34 Facts About Son House

Son House quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom.

Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County.

In 1964, Alan Wilson, co-founder of the band Canned Heat, found House and had him listen to his old recordings.

Son House encouraged him to find his way back to the music and from this collaboration, Father of Folk Blues was born.

Son House relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a "folk blues" singer.

Son House recorded several albums and some informally taped concerts have been issued as albums.

Son House was born in the hamlet of Lyon, north of Clarksdale, Mississippi, the second of three brothers, and lived in the rural Mississippi Delta until his parents separated when he was about seven or eight years old.

Son House was a church member but a drinker; he left the church for a time as a result of his drinking, but then gave up alcohol and became a Baptist deacon.

Young Eddie Son House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing.

Son House absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds.

When Son House's parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Son House moved frequently, on one occasion taking off to East Saint Louis to work in a steel plant.

Son House found an escape from manual labor when, following a conversion experience in his early twenties, he was accepted as a paid pastor, first in the Baptist Church and then in the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

In 1927, at the age of 25, Son House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion.

Son House immediately changed his attitude about the blues, bought a guitar from a musician called Frank Hoskins and within weeks was playing with Hoskins, McCoy and Wilson.

Son House received a 15-year sentence at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, of which he served two years between 1928 and 1929.

Son House credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked.

The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; Son House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Son House walked to Jonestown and caught a train to the small town of Lula, Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Clarksdale and eight miles from the blues hub of Helena, Arkansas.

Patton watched Son House busking when he arrived penniless at Lula station, but did not approach him.

Son House observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the cafe and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight.

Patton invited Son House to be a regular musical partner with him and Brown.

Beaumont concluded that Son House became a friend of Patton's, traveling with him to gigs but playing separately.

Son House did not record again commercially for 35 years, but he continued to play with Patton and Brown, and with Brown after Patton's death in 1934.

Son House then faded from the public view, moving to Rochester, New York, in 1943, and working as a railroad porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a chef.

Son House had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.

Son House subsequently toured extensively in the United States and Europe and recorded for CBS Records.

Son House subsequently recorded the album Father of Folk Blues, later reissued as a 2-CD set Father of Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions.

Son House appeared in Seattle on March 19,1968, arranged by the Seattle Folklore Society.

The Arcola CD included an interview of Son House recorded on November 15,1969 in Seattle.

Son House played at the Two Days of Blues Festival in Toronto in 1974.

Son House later moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he remained until his death from cancer of the larynx.

Son House had been married five times and had two daughters, Beatrice and Sally.

In 2007, Son House was honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail in Tunica, Mississippi.