Image: Charley Patton (1929 photo portrait)

Description: The only extant photograph of American bluesman Charley Patton, circa 1929. Patton sits at a chair with a Stella guitar. The portrait was likely taken in Grafton, Wisconsin—the headquarters of Paramount Records—at either a photography studio or recording studio. An image of Patton's face (cropped from this photo) had been discovered in the early 1960s, but the full portrait was not uncovered until 2002 when John Tefteller found it while searching for blues records and ephemera on a trip to Grafton and Port Washington. Source: Tefteller, John (2003). "Gold in Grafton! Long lost Paramount photos, artwork, 78s surface after 70 years!" 78 Quarterly. No. 12. pp. 12–39. Archived from the original on October 17, 2015.
Title: Charley Patton (1929 photo portrait)
Credit: The full photo was first published in 1929 or 1930 and rediscovered/republished in 2002 after it had entered the public domain. Original source: The photo was originally published in at least two different forms: a Paramount publicity photo (most likely distributed to newspapers) and a 1930 Paramount promotional calendar distributed by the F. W. Boerner Company. (Boerner was responsible for Paramount's graphics and marketing from 1930–1934, and his company distributed the remainder of Paramount's unsold records after the label went out of business in 1932.) The tighter crop showing just Patton's face was published in a 1929 Paramount supplement. Instant source: High-res scan via NewSounds.org. Retouched by uploader; see unretouched original in upload history below.
Author: Photo published by Paramount Records and the F. W. Boerner Company. Photographer uncredited and unknown.
Permission: This work is in the public domain because it was published in the United States between 1928 and 1963, and although there may or may not have been a copyright notice, the copyright was not renewed. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart and the copyright renewal logs. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 years p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 years p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 years p.m.a.), Mexico (100 years p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 years p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No