HOT BLUES FOR THE HOMELESS

Son House is an internationally known blues artist who spent a good part of his life in Rochester, NY yet the city has never recognized this legendary musician. This festival aims to celebrate the music of Son House and his deep connection to the city of Rochester.

Audio

Son's Blues (MP3) [Newport, 1965]

Pony Blues (MP3) [The Real Delta Blues, 1965]

Death Letter (MP3) [Father Of The Folk Blues, 1965]

Grinnin' In Your Face (MP3) [Father Of The Folk Blues, 1965]

Walking Blues (MP3) [Library Of Congress, 1941]

Delta Blues (MP3) [Library Of Congress, 1941]

Preachin' the Blues (part 1) (MP3) [Paramount, 1930]

My Black Mama (part 1) (MP3) [Paramount, 1930]

Mississippi County Farm Blues (MP3) [Paramount, 1930]

Dick Waterman Talks About Son House (MP3)

Son House Radio Feature (MP3)

Video

Documents

"Looking for the Blues"
The cover of Newsweek, July 13, 1964 and the article about the ‘rediscovery of Son House. The lead story in the magazine was about disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi and the violence there.

"Finding 'Son' House"
The article that Dick Waterman wrote in The National Observer in July 1964 about how he and Nick Perls and Phil Spiro found Son House in Rochester, NY.

"I Can Make My Own Songs"
An interview with Son House, in his own words, by Julius Lester from Sing Out!, July 1965.

"Hunt For Blues Singer Ends In City" (JPG)
The earliest article on Son's rediscovery, by Betsy Bues from Rochester Times Union Newspaper, July 6, 1964.

"Blues In The Round"
An account and analysis of the famous 1930 Grafton recording session by Ed Komara.

"An Afternoon With The Father Of CountryBlues/The Real Delta Blues"
A couple of Son House articles from Talking Blues No. 1, 1976.

"John The Revelator The 1970 London Session"
Booklet Notes to Son House - John The Revelator The 1970 London Session by Alan Balfour.

Son House Ontario Place 1964 (Link)
An early rediscovery concert at Washington’s Ontario Place by John Meid.

Son House Discography (Link)

About Son House

Son House at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, 1965 Photo courtesy of Dick Waterman

Any history of the blues has to place Son House at the very pinnacle. Along with Charlie Patton, House was one of the prime exponents of the Delta blues and few recordings match the sheer emotional impact of his first sides cut for Paramount in 1930. Despite his lofty stature House's recorded output is scanty with sides cut by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941-1942 and, after a long gap, a full length album for Columbia in 1965. Dick Waterman, House's manager, put his place in blues history in perspective: "He was the mentor for both Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson, who are clearly acknowledged as two of the most influential bluesmen on not only urban blues but ultimately the modern music scene. If in his prime he had been recorded as much as Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson or Robert Johnson, he would be considered the pre-eminent artist of his time. He would have his proper appreciation."

He was born Eddie James House, Jr., on March 21, 1902, in Riverton, Mississippi a hamlet south of Clarksdale since absorbed into the town. Son House's year of birth is listed as 1902 in most sources however, Waterman believes that Son was considerably older, possibly as much as seven or fourteen years older. House’s father played horn and guitar and played in a band with some of his brothers although they played no blues. House didn't care for blues as he related later, "I just hated to see a guy with a guitar. I was too churchy!" By his accounts at the age of 15 or 20 he was preaching the gospel in various Baptist churches. He didn't pick guitar until his mid-20's when he saw a guitar player playing bottleneck on the street.

Around this time House came under the influence of Rube Lacy and James McCoy. It was the latter who supposedly taught House the songs "My Black Mama" and "Preachin’ The Blues", songs he would later record. By the late 20's House was performing around the Clarksdale area in juke joints and house parties. Even though he had launched head long into a blues career he continued to preach for awhile. The conflict between religion and blues would remain a central theme in House's life articulated in one of his signature tunes, "Preachin' The Blues."

