Edward "Son" House
Edward “Son” House Jr, better known as Son House, was born in Riverton, two miles from Clarksdale, Mississippi. Eddie had an early inclination toward the church and became a devoted gospel singer who initially shunned instruments and rejected blues music. His family moved to Louisiana, he became a preacher at age 15. He started his life preaching as a Southern Baptist near Lyon, Mississippi, in the twenties. Next, he moved north and started work at Commonwealth Steel Plant in East St. Louis, Missouri, around 1922-23. He then moved to Louisiana to work on a horse farm in 1925.
As a young minister, his love for booze and women left his life in conflict, and he fell in love with bottleneck guitar – and blues — after hearing one of his drinking companions play. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. He acquired a passion for blues from James McCoy and Willie Wilson, whose slide guitar work inspired him to become a blues performer himself. In a short time he became a proficient performer, with his own bottleneck guitar style and a vocal approach deeply influenced by his experience in the church.
The tension between his church obligations and musical lifestyle led him to give up his pastorate. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Mississippi’s Parchman Farm prison, he developed his musicianship. His life began in the music world in 1926 when he began playing guitar and working as a hired musician in Mississippi. He started to get recognition by playing with Charley Patton, Willie Brown, who were both Delta blues stars and other well-known jazz musicians. He became a major influence on the playing and singing of legendary bluesman, Robert Johnson.
Edward “Son” House recorded some of his most famous works in 1929: “My Black Mama” and “Preachin the Blues” for Allen Lomax. In 1930, Paramount Records persuaded Charley Patton to record several more sides in Grafton, Wisconsin. Along with Patton came House, Brown, and the pianist Louise Johnson, all of whom recorded sides for the label. House recorded nine songs during that session, eight of which were released, but they were commercial failures. He did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton’s death in 1934.
He made some recording for the Library of Congress in 1941-42. House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943. There he went to work for the New York Central Railroad as a rivet heater in boxcar assembly. Son House retired as a musician in 1960, but in 1964 he came out of retirement to sign with Columbia Records. He then went on to record and to perform from 1964 to 1976. After he was rediscovered in 1964, he recorded what would become his seminal album, “The Legendary Son House: Father of Folk Blues,” in 1965 on Columbia Records.
In 1965 he appeared at Carnegie Hall, and he toured Europe in both 1967 and 1970. In the summer of 1970, House toured Europe once again, including an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival. He also played at the two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974. Although poor health slowed him, House continued to tour through the mid-1970s. House placed equal emphasis on blues and gospel music, and advocated the definition of blues as primarily music of the heart, distinguished from “so-called” blues, which he saw as potentially dangerous.