Ben Wiley Payton, as a Delta-based blues guitarist, was a living testament to the cultural significance and relevance of blues music in today’s world.
While his career led him to perform at venues across the country and even abroad, Mr. Payton settled back in his home state, performing while also teaching people what blues music meant.
Mr. Payton died Thursday in his sleep at his home in Clarksdale, according to Kennedi Wooden, a third cousin. She said she understood that the cause was most likely a heart attack or other natural causes. He was 72.
“Ben illustrates how the blues of the Delta is not just something that survives from the past but is a vital culture that still is being reinvented,” said Scott Barretta, a Greenwood blues music expert and friend of Mr. Payton’s.
Wooden, who lives in Greenwood, had been performing with Mr. Payton since last year.
“He made me understand the genre of blues,” she said.
Born in rural Carroll County, Mr. Payton spent his youth in and out of Greenwood, where he became involved in the local civil rights movement by delivering information about upcoming Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee meetings, according to Barretta.
When Mr. Payton was in his teens, he moved with his family to Chicago. He became involved in the blues and R&B music scene, where he played in a house band for local nightclubs and even toured with Bobby Rush.
Mr. Payton also spent most of a year in the 1970s in Morocco, performing with an R&B band that opened up shows for jazz pianist Randy Weston.
For a while, Mr. Payton stopped performing while he raised three daughters, worked in a factory and started a church in Chicago in 1983.
After discovering Robert Johnson, Mr. Payton began performing again and returned to Mississippi in 2002, where he studied music of the 1920s and 1930s and also became interested in the technical aspects of the music as well as identifying the historical context in the lyrics of songs, according to Barretta.
“Ben didn’t participate in traditional blues when he was a kid here but when he came back he revisited that heritage more directly,” Barretta said.
Mr. Payton had lived in Jackson and played at various gigs, including in Greenwood. In 2009, he released his first CD of orignal songs, “Up Old Country Blues,” which was featured on a blues station on Sirius XM Radio.
Other opportunities for Mr. Payton soon followed. He played at the Chicago Blues Festival, the King Biscuit Festival and taught acoustic country blues to music students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and at the Centrum music camp in Port Townsend, Washington.
Mr. Payton represented Mississippi at the American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Concert Series at the Library of Congress and he also performed at the Kennedy Center.
In 2015, Mr. Payton recorded his second CD of songs, “Caught Up in the Blues,” at Mississippi Valley State University’s B.B. King Recording Studio.
In July 2017, Mr. Payton moved to Greenwood and worked as a manager for Money Road’s Tallahatchie Flats, after he was offered the opportunity by a friend, Regina LaVere, a co-owner of the Flats. Her late husband was Steve LaVere, a Grammy-winning music producer and promoter.
On Sunday evenings, Mr. Payton and others would hold live performances at Tallahatchie Flats for guests at the inn and members of the community, Regina LaVere said.
Her friendship with Mr. Payton, however, extends back almost 20 years to when she and her husband opened up the Blue Parrot, a former restaurant that was located on Howard Street downtown.
“He was such a good friend,” LaVere said. “He was a real, real gentlemen. A unique person. You couldn’t make him mad.”
She said, “Ben was always willing to help out, to continue to talk about the blues, to continue being an example.” She noted that he was a devoted father who stayed in touch with his family daily.
More than just a performer, Mr. Payton educated audiences about the music he played, Barretta said.
“He took it upon himself to try and educate people about that culture and not just about the songs themselves but about the broader social context in which the music developed,” Barretta said.
Mr. Payton was also a mentor.
His cousin, Kennedi Wooden, said she began performing with him in March 2019, playing the washboard as well as backing vocals. They played at venues in Clarksdale, Jackson and Greenwood, Wooden said. She noted that they both come from musically inclined families.
“It was fun. I learned a lot from him, and he would make jokes and sly comments on the side. He was funny,” Wooden said.
Another cousin of Mr. Payton’s, Macy Wooden, described him as a brother. She said, “He was a very good musician, and he was a very good person.”
Earlier this year, Mr. Payton moved from Greenwood to Clarksdale in order to be closer to the blues music scene, Kennedi Wooden said.
“He loved performing. He loved the people who came to see him perform, the people that performed with him. He was family-oriented.”
• Contact Gerard Edic at 581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
