Son House

Son House's blues universe is like no other Delta artist's, and to some his music is without parallel in its spiritual force. Born in Lyon, MS, and raised in Tallulah, LA, the forever-restless Eddie James "Son" House (1902-88) returned to his native state periodically in his teens in what now seems a search for peace of mind that would consume him throughout his life. A devout churchgoer from childhood, by age 15 he was a dedicated Baptist preacher who loved and sang gospel music but scorned the blues for its evocations of immorality and slovenly behavior.

In his mid-twenties, though, House heard the music with new ears, perhaps because he was on his way to living out the very tales he so despised as he rambled aimlessly from town to town throughout the South, preaching, riding the rails, working a variety of manual-labor jobs, designing his next getaway. From a wandering Mississippi guitarist named Willie Wilson he learned the fundamentals of the bottleneck style that would lend his music its eerie, edgy quality. In another bluesman, Rubin Lacey, he heard the guitar being used almost as a second, inner voice, its hard-flailed chords crying out heartache as Lacey sang dark tales relating the ongoing battles in his soul between the sacred and the profane. In Lyon, he stumbled on James McCoy, whose songs "My Black Mama" and "Preachin' the Blues" House mastered, then rewrote into what are now regarded as Delta blues classics (the former in turn served as the foundation for Robert Johnson's "Walkin' Blues"). With these songs as a springboard, House soon found himself with steady work playing Delta juke joints.

In 1928, at the moment his career was gaining some momentum, House shot a man to death after the fellow had opened fire in a Lyon juke joint where House was performing. Rejecting the defendant's claim of self-defense, a judge sentenced House to serve two years at the notorious Parchman prison farm; he was pardoned before his sentence was up by a judge in Clarksdale, MS, who warned him never to set foot in town again. House agreed, telling the judge he could "cover as much ground as a red fox" if he were set free. From the Parchman experience came another House monument, "Mississippi County Farm Blues," whose tune was adapted from the great Blind Lemon Jefferson's "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean."

More important to House's high standing in the blues pantheon was a 1941 trip through the Delta by a team of field recordists (Alan Lomax among them) working on a documentary project cosponsored by Fisk University and the Library of Congress. These recordings, capturing House at his artistic peak (even though he was recorded playing solo rather than in the blues combo he and Brown had formed), were followed a year later by another session with the same team. House had by then moved to Rochester, NY, where he stayed until 1978. Biograph's Delta Blues: The Original Library of Congress Sessions From Field Recordings 1941-1942 is the document arising from those sessions, and monumental it is. While he had his share of songs about faithless lovers and general feelings of doom and degradation, House, more so even than Robert Johnson, found his soul in a constant tug-of-war between God and the Devil (a reason, perhaps, for his frequent returns to the pulpit), and this battle lent the music a moral depth rarely encountered in any genre, let alone Delta blues. "Preachin' Blues" may be the most explicit delineation of the artist's inner conflict, but spiritual turmoil shadows him in almost every circumstance. As powerful as the lyrics are in de-tail and imagery, it is House's deep, gravelly voice, haunted and haunting, that brings the message home with chilling authority. Supporting all this are some rather simple guitar stylings, by Delta standards -- no showy polyrhythms, no startling key changes, no sweeping single-or double-string solo runs; rather, House wielded his slide as if it were on the left hand of God: It slashed, it wailed, it howled, it moaned, it wept. In the end, these fundamental parts created a mesmerizing whole.

When Willie Brown died in the mid-'50s, House lost interest in music completely. After moving to Rochester, he left his instrument in its case, preferring various day jobs (railroad porter, cook, etc.) to playing without Brown. By 1964, when blues scholars tracked him down, he didn't even own a guitar. Coaxed out of retirement, House began playing to enthusiastic audiences all over the country, leading to a 1965 contract with Columbia Records. The resulting sessions, produced by John Hammond and Frank Driggs and first issued on vinyl as Father of Folk Blues, are now collected on the two-CD set Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, the second disc of which is composed entirely of previously unreleased alternate takes ("Death Letter" and "John the Revelator" among them) and seven cuts that didn't make the origi-nal vinyl issue. Here he reprises many of the Delta blues landmarks that established his legend -- "Death Letter," "Preachin' Blues," "Pony Blues," "Louise McGhee" -- along with newer material, including the touching, loving elegy "President Kennedy" (a retooling of a song House had written years before as a tribute to General Douglas MacArthur and then discarded after the general was relieved of his command by President Harry Truman). House is a bit rusty in spots -- a blown lyric here, a fumbled guitar lick there -- but the imperfections are endearing glitches in otherwise remarkable performances. These sessions are available in a whittled-down version -- 11 cuts, including two of the previously unissued tracks on the double-CD set -- on Columbia/Legacy's The Original Delta Blues.

The House canon is rounded out beautifully by Capitol's Delta Blues and Spirituals, which wraps four blues songs and four spirituals around a pair of insightful House monologues explaining in folk poetry -- which was general conversation for Son House -- the link between the two musical styles.

Although House struggled on performing as his health permitted, by 1975 he had played his last show. After moving in with relatives in Detroit, he was later taken to a rest home, where he died on October 19,1988. His legacy is a body of work rarely equaled, never surpassed. His guitar is in the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale; his voice is in the wind. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide