The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi

by Wright Thompson

Charley Patton died surrounded by his family and the violent power structure he sang against barely noticed at all. Not a single word was printed to mark his passing in the same newspapers that devoted a hundred column inches to the marriage of a plain-faced rich girl to the closeted gay son of a planter. But the news hit the sharecropper bars and tenant houses like the death of Elvis, with the same undertone of a lost world slipping forever from view. He had given voice to the voiceless and provided the soundtrack for decades of Saturday nights. His was the kind of death that made everyone stop and consider the passage of time. Patton’s house filled with the men who’d traveled the circuit with him, names famous now to obscure record collectors. They sang over his body all night, finishing

The South Side was Clarksdale with airports and pro sports.

cult is built on believing the absurd if the absurd justifies the cult.