Twenty years after his death, the great Delta bluesman Son House still has the mythic power of a dark god.
More than any other blues originator, House and his music embody a kind of Southern Gothic universe where the forces of good and evil battle in the shadows for men’s and women’s souls.
House didn’t brag, like Robert Johnson did, of selling his own soul at the crossroads; nor did he adopt an audacious nickname like Peetie Wheatstraw, who called himself “the Devil’s son-in-law.” This cosmic struggle was writ large in House’s music – in songs like “Death Letter,” an ode to lost love and the dissatisfaction that’s part of the human condition, and “Grinnin’ in Your Face,” a stern warning of life’s betrayals.
That conflict was also chiseled deeply into his heart. House drank with terrible commitment and witnessed all kinds of violence and debauchery at Delta juke joints and house parties. But through it all, he believed profoundly in the Lord. And late in his life he told blues guitarist Paul Rishell that he’d been run out of several communities for playing the blues all Saturday night long, and then having the audacity to go straight from his gig to the pulpit.
That conflict between good and evil, between mankind’s dark and bright sides, also shone in his performances, which grew increasingly rhythmic and dangerous as he aged. Blues purists complain that when House made his comeback in 1965, after a quarter-century of obscurity working on the railroad and day-laboring, he’d lost the fleetness and melodic skill captured in his initial 1941-42 field recordings.
Listening to those 15 tracks on the Biograph label’s Son House Delta Blues, it’s clear how the clean, fleet, fluid style he then possessed influenced Robert Johnson’s graceful rhythm picking, delicate ascending and descending melodies, and lightning slide. And then there are the quivering high notes that House sings, which are as breathtaking as Johnson’s sugar coated falsettos.
But 1965’s Father of the Delta Blues is a more emotionally profound listening experience. Since conflicting dates – typically 1888 and 1902 – exist for House’s birth, it’s unclear how old he really was when these folk-revival-era recordings were made. Nonetheless, it’s as if every year he’d spent on Earth, every scar or pain he’d endured is etched into these 21 sides. The fleet grace of his early days is replaced by a rumbling rhythmic authority, unstoppable as a runaway tank on “Death Letter,” “Preachin’ Blues,” and “Levee Camp Moan.” Even “John the Revelator,” an a cappella performance with hand-clap accompaniment, bristles with rhythmic intensity as House barks its gospel lyrics.
He smashes out chords without care for finesse – only for meaning. And when he plays slide, it is nearly an act of violence. His slashing and stabbing technique screams with urgency, as if House needed to tell these stories of hard experience at least one more time before his own passage to Heaven or Hell.
House didn’t merely perform a song. He allowed it to possess him. Dick Waterman, House’s manager in the ’60s, described the way House delivered his numbers in his beautiful 2003 book of photographs and reminiscences Between Midnight and Day: the Last Unpublished Blues Archive.
“Eyes shut tight and sweat dripping down his face, Son House would transport himself to another time and place,” Waterman writes. “When the song ended, Son would slump forward and then slowly raise his head. He would blink his eyes, refocusing on the present.”
Waterman describes House as “so many paradoxes rolled into one. He was soft-spoken and modest, yet his music was aggressive and commanding. He told self-depreciating stories, but his aura was compelling to behold. I have always said that you could measure the greatness of Son House not by watching him, but by looking at Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, or Jimmy Reed as they watched him.”
Indeed, House’s catalog and compelling aura still hold some of today’s greatest musicians in awe. The White Stripes dedicated their debut album to House and cover his “Death Letter” and “John the Revelator.” Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule also perform those songs along with “Grinnin’ in Your Face.” John Mellencamp cut “Death Letter” and “John the Revelator” for 2003’s Trouble No More, and Andrew Bird recorded a live version of “Grinnin’.”
Outside of the roots world, Gomez name-check House in “Rhythm and Blues Alibi.” And House’s influence also extends to contemporary film. The Samuel L. Jackson/Christina Ricci movie Black Snake Moan features clips of House talking about the blues, although it is dedicated to the more recently deceased Mississippi blues patriarch R.L. Burnside.