Ben Payton was born in tiny Coila, Mississippi, in the hill country just east of the Delta. His early musical influences included his grandmother Mabel Johnson’s gospel piano playing and his Uncle Joe Birch’s blues guitar. Ben and his family lived in Valley Hill and Blackhawk, and in his mid-teens they moved to Chicago, where Ben soon became active in the city’s blues scene.

He worked regularly with Bobby Rush and Joe Evans and the Supersonics, who backed many prominent artists as the house band at clubs including Peyton Place, the Green Bunny, and High Chaparral. Ben also played in the R&B bands The Oops and Womb From the Tomb.

In 1970 Ben traveled to Morocco together with jazz pianist Randy Weston, and stayed for a six-month engagement at a club. Ben was part of the R&B group Chicago Sounds, which opened the show and then closed the show together with Weston.

Back home in Chicago Ben also worked gigs with artists including Eddie Shaw and the Wolf Gang, Junior Wells, Fenton Robinson, Little Mack Simmons, Barkin’ Bill Smith, Taildragger, Alvin Cash, Eddie C. Campbell, Bobby King, Big Moose Walker, Muddy Waters, Jr., Vince McCollum, Tony Gooden, Doug McDonald, Ron Harris, and Ike Anderson.

In 1977 Ben left the music scene after he got married. He continued to perform occasionally in church, but it wasn’t until he after he moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 2002 that he returned to performing blues in public. Around 2000 he started concentrating on acoustic guitar, and today performs classics from the likes of Mississippi blues legends Robert Johnson, Tommy Johnson, and Skip James as well as his own compositions.

In the summer of 2006 Ben made a triumphant return to Chicago as a performer at the Chicago Blues Festival as part of a program that spotlighted contemporary acoustic blues in Mississippi. There he plays regularly in the Jackson area, Oxford, Greenwood, and Clarksdale, both solo and as a duet with percussionist Cyndi Clark.