He found some relief from constant manual labor when, following a conversion experience "getting religion" in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church, then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. The one job he enjoyed was on a Louisiana horse ranch, which later he celebrated by wearing a cowboy hat in his performances. He moved around frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant. House's resentment of farming extended to the many menial jobs he took in his young adult years. At around the same time, probably 1922, Son's mother died. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalls "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plough some more." In later years, House was still angry and said of Carrie "She wasn't nothin' but one of them New Orleans whores". The couple moved to her hometown of Centreville, Louisiana to help run Carrie's father's farm. This was a significant step for House he married in church and against family opposition. Īt the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married an older woman from New Orleans named Carrie Martin. At fifteen, probably while living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons. Recalling these years, Son would later speak of his hatred of blues and his passion for churchgoing (he described himself as "churchy" and "churchified"). When Son was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. His mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi. Son's parents separated when he was about seven or eight. He also absorbed the family love of music, but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and feeling entirely hostile to the Blues on religious grounds. Young Eddie House adopted the family concern with religion and churchgoing. This caused him to leave the church for a time, before giving up drink and becoming a deacon.
He was a church member, but also a drinker. His father, Eddie House, Sr., was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his many brothers, and sometimes playing guitar. The middle of three brothers, House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi and continued to live in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated. In addition to his early influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, he became an inspiration to John Hammond, Alan Wilson (of Canned Heat), Bonnie Raitt, The White Stripes, Dallas Green and John Mooney. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. With their encouragement, he relearned his style and repertoire and enjoyed a career as an entertainer to young white audiences in the coffee houses, folk festivals and concert tours of the American folk music revival billed as a "folk blues" singer. In 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music. Work for Library of Congress and Fisk University. In 19, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.
Locally, Son remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate, Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. Issued at the start of The Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition.
In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements, and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. (Ma October 19, 1988) was an American blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.Īfter years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher, and for a few years also as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25.