Emerging from the exceptionally gifted Chatmon lineage—which featured Lonnie as part of the celebrated Mississippi Sheiks, the industrious Bo Carter, and multiple additional brothers devoted to blues—Sam Chatmon endured long enough to receive acclaim as a present-day blues authority once he resumed performing and cutting records in the 1960s. He upheld Bo’s practice of crafting witty, suggestive blues numbers to engage a fresh audience of devotees, while revealing a graver dimension on tracks such as the title song from Arhoolie’s early anthology I Have to Paint My Face.
Chatmon took up music during childhood, sometimes joining his family’s string band or the Mississippi Sheiks themselves. He initiated an independent solo path in the early 1930s. Although appearing and waxing material alone, he continued to cut sides with the Mississippi Sheiks and with Lonnie. Across that decade Sam journeyed widely through the South, appearing with assorted minstrel and medicine troupes. He ceased touring in the early 1940s, settling in Hollandale, Mississippi, and taking plantation employment.
For the following twenty years Chatmon remained largely withdrawn from music, devoting himself exclusively to plantation labor. With the blues resurgence of the late 1950s he succeeded in harnessing renewed interest in the style. In 1960 he entered an agreement with Arhoolie and laid down numerous tracks for the company. During the 1960s and 1970s he recorded for several additional labels while performing at clubs and at blues and folk gatherings nationwide. Chatmon remained an active performer and recording artist up to his passing in 1983.