House's career was interrupted when he shot a man dead at a house part in Lyons, MS. and was quickly sentenced to imprisonment at the notorious Parchman Farm. He ended up only serving two years of his sentence and was released in 1929 or early 1930. After hitchhiking and hoboing the rails, he made it down to Lula, MS, about twelve miles north of Clarksdale, where he met Charley Patton for the first time. The extent to which Patton and House actually played together in is uncertain and certainly their temperaments were different. Patton was described as a funny, loud mouthed boisterous showman while House was gloomy by nature and guilt-ridden about playing the blues and working in juke joints. Many of the things House would later say about Patton are better left unprinted.

In 1930, Arthur Laibley who had produced Patton’s last session for Paramount, stopped in Lula to arrange another session with Patton. Patton was famous throughout the Delta and had already recorded close to forty sides for Paramount. Patton told Laibley about House and about two other musicians Willie Brown and Louise Johnson, setting the stage for one of the blues most legendary recording sessions. The group headed to the Paramount studios in Grafton, WI, where House recorded six songs at the session: three of which were long enough to fill both sides of a 78: "Dry Spell Blues," "Preachin’ The Blues," and "My Black Mama." Two songs, "Clarksdale Moan" and "Mississippi County Farm Blues" were issued as a 78, with a lone copy surfacing just recently. In September 2005, a collector announced he had obtained the lost "Clarksdale Moan" 78 in reasonably decent condition. The details of this discovery are not known to the public as the collector has chosen to remain anonymous. On April 4, 2006, both "Clarksdale Moan" and "Mississippi County Farm Blues" were released on the collection The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of from Yazoo Records. While "Clarksdale Moan" is a previously unknown song for House, "Mississippi County Farm Blues" is an earlier (and faster) version of a song Son House later recorded at his Library of Congress recording session in 1941. The unissued test of "Walking Blues" was not found until 1985. Despite poor sales, these sides remained some of the most intense blues ever committed to record.

One of the results of this trip was a long musical friendship with Willie Brown. He and Brown played all over the Delta as well as Arkansas and Tennessee for the rest of the 1930s. He was still tight with Brown when Alan Lomax knocked on his door in 1941 to record him for the Library of Congress on a tip from Muddy Waters. House rounded up Willie Brown, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin and Leroy Williams for the session. They cut six numbers that day and next summer in July, House recorded, unaccompanied, ten more songs for Lomax. As the evidence suggests, House was still in peak form.

Son House & wife Evie, Newport Folk Festival, 1966 Photo courtesy of Dick Waterman

After these recordings House vanished for two decades not to surface for more than two decades. On June 23rd of 1964, Dick Waterman, Phil Spiro and Nick Perls found House in Rochester, NY where he had moved in 1943. In the intervening years he had worked at a series of jobs, including a porter for the New York Central Railroad and as a short order cook at a Howard Johnson’s. Waterman and his friends convinced House to relaunch his career, and the story made Newsweek Magazine. Waterman became his manager, and the guitarist Al Wilson (later of Canned Heat) helped House to relearn his old repertoire. House hadn't quite vanished without a trace, however, and apparently Alan Lomax had kept in touch with him and knew he had been living in Rochester for the past 20 years although failed to share that information with anyone.

House played the Newport Folk Festival that same year and signed with Columbia Records. The next year House recorded "Father of the Delta Blues," produced by John Hammond becoming one of the most successful recordings of the Delta blues made during the 1960s. House toured the US, playing folk festivals and coffeehouses, toured Europe and even played Carnegie Hall.

An accident in the winter 0f 1969-70 more or less ended House’s second career. In the middle of the winter, House passed out drunk in Plymouth Circle in downtown Rochester. Partially buried by a snowplow, he lay in the snow until morning. His hands were frostbitten, and he never completely recovered his dexterity. Around this time he had been asked to open to a sold out Fillmore East with Eric Clapton and Bonnie & Delaney but the accident cut this short. It would have been the biggest gig of his career. By 1976 House’s health had deteriorated even further, and he moved to Detroit where relatives could help take care for him. He died in Detroit on October 19, 1988. Dick Waterman's words provide a fitting epitaph: "If the blues were an ocean distilled...into a pond...and, ultimately into a drop..this drop on the end of your finger is Son House. It's the essence, the concentrated elixir."

