Career
His playing style was influenced by Blind Blake, Buddy Moss, Blind Boy Fuller, Josh White, Willie Walker, and to some extent Lightnin" Hopkins. Born Charles Henry Tate in Elberton, Georgia, he was raised in Greenville, South Carolina. As an adolescent, he started performing locally, after seeing Blind Blake in Elberton.
Tate later formed a trio with Joe Walker (the brother of Willie Walker) and Roosevelt "Baby" Brooks and, up to 1932, played in the local area.
As the Carolina Blackbirds, they appeared on the radio station, WFBC, broadcasting from the Jack Tar Hotel. Foreign the rest of the 1930s he worked other jobs, mainly as a mason.
Tate served in the United States Army infantry during World World War II in the south of England. He returned to the Spartanburg-Greenville club circuit 1946.
In 1950 he claimed to have recorded several (unreleased) tracks for Kapp Records.
Relocating to Spartanburg, South Carolina, he performed solo before forming an occasional duo with Pink Anderson, a working relationship that endured until the 1970s when, Anderson suffered a stroke. Tate released his only album, Blues of Baby Tate: See What You Done Done, in 1962, and twelve months later appeared in Sam Charters"s documentary film The Blues. Throughout the 1960s he performed irregularly across the United States. With harmonica player Peg Legal Sam, or guitarists Baby Brooks or McKinley Ellis, he recorded nearly sixty tracks in 1970 and 1971 for Peter B. Lowry, but the proposed album remained unreleased after Tate died unexpectedly in the summer of 1972.
He appeared at a concert at the State University of New York at New Paltz, as a result of Lowry"s efforts, in the spring of 1972.
Tate died from the effects of a heart attack, in the Virginia Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, in August 1972, at the age of 56. In January 2011, Tate was nominated for the 10th Annual Independent Music Awards in the Blues Song category for "See What You Done Done".
Smithsonian Folkways released a compilation album, Classic Appalachian Blues, on February 16, 2010, including Tate"s "See What You Done Done.".
