Son House looms large in Delta blues annals as a peer of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson, having produced landmark sides in the 1930s and 1940s before enjoying a substantial resurgence once located again during the 1960s. His finest performances rank among country blues’ most viscerally affecting, the incisive attack and bold strumming of his guitar locking into perfect tension with the anguished cry of his vocals across numbers exploring love, belief, and ruined lives; the original Paramount Records sessions from the 1930s together with the 1941–1942 Library of Congress field recordings appear on the 2004 anthology A Proper Introduction to Son House: Delta Blues. Among the scarce 1930s blues performers whose rediscovered material retained nearly the full emotional force of the source recordings, House delivered a stunning revelation to listeners with his 1965 Columbia Records release The Legendary Son House: Father of the Delta Blues. The 2003 anthology Heroes of the Blues: The Very Best of Son House draws from every phase of his output, while 2022’s Forever on My Mind presents one of his earliest post-rediscovery concerts in previously unavailable form.
Born Edward James House, Jr. on March 21, 1902 in Lyon, Mississippi, he was the middle child of three. His father combined occasional music-making with duties as a Baptist deacon and battled alcoholism during the boy’s childhood before later forsaking drink entirely. House began singing young yet steered clear of blues, which his father’s church prohibited. When he reached eight his parents parted, and he accompanied his mother to Tallulah, Louisiana, later moving with her in his early teens to New Orleans’ Algiers district. Regular church attendance continued, and at fifteen he started delivering sermons. At nineteen he wed Carrie Martin, several years older, and the couple relocated to Centerville, Louisiana to work her father’s land. Within a few years the marriage collapsed; House departed in 1922 soon after his mother’s passing.
He held assorted menial positions before serving as a salaried minister, first at a Baptist congregation and then at a Colored Methodist Episcopal church. Though regarded as a capable preacher, he adopted his father’s pattern of heavy drinking and womanizing, prompting his exit from the pulpit. Having abandoned preaching, House at age twenty-five encountered bottleneck guitar while socializing with a drinking companion and became instantly captivated by its tone. He promptly acquired an instrument and mastered it rapidly, appearing in public alongside James McCoy, Willie Wilson, and Frank Hoskins within weeks. Shortly after beginning to perform, he was playing a jook joint when a patron opened fire; House took a bullet to the leg yet fired back, killing the assailant. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen years at Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm), he served only two years after relatives and the planter they worked for interceded.
Following release House settled in Lula, Mississippi, home of Delta titan Charley Patton. The two became close, and House shared stages with Patton and Willie Brown. In 1930 a Paramount Records scout arrived in Lula to arrange fresh sessions with Patton; after auditioning House, the label scheduled him as well. Producer Art Laibly recorded nine numbers, eight of which appeared on 78s in 1930 and 1931. Sales proved modest, and the poor-quality pressings wore out quickly, yet the sides reached Alan Lomax, the noted ethnomusicologist gathering regional American music for the Library of Congress. In 1941, while House supported himself operating a tractor on Mississippi plantations, Lomax arranged a session; House was joined by Willie Brown on guitar, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin on mandolin, and Leroy Williams on harmonica (Charley Patton having died six years earlier). Lomax captured a second date in 1942, after which House relocated in 1943 to Rochester, New York, taking employment with the New York Central Railroad and soon ceasing to perform.
In 1964 Dick Waterman and fellow researchers who had been tracing 1920s and 1930s Delta figures heard the classic Paramount sides and journeyed to Mississippi hoping to locate House. Discovering he had moved to Rochester years before, they traveled north and found him still employed by the railroad and long inactive on guitar. With encouragement from the group, House regained command of his earlier repertoire under the guidance of Alan Wilson, later a founder of Canned Heat. Signed to Columbia Records with Waterman as manager, he returned to the stage in late 1964; the label issued his comeback album The Legendary Son House: Father of the Delta Blues the following year. (Easy Eye Sound later released the 2022 collection Forever on My Mind, containing previously unheard live recordings made just before those comeback sessions.)
Thereafter House appeared regularly at festivals, clubs, and campus venues, offering audiences a rare chance to witness a foundational Delta blues figure in performance. Several live documents capture this era, among them The Oberlin College Concert, Delta Blues and Spirituals, and Live at the Gaslight Cafe, 1965. By the early 1970s he contended with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s; unable to play or recall lyrics, he withdrew from music permanently in 1976. He resided quietly in Detroit with his wife Evie, whom he had married in 1934, until his death on October 19, 1988 at age eighty-six.
