JSP Comes Through For Music Fans Once Again!
November 16, 2009
These recordings have been beautifully remastered and come in a nice set with above-average liner notes. JSP always does a wonderful job with their sets and this is no different. The music is sublime and brilliant, of course, and should be in every blues fan's collection. Before Robert Johnson! I will never understand why Johnson gets so much aclaim and Patton is ignored by everyone except hardcore fans. Johnson is great but nobody comes close to Patton for real-life, back-breaking, cardboard in his shoes, down and dirty blues. All it takes is one listen to "Pony Blues" and you will see what I mean if you've never heard it.
Interesting side-note: due to the photo of him and oral tradition people say that he is half Cherokee. Nonsense. The chances of him being Cherokee are incredibly slim while the chances of him being half white (at least) are very high. For those of you interested in pursuing this idea further I would recommend watching Henry Louis Gates' (only in this case would I recommend involving youself in any way with that moronic propagandist) African American Lives in which he dubunks the light-skinned American black's traditional belief in their Cherokee blood. It is understandable but mostly eroneous.
the voice throwing blues!!!!!!!!!
October 3, 2009
ive been listening to patton for years, and this collection is one the best 5cd collections ever made, and let me point out the voice throwing blues,, one the best songs ive ever heard,, its not patton singing, but whoever it is, its great, he does half regular voice, and the other half sounds like hes singing through a megaphone,, its the coolest thing ive ever heard on a pre ww2 track, it sounds like hes singing through some ancient effect box(and i love effects!!)
Wow
August 21, 2009
Maybe the best less than $30 I ever spent. I can't speak to how these "remasters" compare to, say, Yazoo's, but I can say that they sound marvelous--even revelatory--to my ears. Best of all, not only is all of Patton's solo material here, so are the Willie Brown and Son House and other sides that he may or may not have played on. Getting this set is a no-brainer, unless you already have everything on here in different but equally fine form.
With regard to sound quality and royalties
(6 of 6 Found this Helpful)
March 11, 2008
Comments about the treble roll off (see note below) of JSP's edition compared with other editions (I have Yazoo's on vinyl, and Document's & Revenant's on compact disc) are reasonable, but the person who appreciates Charley Patton enough to acquire any edition of his complete recordings should be or become familiar with the quantitative and qualitative limitations of the source recordings: not a lot of copies of any Patton record exist, they're often pretty beaten up, and Paramount's studio where Patton recorded most of them was notoriously primitive. Many of us may be quite willing to accept some sort of sonic compromise in the remastering process. Really it comes down to a matter of how much the listener wants to struggle through varying amounts of surface noise to get to the music--some of Patton's recordings have been, until now, nearly inaudible behind so much surface noise. Give the folks at JSP credit for trying to do something a little clearer than the purists at Yazoo and Document (not to slight them in any way--God bless your souls, Nick Perls and Johnny Parth!) and more economical than the lavish designers at Revenant (God bless you too, John Fahey!).
However, one reviewer's remarks about royalties are NOT irrelevant: Charley Patton's estate actually does exist, and if anyone deserves royalties, it's Patton's descendants, still alive and well in Mississippi. That said, the whole business of reissuing blues and old time music from the twenties and thirties (this business dating back to the fifties) is largely a case study in "bootlegging" by the independent labels and the withholding of royalties by the major labels. Why shouldn't the folks at JSP get their fair share in exchange for making such a crucial set of historical documents available at a reasonable price?
With regard to the payment of royalties, how many of us REALLY care? Intellectual property rights are a legal fiction, and generally serve the interests of the privileged few. You want a company that's likely to pay royalties? Buy overpriced product from the major labels, most of whom wouldn't touch the music JSP sells with a ten foot pole since no mass market audience exists for it and there are, consequently, no big bucks to be made from it. Ideally, of course Patton's estate would get money from the sales of any Charley Patton product. Maybe I'm just really selfish, but if it came down to one or the other--honest business or dissemination of music--I'd take the music every time. I'd like to believe that someone like Charley Patton would agree (though I can imagine he would not!). If we buy JSP's box sets because we love this music, how important is the question of royalties? JSP seems to be about the music, not the money, so let's just be grateful for what we've got!
Now quit reading this rambling drivel and pay attention to something worthwhile: Charley Patton or Blind Lemon Jefferson, also in a wonderfully remastered (and slightly rolled off) box set by JSP.
Note--"Treble roll off" occurs in the remastering process when surface noises are removed: when the frequencies in which surface noise occur are removed so as to clean up the sound of the record, some of the frequencies we associate with the treble qualities of the music are removed too, making the music sound less bright.
Interesting
November 6, 2006
I haven't had time to listen carefully through all five CD's yet but they're very interesting examples of early blue recordings and I'm glad I have them.
