Monday, March 21 will mark the 120th year since the birth of Edward James “Son” House Jr. in Lyon, Mississippi, just north of Clarksdale. And just in time to celebrate one of the most stirring voices in blues history, today witnesses the release an album of previously unheard recordings by House on Easy Eye Sound, Forever On My Mind.
The bluesman’s distinctive vocals, paired with guitar licks that feel like he clawed them out of the earth itself, won House much acclaim during the blues Renaissance of the 1960s, when many artists were brought out of obscurity. After Folkways Records re-released House’s original 1930s tracks on Blues from the Mississippi Delta in 1963, Columbia Records made new studio recordings for its 1965 album, Father of Folk Blues, and House’s profile grew exponentially. He was even featured on the cover of Newsweek at the time.
But Forever On My Mind represents the time in between those two records, when Son House was rediscovering himself. In 1964, blues enthusiasts Dick Waterman, Nick Perls, and Phil Spiro tracked House down in Rochester, New York, but the then 62-year-old musician had not performed for decades. Yet he was persuaded, under Waterman’s management, to undertake a series of performances at folk music festivals and college campuses around the country that year.
After one such performance at Indiana’s Wabash College was recorded, the tapes were given to Waterman, and he sat on them for decades before Easy Eye Sound acquired them (along with many other tapes from Waterman’s collection). Now, released on the new album, they are a revelation.
Notably, the recordings transcend the limitations of most live performances on tape, being devoid of crowd noise, banter or other distractions. They sound as intimate as studio recordings, yet with a rawness and spontaneity that outshine the Columbia sessions of five months later.
If you’ve thrilled at the rugged descending bass figures of House’s “Empire State Express” from the Columbia album, listen to the version here for a rendition even more gutsy, as the guitarist’s hands seem to pull the notes from stone, his voice testifying with spiritual fervor.
The same could be said for nearly all these tracks, even if other versions have been known for years. Five of the eight songs heard on Forever on My Mind were represented in other forms on House’s Columbia LP. Another two songs, his versions of Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues” and the gospel blues standard “Motherless Children,” were recorded by the label but went unreleased until 1992.
The eighth number heard on the Easy Eye Sound release, the titular “Forever on My Mind,” was never attempted in a recording studio, though there is film footage of him playing it at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. The version heard on the new album borrows from Willie Brown’s classic “Future Blues” and House’s own “Louise McGhee,” true to the improvisatory Delta blues tradition.
All in all, the album reflects a sharp musical focus that diminished in House’s later concert appearances and recordings. Waterman notes in a press release that “as [Son House] toured in ’65 and ’66 and ’67, he developed stories — they were self-deprecating stories, with humor and things like that. So, he became sort of an entertainer. But these first shows in ’64 were the plain, naked, raw Son House. This was just the man and his performance. He didn’t have any stories or anything to go with it.”
For Easy Eye Sound founder Dan Auerbach (of the Black Keys), this release has a personal dimension. “Easy Eye Sound makes blues records,” he notes, “and not many people make blues records anymore. This record continues where we started off, with our artists Leo Bud Welch and Jimmy ‘Duck’ Holmes and Robert Finley. It also is part of my history — some of the first blues music I heard was Son House. I was raised on his Columbia LP, Father of Folk Blues. My dad had that album and would play it in the house when I was a kid, so I know all those songs by heart.”
Hearing Waterman’s tapes for the first time, Auerbach was galvanized. “He sounds like he’s in a trance, and his singing is so nuanced here. He’s very playful with his phrasing, just right on the money with his singing and playing. It sounds so right to me — top form Son House.”