Bluesman portrait of the Day : Son House by the legendary David Gahr

 

David Gahr, Son House, Newport Folk Festival, 1966

 As noted by Gary Lucas over on his Flickennabok page, actually really well recorded!

Son House - Shetland Pony Blues

At 1:07 you can hear an actual steam-powered freight train chug past the recording studio in Klack’s Store Lake Cormorant Missippi where this classic Son House side was recorded by Alan Lomax. The makeshift studio abutted a railroad track. I played this for Don Van Vliet who remarked: “He’s singing about a Shetland pony and here comes the Iron Horse!” G.Lucas

 

 

Remembering the great Son House (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) | Don's Tunes [Facebook]

Born Eddie James House Jr. on 21 March 1902 in the Riverton community near Clarksdale, Mississippi, Son House was one of the most influential Delta bluesmen of the twentieth century. His protégés included Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) as well as a number of post-1960s blues revivalists.

House’s father was an amateur musician who played guitar as well as tuba in a local brass band. House’s parents separated when he was eight years old, and House moved with his mother and two brothers to Louisiana. Leaving school after the eighth grade, House worked temporary jobs, and by the age of fifteen he was preaching in Baptist churches. He eventually returned to the Clarksdale area to visit his father, and for several years thereafter House wandered around the Delta working as a sharecropper. Initially disliking his father’s blues music, Son House preferred church music as a teenager, singing in a choir and learning shape-note singing from an uncle. But after he realized that singing and playing the blues at various venues was an easier way to earn money than sharecropping, he began to perform. In 1928 he studied the guitar—particularly slide techniques—from widely respected Delta musician Willie Brown

House spent about two years in the second half of the 1920s imprisoned at Parchman Farm, apparently after killing a man in self-defense, though the details of the incident remain unclear. By 1930 he had returned to performing music throughout the Delta, and he met bluesman Charley Patton, who told House about the Paramount label’s interest in recording blues musicians. In May of that year House traveled to Paramount’s studio in Grafton, Wisconsin, where he made his first recordings. While few copies sold on the commercial “race records” market, House’s three double-sided Paramount 78s featured his dynamic vocal interpretations and his innovative slide guitar arrangements of blues learned from other Delta musicians, particularly Lyon bluesman James McCoy.

House’s Paramount recordings attracted the attention of folklorist Alan Lomax, who in 1941 journeyed to the Delta to record House performing blues solo and with Willie Brown and a small band. Returning to Mississippi the following year, Lomax made additional field recordings of House’s blues music. Recorded onto acetate on portable equipment and intended primarily as documentation for the Library of Congress, these recordings were not widely heard for years.

In 1943 House moved to Rochester, New York, where he lived in obscurity and stopped making music for two decades. He was rediscovered in June 1964 by three white blues aficionados, Dick Waterman, Nick Perls, and Phil Spiro, who encouraged House to resume performing. Since House had forgotten much of what he knew about guitar playing, Alan Wilson, a white guitarist and student of House’s records, demonstrated his former performing style. House soon began performing at coffeehouses and festivals, and he made new recordings of his blues repertoire for the Columbia label. In 1965 he appeared at Carnegie Hall, and he toured Europe in both 1967 and 1970. Although poor health slowed him, House continued to tour through the mid-1970s

Written by Ted Olson, East Tennessee State University 

Photo: Lynn Adler

Don's Tunes

Son House - Levee Camp Blues

JOHNNY WINTER on Open Tuning and playing Slide | GUITAR

Photo: Gai Terrell—the legendary Redferns Picture resource for music

 

Jas Obrecht: For a beginner, could you explain the advantages of playing in an open tuning versus standard tuning?

Johnny Winter: Well, when you’re playing with a slide, the advantages are that you’ve got that chord there. You can just barre the strings and you’ve got a chord to work with. That’s the advantage – that you’ve got an open chord to work with, and you can have that chord ring down in the bass notes while you play the top strings with your fingers – I do some of that. You know, I keep the bass going with my thumb and play lead with my fingers, especially if I’m playing by myself. That’s a big help. The notes are easier to go to. It’s easier to go to blues notes in those two tunings than it is if you’re just tuning to standard tuning. Duane Allman was about the best slide man at playing with a regular tuning. You just don’t get too many chords, especially if you don’t use your little finger [for the slide]. That’s pretty important.

I started out using my ring finger because it really feels weird playing with a slide on your little finger, but a guy from the Denver Folklore Society – I think his name was Dave Debetzer – he was a blues freak, and he got me my first National guitar for about a hundred-and-fifty bucks, and he really helped me a whole lot, man. He forced me to use that little finger. He said, “Man, you’re gonna be unhappy later on down the line if you don’t change.” It’s so hard to do at first.

So you were initially wearing the slide on your ring finger, like Duane did.

