Delta Blues

1891 · Mississippi Delta

Based for years at Dockery Plantation, Charley Patton was the founding voice of Delta blues, a rough-throated showman whose driving rhythm and percussive guitar shaped nearly everyone who followed.

1896 · Mississippi Delta

From the Jackson area south of the Delta proper, Tommy Johnson brought a leaping falsetto and a deep, swinging guitar to his blues.

1900 · Mississippi Delta

Willie Brown was the great accompanist of the Delta, a guitarist whose second part underpinned both Charley Patton and Son House on record and in the jukes.

1902 · Mississippi Delta

A preacher who turned to the blues, Son House played a fierce, sermon-like slide guitar that bridged Charley Patton's generation and the young Robert Johnson, whom he knew in person.

1902 · Mississippi Delta

Skip James cut a singular path through the Delta blues with an eerie high falsetto, an open-D minor guitar tuning, and a haunted piano style.

1911 · Mississippi Delta

Born in Hazlehurst in 1911 and dead by 1938, Robert Johnson cut just twenty-nine songs across two sessions, in San Antonio in 1936 and Dallas in 1937, yet they became the most influential body of work in the blues.

1913 · Mississippi Delta

Raised on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Muddy Waters learned slide guitar in the Delta tradition handed down from Son House and Robert Johnson.

1915 · Mississippi Delta

The folklorist Alan Lomax carried portable recording equipment for the Library of Congress into the rural South, documenting musicians who would otherwise have gone unheard.

1928 · Mississippi Delta

Tommy Johnson's 'Big Road Blues,' recorded in 1928, is one of the most widely copied performances in Delta blues, its rolling guitar figure learned and passed along by countless players.

1929 · Mississippi Delta

Recorded by Charley Patton at his first Paramount session in 1929, 'Pony Blues' is one of the foundational performances of the Delta style.

1929 · Mississippi Delta

Charley Patton's 'High Water Everywhere' is a two-part account of the catastrophic 1927 Mississippi River flood, sung from inside the disaster that displaced hundreds of thousands across the Delta.

1930 · Mississippi Delta

Son House's 'Preachin' Blues' channels his time in the pulpit into a fierce, slide-driven sermon turned inside out, the holy and the worldly wrestling in a single performance.

1931 · Mississippi Delta

Skip James's 'Devil Got My Woman' is the centerpiece of his 1931 Paramount sessions, built on his distinctive open minor tuning and an unsettling high vocal that hovers between lament and dread.

1931-07 · Mississippi Delta

Issued by Paramount in 1931, this two-sided Skip James record pairs the haunted minor-key 'Devil Got My Woman' with the spare 'Cypress Grove Blues.' Cut at the depth of the Depression, it sold almost nothing and became one of the rarest of all prewar blues discs.

1936 · Mississippi Delta

Recorded by Robert Johnson at his 1936 San Antonio session, 'Cross Road Blues' fuses urgent slide guitar with a vocal of real desperation.

1937 · Mississippi Delta

Cut at Robert Johnson's 1937 Dallas session, 'Hellhound on My Trail' is among the most harrowing performances in the blues, a song of pursuit and dread driven by jagged guitar and a quavering voice.

1961 · Mississippi Delta

Released by Columbia in 1961, this compilation gathered Robert Johnson's 1936 and 1937 recordings onto a single album for the first time.

1990-08-20 · Mississippi Delta

Issued by Columbia in 1990, this box set assembled every surviving Robert Johnson recording, including alternate takes, in one carefully annotated package.

1929 · Mississippi Delta

In 1929 Charley Patton traveled north to record for Paramount Records, cutting the sides, among them 'Pony Blues' and 'High Water Everywhere,' that first fixed the Delta style on shellac.

1930 · Mississippi Delta

In 1930 Son House recorded for Paramount alongside Charley Patton and Willie Brown, cutting a handful of intense sides including 'Preachin' Blues' and 'My Black Mama.' Released into a collapsing record market, the discs sold poorly and grew vanishingly rare.

1936-11 · Mississippi Delta

In November 1936 Robert Johnson recorded for the first time, in a makeshift studio in San Antonio, Texas, cutting sixteen songs including 'Cross Road Blues' and 'Sweet Home Chicago.' The session captured a young Delta musician at full command of his craft, far from home, on equipment run by a visiting recording unit.

1937-06 · Mississippi Delta

In June 1937 Robert Johnson returned to record again, this time in Dallas, cutting the remaining sides of his catalogue including 'Hellhound on My Trail' and 'Love in Vain.' It was his final session; he was dead within a little over a year.

1941 · Mississippi Delta

In 1941 Alan Lomax arrived at Stovall Plantation with Library of Congress recording equipment and captured the young Muddy Waters performing his Delta blues on his home ground.

1925 · Mississippi Delta

Dockery Plantation, a large cotton operation in Sunflower County, Mississippi, was home base for Charley Patton and a gathering point for the musicians around him.