Song of the Day
Son House: The archetypal old blues man
Death Letter Blues- Son House Son House was one of the last of the old school Mississippi delta blues singers. Son's music had a big influence on both Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters who both came from that rural area near Clarksdale Mississippi where Son House frequently performed at picnics, juke joints and roadhouses.
When I first heard his version of this old blues classic I was thunderstruck by the intensity of his voice and guitar playing. Son House was the closest friend of Charley Patton the first American blues musician to record his music for a record label. Patton is acknowledged to be the father the blues music idiom. Patton and House spent their entire lives in the same delta region of Mississippi that was the home of the Mississippi blues.
All Music Guide descibes the relationship between Patton and House as almost comically dysfunctional:
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The two of them argued and bickered constantly, and the only thing these two men seemed to have in common was a penchant for imbibing whatever alcoholic potable came their way. Though House would later refer in interviews to Patton as a "jerk" and other unprintables, it was Patton's success as a bluesman — both live and especially on record — that got Son's foot in the door as a recording artist.
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I never met Son House or heard him play live but by all accounts even in his twilight years, he wasn't a pleasant person to hang out with. Dave Van Ronk once told me that Son scared the bejesus out of the more genteel elements of urban white folk music crowd at patron's reception for Son at the Newport Folk Festival . Son House was an old school hard drinking bluesman who was as quick tempered and mean as a rattlesnake. Son wasn't an affable and urbane elder statesman of blues like B.B. King. Son was suspicious and hostile toward the white patrons of the musical arts who treated him like he was an exotic musical curiosity or a minstrel show performer. He didn't like being patronized and I've seen that same vitriolic attitude in many the delta blues players I met. There's a good reason for that.
You have to understand that talented blues musicians like Charley Patton, Furry Lewis and Son House were made a lot of promises by white folks early in their musical careers and none of those promises were delivered. In Son's world, undue flattery from a white person was perceived as an attempt to exploit his hard earned reputation as a musician. When Son recorded his lengendary sessions for Paramount Records he was promised fame and fortune by Paramount but he was paid $5 for each song he recorded, and he returned to anonminity in Clarksdale Misssissippi and never heard from Paramont again.
Those first generation of blues players didn't reap the financial rewards and universal public acclaim as the next generation of blues players like B.B. and Albert King, Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters. Yet without Son House or Robert Johnson there would have never been a next generation of blues players.
Son spent his prime years working as anonymous sanitation worker (garbage collector) for the city of Rochester New York. He was retired and in his sixties
when Al "Blind Owl" Wilson a musicologist showed up on his door step to rediscover him. It was the end of year long oddessy of a couple of blues researchers to locate him.
Wilson and guitar virtuoso/blues researcher John Fahey came across a couple of Son's old 78 rpm on a field trip to Mississippi in 1963. Prior to that neither man knew of Son House's exsistence much less his connection the famed Charley Patton, whom coincidentally was the subject of Fahey's master's thesis in music history at University of California Berkeley. Wilson and Fahey spent several months doing a search for him in Mississippi. Just when they believed he had long since died, they got a tip from a distant relative that Son was alive and well and living in Rochester New York, a city was that was about as many miles due north of the Mississippi delta region as one could travel without without being in Canada
Son hadn't played music in so long, the 22 year old white blues researcher, Blind Owl Wilson had the rather strange assignment of reteaching Son House how to play the guitar like Son House. Blind Owl was a talented blues guitarist in his own right and went on to form the popular blues boogie band, Canned Heat, with blues music collector Bob "The Bear" Hite.
Despite of all his career setbacks and well being well into his sixties, Son delivers the goods on this rarely seen video rendition of
Death Letter Blues recorded sometime in the 1960s after Blind Owl rediscovered him in 1964. Son House once said, "
Al Wilson didn't redisover me... how can you rediscover somebody who never got discovered by nobody in the first place?" Bow to the wisdom of your elders, children.
Errors of Fact on Video: The voiceover intro says Son House lived well into the Sixties, Son actually died in 1988 at age 86. The voiceover also says that Son recorded 3 or 4 songs for Paramont but in reality Son recorded 15 songs (19 if you count the session outtakes). This guy has done a tremendous service by posting this rare tape of Son House on YouTube. Unfortunately the 45,200 people who have viewed it will gotten some unintentional misinformation about the essential facts of Son's life.