Long before Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jimi Hendrix, Van Halen, Stevie Ray Vaughn or T-Bone Walker or any of our rock-n-roll and blues heroes took their first jump or slide across the stage, their on-stage antics had been developed by the first great bluesman, Charley Patton.

Charley Patton is another of the many blues historical figures who ranged across the Mississippi Delta playing a variety of musical styles including ragtime, Gospel, and country-type ballads, but he was first and foremost a bluesman!  He was also a master at using his acoustic guitar like it was a percussion instrument, slapping the tops and sides with the palm of his hand to get a drum sound.  If that was not enough, Charley was one of the first performers to play behind his neck, behind his back or with one hand, styles later made world-famous by Jimi Hendrix and others.  

Every mentor needs a protege and Charley's was Howlin' Wolf who hooked up with him in 1928, traveling from juke joint to juke joint with him, learning how to shout while singing, pick the music on the guitar at high volume and pitch, and otherwise bring the sound to its bluesy edge.

Nineteen-ninety-eight and my blues history tour found me turning up one dusty Mississippi Delta road after another to find the last resting place of Charley Patton.  The cemetery was on the edge of small town called Holly Ridge, no larger than a wide place in the road, behind a cotton gin. 

As I walked through the cemetery, looking at stones with names and some with no names and markers made of out wood or even sticks bound together with a note on them, I thought, "I'm not going to find him, everything's falling in around here."