1902 Eddie James "Son" House, folk blues musician (Delta Blues)
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Eddie James "
Son"
House, Jr. (March 21, 1902
[1] – October 19, 198
was an American
delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and
slide guitar playing.
After 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. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. 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.
Issued at the start of the
Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate
Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of
Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on
Robert Johnson and
Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by
Alan Lomax and
John W. Work for the
Library of Congress and
Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for
Rochester, New York, and gave up music.