The precise origins of the blues are lost to time, but Dockery Farms in Mississippi became one of the music’s primal centers and is regarded by some as a wellspring of Delta blues. Founded in 1895 by William Alfred “Will” Dockery, the plantation grew on thousands of acres along the Sunflower River into one of the Delta’s most important plantations and, at its peak, a largely self-sufficient town with schools, churches, offices, its own currency, medical care, transportation links, shops, and housing for four hundred tenant families, most of them African Americans who had migrated there for work. Among the families who settled there in the early 1900s were Bill Patton, Jr. and Annie Patton and their children, including Charley Patton, who became the most important early Delta blues musician. Inspired by the older guitarist Henry Sloan, another Dockery resident from the Bolton area, Charley Patton was influencing other musicians by around 1910, including Willie Brown, Tommy Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Roebuck “Pops” Staples. A popular performer among both whites and blacks, he often played on the commissary porch and at all-night picnics for residents, and after he began recording in 1929, many of his songs drew on daily life and events in the Delta, including life at Dockery. Though he traveled widely to play and sometimes preach, Dockery remained his most regular stopping point until his death from mitral valve disorder on April 28, 1934, near Indianola.