Son House 1902-88

Author(s): Paul Oliver

Source: Popular Music , May, 1989, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1989), pp. 195-196
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/853469

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Popular Music (1989) Volume 8/2

Middle
Eight
Son House 1902-88

Paul Oliver

No one who is seriously interested in contemporary rock music is likely to deny the
importance of the blues in giving it form and expression. Yet the name of Son House,
who died on the 18 October 1988, remains known, for the most part, only to
enthusiasts of rural blues.
In Popular Music I John Cowley wrote an article 'Really the "Walking Blues": S
House, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and the development of a traditional blues
filling in one of the many pieces that make up the jigsaw of House's relationship
the blues singers of Mississippi. As the inspiration of Robert Johnson, the ill-fat
young blues singer whose recordings in 1937 influenced a generation of blu
singers, and of McKinley Morganfield who, as Muddy Waters, was the leader of t
most formidable of the sensational blues bands of the 1950s, Son House can rightl
be regarded as the father of modern blues. But he was more, for as the companion
Charley Patton when they made their historic recordings for Paramount in 1930, S
House represented a keystone in the arch which sprang from the Mississippi De
and terminated in Chicago; the arch through which two generations of roc
musicians have passed.
There were some surprising aspects to his life: he was fifteen years younger than
Patton, having been born Eddie James House Jr at Lyon, Mississippi, in March 19
As a young man he travelled as far north as St Louis and south to Louisiana; he wa
lay preacher, a farmer and tractor driver; and he served time in Parchma
penitentiary. Only a year before, in 1927, he had taken up the guitar, beginning
decade after most of his contemporaries. Yet his playing and singing epitomised t
Mississippi blues: intense hollered vocals, powerful 'heavy' voice and searin
rhythmic guitar.
In 1941 and 1942 Alan Lomax and John Work found Son House in Coahom
County and recorded him for the Library of Congress. Nothing more was heard o
him for twenty years until, in 1963, three blues enthusiasts, Dick Waterman, P
Spiro and Nick Perls traced him to Rochester, New York. An album for CBS follow
in 1965 which revealed that Son was in remarkably good shape. But nothing
record could quite prepare one for the experience of hearing him in person. In 19
he came to Britain with the American Folk Blues Festival, and three years later
made a club tour, even appearing on the BBC2's 'Late Night Line-Up'. After 1970
House seldom performed in public; he farmed a little and drank a lot, living quiet
with Evie, his wife of half a century. In these later years his health was poor but
rejoiced in his ten grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren, who paid hi
their last respects when he was buried at the funeral at the Mayflower Bapt
Church, Detroit.
Of Son House it can be truly said that we'll never hear, or know, his like again
but the memory of seeing him for the first time is unforgettable. He settled shyly on
his chair, his National guitar loose on his lap. Then he threw back his head a

195

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196 Middle Eight

suddenly hollered in a stentorian voice that seemed to rise from depths of his body.
His slide slithered down the strings of his chrome steel guitar and there was an
agonising moment of suspense as he flailed the guitar apparently aimlessly - to
produce a sound of chilling intensity. All the meaning and beauty of the blues
seemed to be captured in his performance. To have heard him in person was a
privilege without parallel.

The big get bigger

Dave Laing

The tendency towards increasing concentration of ownership in the international

record and music publishing industries has gathered momentum during 1988/9.
Among the big five companies, both WEA (Warner-Elektra-Atlantic) and EMI have
been involved in a series of takeovers while BMG, the music division of the
German-owned Bertlesmann group, has consolidated its position as owner of the
RCA label and catalogue. Meanwhile PolyGram has devoted resources to support its
parent Philips' attempt to make CD-video as successful as compact disc itself and
CBS Records, now owned by Sony, has been less spectacularly maximising sales of
Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen's latest efforts.
The most aggressive of these conglomerates has undoubtedly been WEA, so
much so that its 1988 turnover of $2.1 billion rivals that of CBS, previously the
undisputed industry leader. In an attempt to broaden its repertoire base from
American rock (Madonna, Prince, Fleetwood Mac), WEA International (now headed
by an EMI-trained Spaniard Ramon Lopez) has bought three European record
companies in the past year.
First there was the 40-year-old German company Teldec, a manufacturer and
distributor as well as a label specialising in children's music and classical recordings.
WEA intends to use Teldec as a base to enter the classical field, which Lopez thinks
will grow in importance in the 1990s as baby boomers want something more than
rock to fuel their imaginations and their CD players. The purchase of British
independent label Magnet was made primarily to secure one top artist, Chris Rea, a
gravelly rock balladeer with a growing European reputation. The Italian company
CGD Dischi was also added to the WEA empire because of its success with
indigenous pop artists like Umberto Tozzi. Interestingly, CBS itself had used a
similar strategy in the late 1960s when its first European branches were formed by
buying up local record companies.
But WEA's biggest deal was the $250 million purchase of the Chappell music
publishing company, whose catalogue contains over 250,000 songs. Founded in
London in the last century, Chappell has in recent years been owned by PolyGram
and by a consortium including veteran American publisher Freddie Bienstock
(whose Hill & Range company had prospered through handling songs for Elvis
Presley). The new Warner-Chappell company has proclaimed itself the world's
biggest music publisher but in January 1989, EMI set out to challenge WEA when it
bought SBK Entertainment, owners of the former CBS Songs publishing catalogues,
for $375 million.
For many years, EMI has been regarded as a sleeping giant of the record
industry. It has had a steady cash flow thanks to The Beatles and its ownership of
labels like Liberty-United Artists which has Fats Domino's recordings, but it has not

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