The Mississippi Blues Tradition and the Origins of the Blues

Abstract

This chapter examines the Mississippi blues tradition and the origins of the blues through the lives and music of Charley Patton, Bukka White, Son House, and Robert Johnson. All are part, of course, of what is recognized as Mississippi Delta blues—a style fathered by Charley Patton. Although bluesmen have come from many southern states, the largest and most impressive group of blues singers came from Mississippi. In Delta blues, there was also the ultimate flowering of a personalized, localized style of expression. What has become evident from this brief glance at the work of four Delta bluesmen is that each has to one degree or another employed his songs as a chronicle of his experiences and each has emerged, however sketchily, as an identifiable individual. The chapter then demonstrates the power of Patton's poetic voice in “High Water Everywhere” as he sings of the flood's victims.