. Johnson, Joe Smith, Charlie Green and Fletcher Henderson. Smith's career was short due to a combination of alcoholism, the Great Depression (crak 29) and the birth of vaudeville.While the days of shows produced were fashionable, she continued traveling and spending time occasionally singing in clubs. John Hammond convinced her to record four songs for the Okeh house in 1933, after seeing her perform at the nightclub in Philadelphia.
These were her final recordings of great interest as the backing band included musicians of the Swing Era of the category of Frankie Newton and Chuck Berry Hammond was not satisfied with the result, preferring to put on the B side of old blues, but "Take Me For A Buggy Ride" and "Gimme a Pigfoot" are among his most popular recordings.
The September 26, 1937 suffered a serious car accident while traveling to a concert in Clarksdale, Memphis. You would never regain consciousness and died that morning.
ROBERT JOHNSON
Robert LeRoy Johnson was born in 1911 in Hazlehurst, south of the state of Mississippi, was designed because of a casual encounter, and Robert took years to learn his real name.
He was the eleventh brother of a black family in a very complicated time and place for someone of color.The music began to attract him at an early age and began playing the harp and harmonica and miss school, and a vision problem was an excuse to abandon classes and definitely focus on the music, which was more mediocre.
In adolescence he began playing the guitar But in 1929 found stability with Virginia Travis, with whom he married. She became pregnant and first appeared happiness in your life, but in April 1930, Virginia died in childbirth with the baby. She was 16.
Robert's life turned around and hid her sadness in the blues, and began traveling along the great blues and playing without any success, until he decided to return to his hometown where a wealthy widow, Esther Lockwood, welcomed him and with her had a son
It is in this period of time when they begin to suspect his known as Robert, who had never been good musician, he began playing with flawless execution own admiration of the great figures of the time, they believe that touching and suddenly can not be anything other than the result of a pact with the devil.Robert played throughout the southern United States. He never stayed in one place, as if fleeing constantly. The public claimed to have some magic that captivated
Surprised the audience with his music and his guitar that sounded like two, his voice who could change forms, his eyes that looked as if possessed, could not stay in one place.
The lyrics of the songs dealt with religious despair and inner demons, and two of his biggest hits were related to his alleged pact. "Crossroad Blues ..In one of these concerts was discovered by a music promoter, and between November 1936 and June 1937, he recorded 29 songs.One story is that Robert made the recordings with his Gibson guitar half destroyed and not separated ever, and facing the wall
THE LEGEND OF ROBERT JOHNSON
Legend has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of the current Highway 61, in exchange for playing the blues better than anyone.
He waited at the crossroads until midnight, with guitar in hand, until the devil it back, and hands of Robert only had to slide down the neck to play the best blues history. .
His legend grew by leaps and bounds, and people flocked to ensure attracted by music and by the curiosity of his personality His life was frantically from one place to another. He was looking for a woman in every city he played in a room and disappeared, until the August 13, 1938, in Greenwood, South Carolina, the devil claimed his alleged debt.Robert was the mistake of seducing the wife of the owner of the premises where he played that night, "ThreeForks" and gave him a bottle of scotch open.
Before Robert could drink, a musician who accompanied him took it off and broke warning that never drink from an open bottle, but Robert was angry and he also brought another bottle when you had open.
In half of the concert, Robert stopped singing, he left his guitar aside and went out.
Three days after he was delirious until he died poisoned by strychnine containing the bottle of whiskey on August 16, at 27, they had to die strangely other great music legends like Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain ..Robert is best bluesman of music and is among the five best guitarists in history.