Yeah. That’s what feels natural at first, but when you do that, you really can’t play chords. You can fret with those free fingers if you put the slide on your little finger. You can do a lot of fretwork with those three fingers. If you put the slide on the middle, it pretty much screws you up. You can’t do much chord work that way. So I have the slide halfway up my little finger, not all the way on it, but halfway up to where I can still bend that little finger.

What were your favorite slide cuts? What would be essential for a young player to check out?

It’s good to start with someone like Son House, because Son played real simple. Robert Johnson, without a doubt, though, is the best of those Delta guys. He’s so far above everybody else that it was scary. Robert Johnson, without a doubt. Either one of those Columbia Robert Johnson albums – the first one and King of the Delta Blues. That stuff is just great. That’s really where I learned most of my first stuff. Well, actually the first slide I heard was Muddy Waters. It was off this album The Best of Muddy Waters, on Chess. And I didn’t know what it was. I remember hearing it for the first time, and at first I thought it was a steel guitar. And then I could tell for sure there was one cut on there that was just one guy playing, and he would fret the guitar sometimes and sometimes he would use the slide. I didn’t know what it was for a long time.

I just kept buying albums, and I’d hear somebody else. I don’t really remember how I finally found out what it was – I think probably from some album liner notes. But as soon as I found out what was going on, I started experimenting with different things and trying to get the right tuning.

First I was trying slide without tuning my guitar different at all, and I knew that wasn’t right. And then you just got to where you could hear it by listening over and over. You could hear this must be tuned to this chord, and I would just tune my guitar where I thought was right and then I would play along with it. I started being able to copy what was on the record, so then I figured, “Well, this must be right.” That’s the way I learned it.

Later on, after the Muddy Waters stuff, I found the Son House album on Columbia, right when he had been rediscovered and he’d just put this album out. I think it was The Legendary Son House. It was definitely on Columbia. It was right when he first got rediscovered.

©2024 Jas Obrecht. 

Photo: Gai Terrell—Redferns

source

Don's Tunes

Howlin' Wolf performs "Howlin' For My Darling" live at Newport 1966

 Here this wonder clip shared on Facebook earlier today minded me how much Wolf influenced our dear Captain Beefheart! . . . plus a cautionary tale about alcohol addiction (not Alan Lomax’s best idea to give a free bar to a whole bunch of blues legends . . . . )

Howlin' Wolf performs "Howlin' For My Darling" live at Newport 1966

In July 1966, Wolf played the prestigious Newport Folk Festival. Founded by George Wein in 1959, Newport was a showcase for traditional American music as well as the hottest young folk and blues stars. Wolf’s Newport schedule was full as he participated in a blues vocals workshop, played an afternoon set, performed on the main stage at night, and was filmed for two separate documentaries. Waiting his turn to perform at the workshop, Wolf was deeply moved by the gospel music of Reverend Pearly Brown. Wolf performed a couple of numbers on an acoustic guitar, pulling out some of his old Delta repertoire for a rapt audience. 

The highlight of the day was Wolf’s performance on the main stage. Dick Waterman recalls it vividly thirty years later. “The band is playing and Hubert is leading the band and the band is roaring away and no Wolf is in sight. This is the Newport night concert, which is eighteen thousand people, and they were up in a frenzy. And the band is playing and still no Wolf. And finally from the back left corner of the stage, Wolf enters, wearing work boots, Farmer Brown bib overalls, a long-sleeve work shirt, a white straw hat—a big, big hat. And he has a broom and he’s sweeping the stage! The band keeps playing and Wolf keeps sweeping, slowly moving towards the front, and it takes a matter of minutes for him to do this. In Newport in those days, since they put so many acts on, each act had maybe seventeen or eighteen minutes.… For somebody to be wasting their stage minutes with these antics—well the Newport people were just totally baffled. Not just baffled, but stunned. Wolf finally comes right up to the front of the stage. He’s taken three or four minutes to do this, and the crowd is in a frenzy. They’re on their feet, they’re roaring, they’re just yelling and screaming, and the band has whipped them into a frenzy! And Wolf gets right up to the front of the stage, grabs the microphone, throws down the broom, and right on the chord change sings, ‘I’m gonna get up in the mornin’—I believe I’ll dust my broom!’ He just disintegrated them. Just destroyed them—just destroyed them.” 

Taj Mahal saw Wolf’s Newport show and was inspired to wear bib overalls and a big neckerchief for years, including on the cover of his influential 1969 album Take a Giant Step. After his show on the main stage, Wolf and his band rode over to a faux juke joint that Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax had set up to film some of the festival’s black performers—Wolf, Son House, Bukka White, Pearly Brown, and Skip James. Lomax gave everyone in the room free booze to re-create a juke joint atmosphere. * Unfortunately, House, by then a desperate drunk, was in the advanced stage of alcoholism known as “wet brain,” where a single drink could overload his damaged liver. Worse, House’s manager, Waterman, was not at the filming. With no one to watch his intake, House drank up and started reeling. 

