Reviewed by Lins Honeyman

To simply call this gargantuan release a box set would be do it a severe disservice. In fact, this collection of songs by Charley Patton (and other artists associated with the legendary Delta bluesman) is a stunning work of art that forgoes the boundaries of normal retrospective compilations courtesy of its incredible attention to detail and the obvious love that has been poured into the making of it. To start off with, the outer box that houses this release's seven discs - all contained within 78rpm style sleeves - and 128 pages of illustrated liner notes is striking enough with its replica of Paramount's Masked Marvel promotion campaign that revealed Patton to thousands of new listeners back in his day. Inside are countless delights starting with a reprint of John Fahey's informative if somewhat obsessively analytical book on Patton from 1970 perched in a pocket on the back of the front cover. The set's liner notes themselves are hugely enlightening and offer up more information on one of the blues world's most mysterious exponents than ever before. Featured are a variety of different articles including an introduction to Patton for the newcomer, a chapter on the influence of his physical surroundings plus an intriguing essay called Charley Patton: The Conscience Of The Delta which touches on the man's spirituality with first hand contributions from family members. Elsewhere, sheet music, brave stabs at providing interpretations of Patton's frequently indecipherable lyrics and incredibly in depth recording notes add weight to the argument that this is perhaps the finest blues release ever published. In terms of musical content, there are five discs of Patton material and songs like "Pony Blues", "A Spoonful Blues" and "High Water Everywhere" together with sanctified tracks such as "I Shall Not Be Moved" and "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die" remain hugely important to this day on account of Patton's unique guitar technique and direct vocal approach and the subsequent influence his songs had an countless upcoming blues artists. Undoubtedly, the sound quality of Patton's recordings is consistently poor but this bitter pill is sweetened by the inclusion of tracks by some of Patton's contemporaries - Son House, Willie Brown, Patton's fiddle player Henry Sims and wife Bertha Lee to name but a few - at the end of each disc on the tenuous premise that he may or may not have played on them or even been present when these tracks were recorded. Disc six, titled 'Charley's Orbit', contains 24 tracks that either were an influence on Patton or were influenced by him and sees blues giants such as Bukka White, Big Joe Williams and Howlin' Wolf nestle alongside lesser known artists. A final disc sees a couple of short interviews from the late 60s featuring Howlin' Wolf and Pops Staples - both of whom grew up on the same plantation as Patton and took up music on account of hearing him play. On the same disc, lengthier dialogue from Patton's sometime musical partner Booker Miller and talent scout HC Speir shed further light on the life of one blues musical most revered and influential forefathers and bring this masterpiece of the compiler's art to a fitting end.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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