Eddie "Son" House is a slide guitar genius, killer, personal mentor to the likes of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, preacher, sinner, and a venerable Bluesman who could make a strong claim at being the greatest Blues singer who ever lived. Both his performance style and lyical motifs secure him as one of the most intimidating musicians of all time, a bizarro-world Mississippi John Hurt.
Son had boyhood dreams of preaching the gospel, one of the few routes out of a life of hard manual labour and poverty for a black man in pre-WWII southern United States. Equally though, he was was enamoured by the Blues. He found himself torn between two extremes: the torrid life of a bluesman and the life a man of the cloth was meant to lead. Eventually, the blues won, and in fact many of his best songs would taunt insincere preachers, and even question his very faith.
Son shot a man dead in a bar, but he deserved it, and he fired first.
He also, understandably, spent a long while incarcerated for this altercation, but like so many other blues greats, the music still speaks louder than any gunshots.
Here he is, Son House performing Downhearted Blues, coupled with an introduction where he finally traces the roots of the Blues right back to its origins (and inadvertantly dismisses every gay and lesbian blues musician who might have made a go of it).
Son House - Downhearted Blues from Andy Minnes
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