Charley Patton: sound quality recommendations

I've got the amazing-- and very pricey-- Charley Patton boxset SCREAMING AND HOLLERING THE BLUES. It's wonderful, but I'd love to get a less sprawling collection, too. Of the many out there, is there one in particular that board members would recommend over the rest?

I've heard good things about the sound on the 5 disc COMPLETE CHARLEY PATTON and the 3 disc DEFINATIVE CHARLEY PATTON.

teejay

 

I like the Screaming and Hollering the Blues the best, but tend to recommend the 3 CD Definitive Charley Patton on Catfish for a more inexpensive and less scholarly approach. I prefer the sound of both of these to the Yazoo sets, and have not yet heard the latest attempt at Patton on JSP, which has earned some kudos.

Why not go for a CD-R distillation of Screaming and Hollering - using the liners and Fahey's dissertation that is included with the set, you probably could do some neat groupings of Patton material - blues, rags, spirituals, etc. for more managable listening experiences(?)

 

From what I understand, the 5 CD Complete Charlie Patton are the same disks of the Relevant Box set (minus 2 disks). It's much better sounding than the Catfish 3 CD set which is itself far better than the 2 Yazoo CDs.

I would second the CD-R recommedation.

 

What's wrong with the Yazoo discs? They're all I've got and they've always seemed good.

 

Nothing wrong. The catfish set was just so much clearer, the guitar and voice better defined, that I sold my yazoos.

 

Me too.
I guess I will have to try the complete box set.
Thanks

BC

 

Don't forget that the masters for all of Charley Patton's records were destroyed in the thirties, and all that has ever been available for mastering are old '78's, usually in very bad condition.

 

It's true, and it's amazing that the power of his voice,performance, and songwriting can transcend the condition of the source material. It also makes the mastering choices made by the producers of these sets all the more important. The temptation to over-noise reduce must be pretty powerful!

I'm amazed by how affordable most of the Charley Patton collections are. For example, I picked up a new copy of THE DEFINATIVE CHARLEY PATTON (Catfish 3CD) for $15.99). Makes a good case for the benefits of recordings lapsing into public domain.

 

I simply couldn't afford to spring for big box and got the Catfish set instead. I'm really pleased with it. I also recently picked up their Blind Wille McTell set and think it's quite wonderful, too.

Cheers,
Chris

 

I had originally picked up the Catfish box only a couple months before the big box, never anticipating a real need to spring for the big set. It was only after I read about all the extras in the big set that I was tempted (and I gave in pretty quickly). One thing I would recommend for anyone sticking with the Catfish (or Yazoo) set is to somehow get your hands on some decent lyric transcriptions. My appreciation and enjoyment of Patton's art has increased tenfold because of the big box's transcriptions (and insightful liners for that matter). It is amazing - what was once just purely guttural, unintelligible vocalizing is now a recognizable dialect to me - I actually "hear" the words. A lot of fun can also be had in trying to piece together relationships between stanzas in one song to another, since Patton strung together lyrics and themes in often seemingly random and/or nonsensical ways.

 

That's a good idea. I picked up a complete Robert Johnson songbook and it's great to follow along while you listen to his music.

Cheers,
Chris

 

Catfish has good quality sound, selection and liner notes. (The liner notes and dates I think are essential and I was really disappointed to find them absent from the Audio Fidelity recordings of Hopkins and Hooker. They sounded fantastic though.)
I really liked the Henry Townsend/JD Short CD and the Bo Carter. I've been meaning to get the Definitive Leadbelly set to see how it compares to the new document 2 CD Essential but now I can't find it anywhere. All the Catfish titles are getting harder to find in my area.

http://www.catfishrecords.co.uk/webpages/home_index.html