Son House: Positively Primeval

This article appears in our May/June 2015 “Blues Issue.”

The name is positively primeval. It’s not hard to imagine those two words as the first things ever said by man: Son House. He was, in fact, born long enough ago to have been an influence on Robert Johnson. In his early years, he railed against secular music as a preacher and pastor. But it seems he protested too much: by the age of 25, Edward James House, Jr. turned to that worldly music, the sound the devil might make if he ever picked up a National Steel guitar. And this sinner progressed so quickly that Charley Patton invited the man to join him at gigs and recording dates. 

Son House’s playing is primitive, but hypnotically so, and his worried, outraged moan of a voice can keep you up nights, which is fine – he’ll be there to keep you company, even if that angry, terrified wail of his says no comfort will arrive come morning.

Son House managed to combine Old Testament terror and the New World Blues in a single song, one as personal as a signature. In “Death Letter Blues,” this Son who “fathered” many “children,” sings so bluntly, in a howl like the last wail of a sick animal, you hope you never get a missive so short, sharp and terrifying. “I got a letter this mornin’, how do you reckon it read?/ It said, ‘Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead.’” 

As Son House blurts out those lyrics, he keeps a strong propulsive beat on his guitar, intermittently slipping in slide licks. This song tells you why people like Jack White and other blues aficionados love this music so much. The man singing seems as alone as one can possibly be. Then things get worse: he looks at the letter, later at the gal who’s died, and doesn’t flinch. He faces it head on. And while the subject isn’t pretty, the honesty and ferocity of the performance reminds you that the blues is a way of making you feel a bit better when you’ve been hit with the absolute worst.

House’s life was full of fits, starts, prison time and freedom, all the while seemingly knowing, if his weary, angry voice is any indication, that a man does his time inside and outside the joint, and that life’s pleasures are fleeting at best. In 1928 and ’29, House spent time in the pen for allegedly killing a man in self-defense in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Upon his release, he left the Magnolia State and ended up in that big blues hub, Helena, Arkansas. He busked and learned his trade but didn’t record until the great musicologist Alan Lomax heard him in the early ’40s. Son House then made two legendary albums in 1941 and 1942. Although they didn’t sell, their influence was felt by similarly minded men. One of them, Muddy Waters, was apparently smitten by the seen-it-all voice and picking style of this hard luck man. 

If we know about him at all, it has to do with the great folk (and folk-blues) explosion that happened in the early ’60s. Blues manager Dick Waterman was chief among the men who found a retired Son House and got him on the festival circuit. Interestingly, House, having laid up for so long, couldn’t really remember how to play his own music. Fate intervened in the personage of Al “Blind Owl” Wilson, future member of Canned Heat, who knew Son House’s stuff note-for-note. Legendary talent scout John Hammond Sr. got Wilson to teach “Son House how to play like Son House” again.

Finally, it all fell into place for a man who not only sang the blues, but lived them. Over the next 10 years, Son House played festivals here and abroad, entrancing listeners with his “Downhearted Blues,” “Grinning In Your Face” and other unvarnished stories of being alone, beat, cheated on and making no bones about how angry this could make a man. Along with Wilson, House gathered fans as diverse as Bonnie Raitt, John Hammond, Jr. and that young whippersnapper White, who’s played “Death Letter Blues” almost as often as its composer.

Son House, despite his endless tribulations, lived to be 86, fully spreading his message that life is mean, merciless and can really mess you up. But thank God he gave up those early dreams of being a preacher. We would’ve missed all those heartrending moans, coal-black lyrics and great slide runs. Still, Son House did preach and preached well. And the blues is our religion, anyway, right?