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Son House

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Son House, in full Edward James House Jr., was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist, born in 1902. He was known for his highly emotional singing and his slide guitar. For years he was a preacher and opposed to worldly music. At twenty-five he switched to the blues. He brought with him the rhythmic drive, the powerful delivery and the intensity of his sermons and developed a style of his own from them.

Music and breakthrough

Charley Patton, the most important blues musician of the Mississippi Delta, invited him to perform together and in 1930 took him along to a recording session for Paramount Records. The records came out at the start of the Great Depression, did not sell and did not lead to national fame. In the area he did remain popular, and together with Willie Brown he was the most important musician of Coahoma County in Mississippi in the 1930s. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942 Alan Lomax and John W. Work recorded him for the Library of Congress. The year after, he left for Rochester in New York State and gave up music.

Influence

In 1964 he was rediscovered, among others by Alan Wilson of Canned Heat. The album Father of Folk Blues was released in 1965. He relearned his repertoire and performed for young, mostly white listeners at folk festivals and in coffee houses. In School of Rock his name appears in that connection, alongside Robert Johnson: the recordings in which young collectors searched for the real blues.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Preachin' the Blues and notice the sharp slide guitar and the shouting, sermon-like singing. Can you hear how the rhythm of the guitar drives the voice forward?

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Categories: Artists