New biography looks back at nearly forgotten music legend Son House

Susan Whitall/ Detroit News Music Writer

The Motor City has been home to more than a few blues, jazz, R&B and rock musicians, but for several years in the 1960s, a blues giant lived here in a modest apartment on Second Avenue.

Son House was one of the original generation of pre-World War II blues masters, born in Mississippi in 1902, a singer/guitarist active in the blues scene in the late '20s and early '30s. After a career revival in the '60s, by 1976 he ended up in Detroit, where, ill and hazy of mind, he lived out his waning years with wife Evie. He died in 1988 and is buried in Mt. Hazel Cemetery on Detroit's west side.

Dick Waterman, who managed House's second career, cherishes the memory of his music. "Son House was the very essence of the blues," he says. "If you took a sea of blues emotion and distilled it down to a lake and then to a pond, then to a tub and finally to a drop on the tip of your finger, that would be Son House. He was an art form in its purest state."

Now a new biography, "Preachin' the Blues: The Life and Times of Son House" (Oxford University Press) written by Daniel Beaumont, attempts to piece together the bluesman's tangled, mysterious past.

The author had been a fan of House's since he was a teenager, but "it was after moving to Rochester (N.Y.) and getting to know (blues musician) Joe Beard that I got into the story," says Beaumont, 59.

Beard also was a former Mississippian and blues guitarist, working as a superintendant in 1964 at the same Rochester apartment building where House lived. House told Beard stories about his tough life and musical adventures, mentioning names like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. It wasn't namedropping, Beard realized — this guy was the real deal.

Years later, he related those stories to an intrigued Beaumont. "I began to realize, it's not all gone … there's a real story left here, on Son House's life," Beaumont says. "It's a really compelling story from a narrative standpoint, apart from his importance to blues musicians. It was a remarkable life of ups and downs."

Not getting his due

In the 1920s, House took up both preaching and the blues at about the same time in rural Mississippi, and his life embodied the conflict between those two worlds. He never seemed entirely at ease in either one.

His music hasn't been as celebrated in the last few decades as Robert Johnson's. As a teenager, Johnson tagged around after House and Charley Patton in Mississippi, begging them to teach him their songs. Watching the wonderful 1960s-era TV clips of House available on YouTube, it's hard to understand why he was so eclipsed.

Beaumont cites a small group of 1960s blues fans who anointed Johnson the father of the blues. "They mythologized (Johnson)," says Beaumont, who scorns the oft-cited story that Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of highways 61 and 49 (in Mississippi) to earn musical immortality .

"(Johnson) died young (at age 27) and therefore he couldn't talk back. He became a screen on which they could project their fantasies. There's been so much nonsense written about him. If you asked (House) about Johnson selling his soul to the devil, nothing would make him clam up faster."

Many high-profile rock musicians — among them Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin — helped stoke the Johnson legend. But House has his own high-profile musician admirer in Detroit's own Jack White and the White Stripes, who recorded a molten version of his song "Death Letter Blues."

In the documentary film "It Might Get Loud," White declares House's song "Grinnin' in Your Face" to be his favorite record of all time. "This spoke to me in a thousand different ways," White said. "I didn't know that you could do that to singing and clapping, and it meant everything, everything about rock and roll, about expression, creativity and art. One man against the world, in one song."

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110809/ENT04/108090303/New-biography-looks-back-at-nearly-forgotten-music-legend-Son-House#ixzz1UeFCigIb