Son House

Eddie “Son” House Jr. spent his life torn between the pulpit and the juke joint, and the tension is audible in every bar he sang. A Baptist preacher in his youth, he took up the blues around 1927, served time at Parchman Farm, and fell in with Charley Patton, recording for Paramount in 1930. Those sides — “My Black Mama,” “Preachin’ the Blues” — sold almost nothing in the Depression but preserve Delta blues at maximum voltage: slashing slide guitar and a voice that never stopped being a preacher’s (Palmer 1981).

Alan Lomax recorded House for the Library of Congress in 1941–42 — the most substantial documentation of a Delta master in his prime environment (Lomax 1993). Then House moved to Rochester, New York, and left music entirely.

In 1964, young blues enthusiasts traced him there, and House — who had to be partly retaught his own songs — became a central figure of the folk-blues revival, electrifying festival audiences with “Death Letter” and an a cappella “John the Revelator” until his retirement. He was also the living link in the chain this site traces: Patton’s colleague, Robert Johnson’s elder (he told the story of Johnson’s transformation from annoying kid to master), and Muddy Waters’s first model on slide guitar.