Legendary Son House: Father of the Folk Blues

Born in Mississippi in 1902, Eddie James House, Jr.--known as "Son" throughout his life--truly was, as many have called him, the Father of the Delta Blues. Of course, Son House did not personally invent either acoustic modal blues or bottleneck slide guitar. But it can be argued that he codified what his friends and forebears had been doing into the style that became known as Delta blues, thereby directly influencing such folks as Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters.
Though Alan Lomax made some live field recordings of Son House in 1941 and 1942, the entirety of House's studio recordings consists of less than two dozen tracks recorded in 1965, after his "rediscovery" by members of the collegiate blues scene. The nine songs on DEATH LETTER were originally released on Columbia in 1965 as THE LEGENDARY SON HOUSE: FATHER OF FOLK and have been repackaged endlessly since.