Patton was pastor of the First Congregational Church in Chicago during the Civil War, and later served as president of Howard University in Washington, D.C. Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
The childhood desire of the Rev. William R. Patton, Class of 1871, was to attend the Baptist university in Lewisburg, Pa., to earn a degree in the classical course and then to become a minister.
Patton's untimely death came on June 5, 1899, as a result of a fall while boarding a trolley for a trip to Philadelphia.
Onstage with guitar, baritone vocals, rack-mounted harmonica and occasionally banjo, Weiser shamelessly and wonderfully mixes genres and eras - Blues and Celtic tunes, Country Blues of the 20's and 30's - then throws in a Scott Joplin rag, Tin Pan Alley show tune, or a blues or folk classic made famous by the Grateful Dead.
A veritable encyclopedia on Celtic music and blues (he's Sing Out magazine's harmonica expert and also writes for Acoustic Guitar), Wiener has accumulated a vast repertoire through his travels from 1950's New Jersey: fingerstyle classics of the '20's and '30's made famous not only by Jefferson, but Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, and others.
As a youth studying classical guitar ("the rich cultural tradition of the New Jersey suburbs," he deadpans), Weiser gradually converted from Baroque and Spanish music to steel-string fingerpicking after hearing "Separation Blues" at a 1967 peace rally.
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