Son House - live in Seattle, Washington 1968

The brilliant Son House live on the 18th March 1968 recorded by Robert Garfias, Dan Grinstead, Margaret Devine, Walter Tianen, and Byong Won Lee with Nagra III at KCTS-TV studios, Seattle, Washington.

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Son House was born Edward James House, Jr. on March 21, 1902, in Lyon, Mississippi, the second of three siblings. His father was a part-time musician as well as an elder in the Baptist church who struggled with alcoholism as his son was growing up but would later renounce the bottle. Son took up singing early, but initially avoided blues music as it was forbidden in his father's church. By the time Son was eight years old, his parents had separated and with his mother he relocated to Tallulah, Louisiana, and in his early teens they settled in New Orleans, making their home in the Algiers neighborhood. Son was a frequent churchgoer in this period, and when he was fifteen he began preaching sermons. At nineteen years old, House married Carrie Martin, who was several years his senior, and they moved to Centerville, Louisiana, where they worked her father's farm. A few years later, their marriage was in tatters and House left her in 1922, shortly after the death of his mother.

House worked a variety of odd jobs before he became a paid pastor first at a Baptist church, and later at a Methodist Episcopal church. He was said to be a god preacher, but he fell into his father's habits and began drinking to excess and chasing women, which led him to leaving the church. House had given up on preaching when at 25, while hanging out with one of his drinking buddies, he saw a man playing bottleneck guitar and was immediately obsessed with the sound. He soon bought a guitar and was playing out with his friends James McCoy, Willie Wilson, and Frank Hoskins within a matter of weeks. Not long after House began performing in public, he was performing at a jook joint when a patron pulled a gun and started shooting. House took a bullet in his leg and he returned fire. The shooter died, and House was sentenced to fifteen years at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm. House was released in two years, when his family and the planter they worked for spoke on his behalf.

After his release, House ended up in Lula, Mississippi, (also the home of Country blues titan Charley Patton). Patton & House became friends with House performed alongside him and fellow bluesman Willie Brown. In 1930, a producer from Paramount Records came to Lula to persuade Patton to record new material for them. After hearing House, they opted to do a session with him as well. Paramount's Art Laibly cut 9 songs on House, and eight of them saw release on 78s issued in 1930 and 1931. In 1941, when House was making a living driving a tractor for several plantations in Mississippi, Alan Lomax invited him to record a session for him. House agreed, with accompaniment from Willie Brown on guitar, Fiddlin' Joe Martin on mandolin, and Leroy Williams on harmonica (Charley Patton had died 6 years earlier). In 1942, Lomax recorded a second session with House, but by 1943 he had moved to Rochester, New York, and taken a job with the New York Central Railroad. He soon gave up performing music.

In 1964, Dick Waterman and a handful of other blues fans who were researching Delta blues artists of the 1920s and '30s heard House's classic Paramount recordings and traveled to Mississippi in hopes of finding him. Finding out he'd moved to Rochester years ago, they headed Northeast and soon discovered House was still working for the railroad and had not played guitar for years. House relearned his old songs with the help of Alan Wilson, who would later form the blues-rock band Canned Heat. With Dick Waterman as his manager, House, started performing again in late 1964, and in 1965 he signed with Columbia Records, which released his comeback album The Legendary Son House: Father of the Delta Blues later that year.

In the years that followed, House became a frequent act at blues festivals, clubs, and the college concert circuit. A handful of live albums would document this period of his career, including The Oberlin College Concert, Delta Blues and Spirituals, and Live at the Gaslight Cafe, 1965. By the early '70s, House was struggling with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, unable to play guitar or remember his lyrics, he retired from music in 1976. House settled in Detroit, Michigan, with his wife Evie, who he had married in 1934, and they lived quietly until his death on October 19, 1988, at the age of 86.

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