ASIE PAYTON
Asie Reed Payton (April 12, 1937 – May 19, 1997)was an American blues musician, who lived most of his life in Holly Ridge, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta. Born in Washington County, Mississippi, he sang and played the guitar, but made his living as a farmer.
Near the end of his life he recorded one album, Worried, for the Fat Possum Records label, which was released after his death. He died of a heart attack.
He appeared and performed in the documentary film, You See Me Laughin': The Last of the Hill Country Bluesmen. There is also a track by Payton on the Big Bad Love soundtrack. Payton's song, "I Love You" from the album, Worried, was used in the closing credits of the 2002 film, The Badge. Several artists from Fat Possum were featured in the soundtrack, but it was not released.
He and his wife Mary are interred at Holly Ridge Cemetery, where Charlie Patton is also buried.
I would personally like to know more about this hard working bluesman. Unfortunately all I've been able to figure out about this legend is he knew farming was putting food on his table. Maybe making records was an unreliable dream, a dream that might have left him broke and hungry. Well, Asie's dedication to farming has left me hungry, hungry for more Asie Payton.
Thanks to Fat Possum Records finding and recording this beautiful treasure my own copy of Asie Payton's Worried sits in front of me. To all who hear these tracks I would recommend going to www.fatpossum.com or to your local record store and ordering it. This is truly a must have CD.
Other great artist you can find on Fat Possum:
R.L. Burnside
Junior Kimbrough
T-Model Ford
Cedell Davis
Asie Payton: guitar and vocals
Sam Carr: drums
"Asie Payton died of a heart attack on May 19, 1997, in Holly Ridge, Mississippi. It occurred in the early afternoon, while he was driving a tractor in the same fields he'd worked most of his sixty years. For all of 1995 and most 1996, Fat Possum tried unsuccessfully to convince Asie that the world outside Mississippi needed to hear him. But despite living below the poverty level and desperately needing the easy money of a gig, he could not be lured away from Washington County for more than a couple of hours.
Fat Possum succeeded in recording Asie twice: once at Junior Kimbrough's club, and once at Jimmy's Auto Care, Fat Possum's old studio. Obviously, all the songs on Worried were recorded during these two sessions, and originally intended to be demo tapes. At the time, all we knew about Asie was that he lived in a shotgun shack -- no phone, no a/c; and that whenever the fields were dry enough for tractor tires, he was working in them. When they were too wet, Asie was impossible to find. He lived in Holly Ridge almost all of his life and, like his father before him, spent Saturday nights playing in one of the two small grocery stores that qualify Holly Ridge for a name on the map-- a place, instead of just a county-road intersection." ~Matthew Johnson
Though he was also a bluesman, most of Asie Payton's 60 years were spent as a farmer, driving a tractor on his land in Holly Ridge, MS. Living in a shotgun shack and working his fields took most of Payton's time, but he also wrote and performed blues originals, playing at places like the local grocery store, Junior Kimbrough's club, and Jimmy's Auto Care. Two of his club performances were recorded by Fat Possum records, with the intention of using them as demo tapes for a studio album. Payton's ties to his land were strong, however, and the label was unable to get him into the studio before he succumbed to a heart attack in 1997. Two years later, Fat Possum released the tapes as Payton's first and only album, Worried
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