When it was his time to perform, Wolf rapped about the blues. “A lot of people’s wonderin’, ‘What is the blues?’ I hear lots of people saying, ‘The blues, the blues.’ But I’m gonna tell you what the blues is: When you ain’t got no money, you got the blues. When you ain’t got no money to pay your house rent, you still got the blues. A lot of people’s hollerin’ about, ‘I don’t like no blues.’ But when you ain’t got no money and can’t pay your house rent and can’t buy you no food, you damn sure got the blues. That’s where it’s at, let me tell you. That’s where it’s at. If you ain’t got no money, you got the blues, ’cause you’re thinkin’ evil. That’s right. Any time you thinkin’ evil, you thinkin’ ’bout the blues.

Segrest, James; Hoffman, Mark. Moanin' at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf

Here an additional note about The Wolf from the always fascinating Dangerous Minds . . . .I was scared by the sound of Howlin’ Wolf when I first heard him (about 12/13) singing, I think Smokestack Lightning which still can haunt me and it took me a long time to adjust and appreciate the greatness of the man mentioned more kindly here:

"During the American Folk Blues Festival in Newport, Howlin’ Wolf reflects on the meaning of the blues, while Delta blues peer Son House heckles him, sloshed out of his ever-lovin’ gourd. It could have been way more uncomfortable than it actually was, but Howlin’ Wolf elegantly hands House his drunken ass. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Son House, but Wolf is one of those seemingly rare aggressive, “dangerous” performers who also happened to be a really, really good person.

In additions to being a devoted husband and father (and raising his wife’s two daughters from a previous relationship), Howlin’ Wolf (real name Chester Burnett) actually attempted to support his mother as soon as he became successful. Tragically, she drove him to tears, rejecting both her son and his money for their association with “The Devil’s Music.” In a time when black musicians were almost never properly compensated, Howlin’ Wolf was a musician’s union member and managed his money incredibly well. Not only did he possess innate business savvy, he passed that knowledge on to his band members, who received health insurance as a condition of their employment. They were also required to pay union dues, but if they couldn’t afford it, Wolf would front them the money, or send extra dosh to their family back home.

It might go without saying that Howlin’ Wolf attributed much of his success to the avoidance of vice and excess, and with Son House as a cautionary tale, it’s not hard to imagine why."

Dangerous Minds

Down In The Bottom - Howlin Wolf behind the scenes at the faux Juke Joint Newport after scolding Son House (*see above notes)

Howlin’ Wolf scolding a drunk Son House in the final stages of alcoholism . . . . . . . 

Son House - Don's Tunes

 I was obsessed with Son House's 'Death Letter Blues' as a youngster and this from the always fascinating Don's Tunes on Facebook and the web is really worth a read . . . . .

 

“They came to Rochester seeking an older black man who had been a blues musician in Mississippi before World War 2,” wrote blues historian Daniel Beaumont in his book Preachin’ The Blues: The Life & Times Of Son House.

“Their search had begun with some liner notes on a record album and some mistaken information from another blues musician about the man’s whereabouts. But following a trail of tips, they had finally spoken to the man himself by telephone from Memphis two days earlier.”

The rediscovery of Delta bluesman Eddie James “Son” House Jr is one of the most fascinating tales in 20th century music. As Beaumont reports in his highly-recommended book, the search for House took blues obsessives Nick Perls – “a skinny 22-year- old New Yorker” – and his two companions, Dick Waterman  and Phil Spiro on a journey into the deep south. “The trip – long, hot and cramped – had taken the three young men from New York City to Memphis. From that city on the banks of a new-world Nile, their search had led them down into sweltering small towns and plantations of the north Mississippi Delta.”

When they did finally track down Son House, they found him living in obscurity in Rochester, New York. House had given up playing music in the early 40s when he moved to the city. He who had run with Charley Patton, mentored and inspired Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters and cut blues masterpieces My Black Mama Part 1 and Part 2. The latter provided the foundation for his best known recording Death Letter Blues cut in 1965, a song knitted into the DNA of Jack White. House was a complex character. As a preacher, he’d once shunned secular music – or the devil’s music as it seemed to southern Christians. He killed a man in 1928 and found himself in Parchman Farm, aka the Mississippi State Penitentiary. On his release, he fell in with Charley Patton and his place in blues folklore was secured.

 

-  By Jerry Gilbert( Classic Rock )

Image: Jan Persson

Don's Tunes here

One of the first great call holler blues that influenced me no end 'Death Letter Blues' from the legendary Son House . . . . possibly from a new occasional series of classic blues songs that influenced me from the age of about 13 onwards, Big Bill Bronzy, Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt et al