The Rochester Connection

The Men Who Found Son House: Nick Perls, Dick Waterman, Son House, Phil Spiro (source: Eric von Schmidt & Jim Rooney: Baby, let me follow you down. The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years.- New York 1979)

The spirit of Son House still looms large in Rochester, the city Son called his home for over 30 years (1943 to 1976). Son came to Rochester when he got a job as a porter on the New York Central. He worked that job for 11 years before being laid off. This would become the subject of a "Empire State Express" a song he recorded for his 1965 comeback album. He also worked as a landscaper and at the time of his rediscovery he was employed at Howard Johnson's as a dishwasher and cook. According to Dick Waterman he stopped playing music in 1948 due the changing music styles and the fact that his partner Willie Brown had passed away (Brown's date of death has been listed by some as 1952). By some accounts Brown came to Rochester not long after Son but only stayed a few months because he couldn't stand the cold weather.

One of the first musicians to hang out with Son is Joe Beard, now an internationally known blues artist who still lives in Rochester, who knew him before he was rediscovered. "Son lived at 65 Grieg Street. I moved into 67... and after a few days I met Son. (Grieg St no longer exists, a victim of urban redevelopment) ...He found out I played guitar. That I had guitars and then that’s when we really started to see a lot of each other. ...Son told me all these stories about him and Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton. He told me he became a Baptist preacher. Over the years what caused that he says was all of his friends started to die off. He got scared. ...Son got out of music, he got away from music totally during the time he was there. But he always knew that his life experience with the blues and the music would always be a part of him. But he had no thoughts of ever getting back in to it again until Dick Waterman came along."

After the rediscovery local musicians came around to meet Son including a young John Mooney. "John got really involved with Son--most everybody did. Almost all of the guitar players, you know, when they learned that it was Son House you know." A few years later Mooney would play in Beard's first band called "Friends of the Blues." Among the other players in town who met and played with Son were Rockin’ Red (Fred Palmer) also a charter member of "Friends of the Blues", Aleks Disljenkovic (currently in The Trendsetters) and Ted Mosher (currently in The White Hots and Beale Street Blues Band).

Newspaper photo of Son House, and a July 14 Times-Union article about his comeback.

Son played in various venues around town including the Black Candle (later called Studio 9) and the Regular Restaurant in the Genesee Co-Op on Monroe Ave.. Photographer Mark Sampson witnessed Son played at the latter venue: "When I heard him play it was astounding. I have never heard a more powerful singer... And I'm sure I never will." The Black Candle was run by Armand Schaubroeck who now operates the world famous House of Guitars. He booked Son at the coffeehouse in the late 60's. Son was not always reliable as he recalls, "he wouldn't always show...We'd go bar to bar hunting for him. ...We find him in there and he'd jump in our car. We'd have a guitar for him to play. He'd do a show and we give him his money after. ...We get RIT students (Rochester Institute of Technology), daters, Eastman Theater crowd, real mixed. ...It was very powerful. It would blow away like a local rock group. They wouldn't have a chance to go on after him. He was center stage. ... He was powerhouse. He was the blues."

Armand has numerous amusing tales about Son. "He get all dressed up... It wa guitar buyin' day. ..Sometimes we'd show him Nationals, all metal Nationals like he used to play in the 20' and 30's. He'd go 'I'd played those back then because they were cheap.' He wanted an electric guitar. "Alot of times they were sending him expensive Nationals 'cause that's his image and tradition. ... He'd often sell them for booze money."

Son was still playing around town before he moved to Detroit and had moved from Grieg St to West Ave. Musician Aleks Disljenkovic looked him up and they played informally several times during this period. Despite nearly 30 years since Son lived in Rochester he is still fondly remembered by those who knew and those who saw him live still speak with awe at his performances.