by Son House List Price:$9.00 Our Price:$9.00 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Product Details
Media: Audio CD
Release Date: Tuesday, June 30, 1998
Label: Sony
Average Customer Review: 5 Based on 12 reviews.
Sales Rank: 2379
Tracks
1.
Pony Blues
2.
Downhearted Blues
3.
Levee Camp Moan
4.
Sundown
5.
Grinning in Your Face
6.
Preachin' Blues
7.
Empire State Express
8.
John the Revelator
9.
Louise Mcghee
10.
Pearline
11.
Death Letter
12.
Preachin' Blues
Editorial Review
This Columbia Legacy reissue of the 1965 release is one of the few recordings available of one of the blues' founding fathers. It contains some of his best songs, which have unsurprisingly become classics of the Delta blues genre: "Death Letter," "Preachin' Blues," "Levee Camp Moan," "Pony Blues," and "Downhearted Blues" are all here. Though not as comprehensive as Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions, this CD is an excellent introduction to this seminal artist's work, revealing the creativity, passion, skillful guitar playing, and rich singing that helped form a whole new kind of music. --Genevieve Williams
Top Customer Reviews
Rating:
5 Son House Blew Me Away...
For me, this was one of those rare CD's that from the first play became an instant favorite. I had heard of Son House, of course, but had never heard him. I have played this CD about a hundred times since I bought it a month ago (my wife is about to have me put away...) It is absolutely incredible. I have never heard anything like Son House.I have quite a few blues discs but this one, more than any other, really moved me. If I could only keep one, this would be it.
Rating:
4 the master of the delta blues style
Son House taught Robert Johnson the slide blues. Son House taught Muddy Waters. When Son House started performing at Blues festivals again in the mid 1960s, Muddy Waters would tell all his band members to be quiet and pay attention when the man played because even compared with Muddy, this was the real deal.Son House is the real deal. Listen and learn
Rating:
5 Raw and captivating - voice of lonely soul
There is so much built on blues out there, so much derived from it, that it is easy to forget where it all began. Son House is so raw, so unaffected by technical tricks or crafty ideas, so far from any pose, pretence or stereotypical imagery of show business that you feel actually privileged to be allowed to come into contact with his singing.It is like entering an empty temple in an unfamiliar country: you have seen some of the signs, you have some of the knowledge about the faith, but the experience is new and humbling.Yes, humbling is the word. If loneliness had a voice, it would be the voice of Son House.
Rating:
5 This is Blues before electricity
Bought this CD on a whim to add some flavor to my collection for the right price. This guy envokes the flavor of blues with every word and guitar strum. You can imagine this guy playing on the porch or around a campfire late into a Saturday night before a mesmerized crowd. This is blues with a passion. Truly an American asset. God bless Son House for not minding people grinning in his face.
Rating:
5 Amazing
This is as good as it gets, performance, playing, content, it's all here. Bone-chilling slide, and vocals that'll stand the hair up on the back of your neck. Add songs like "Death Letter Blues", "Preachin' Blues", and "Grinning In Your Face", and you get the musical equivalent of time travel. For people new to blues, stop here first before going on to Robert Johnson. He learned a lot from Son House.
Rating:
5 Short but sweet
Well, maybe "sweet" isn't the right word, but Columbia/Legacy's "The Original Delta Blues" is a really fine distillation of the label's double-disc set "Father Of The Delta Blues", containing 11 highlights from that comprehensive overview of blues legend Eddie "Son" House's 60s recordings. These 55 minutes of music feature Son House and his National steel guitar, which he played with a slide, and Columbia have managed to include all of House's essential 60s songs. The powerful a capella spiritual "John The Revelator" is here, as is the slashing slide guitar workout "Pearline", the sarcastic "Preachin' Blues", the bitterness of "Grinnin' In Your Face", and the fantastic 9-+-minute "Levee Camp Moan" with Canned Heat's Alan Wilson playing great harmonica fills behind House's clanging, percussive guitar playing.And then there's the awesome, razor-edged "Death Letter" ("I got a letter this morning / say, what d'y'reckon it read? / Said hurry, hurry, 'cause the gal you love is dead"). Music journalist Ted Drozdowski of the Boston Phoenix once wrote something like this about House: "The voice of the great Son House not only sounds as though it could split the earth asunder, it is also the voice of a soul utterly alone".I couldn't have said it better myself. Which is why I steal Mr Drozdowski's line.
Rating:
5 texace on the Original Delta Blues - Son House
The is the real deal. Put this on your cd player with Bukka White, Walter Jacobs, Frank Frost, Muddy, Elmore James on random play and sit back. It don't get no better than this. Born and raised on piney woods and cajun rice between Leesville and Ville Platte, Louisiana in the 50's. Son House is in the same league with Bukka White.
Rating:
5 Not just blues, a history lesson
The more I study the forces that bound together the deeply American, and beautifully unique cultures of African Americans since the Civil War, I find myself referring to the Blues more and more. Son House, despite this recording being made in the 1960's, was a master story teller of an earlier era for the Southern United States; one divided by a still-bitter southern aristocracy and a young culture of black Americans struggling to write their own poetry that would come to define what it is to be a free black American. Son House influenced greats like Robert Johnson, another great story-teller, and more popularly driven Muddy Waters and others. I, like so many others, love to listen to blues guitar, and House plays one of the meanest, dirtiest, most hauntingly beautiful slide guitars ever recorded. However, listen to the man, and the story he is telling all of us with each sentence of every song. THIS is culture. THIS is history. THIS is the Blues. Accept no substitutes....you might just learn a thing or two.
Rating:
5 Great second act...
This was part of Columbia/Legacy's endless recycling of their back catalog. Actually, it's pretty slick marketing (before the so-called "year of the blues," no less) to bring together pithy one disc collections of the best known blues musicians on their roster and then put them out for a bargain price. Son House was one of the most famous of the original bluesmen, the one who had a young Robert Johnson sitting at his feet to learn from the best.Young white scholars and musicians like John Fahey traveled through the south in the early 1960's searching for the music of the pre-war blues and the men and women that made it and one of the musicians that they helped to prominence on the folk blues circuit was Son House. House hadn't recorded for more than 25 years when this music was committed to tape in 1965, but you would hardly know it. Of all the "rediscovered" musicians, Son House was the one who kept the most passion of his earlier music, whether it be the a capella of "Grinnin' in Your Face" or "John the Revelator" or the intense slide guitar of "Death Letter" and his own epic "Preachin' the Blues."While these may be a touch behind the epochal recordings House made in the 30's and 40's, they have their own special magic. It's ironic that although Johnson gets all the print, his mentor has had the last laugh with one of those rare "second acts" in American music.
Rating:
5 This Is The BLUES!!!
When you listen to this you feel like you have been transported to the Mississippi Delta. So many great songs and Death Letter gets it started perfectly. Everytime I hear Louise Mcgee I can almost picture Son riding in a box car down a lonely railroad track in the dead of night with his guitar pining for Louise. That may sound corny but that just gives you an idea of how powerful these songs are. John the Revelator, Levee Camp Moan, Sundown, Pony Blues are also great. Hell, there all great. If you are just getting into the blues, specifically the delta blues you have to have this. This and Robert Johnsons King of the Delta Blues Singers vol.1 & 2(I say these volumes because I think the sound quality is superior on these two as compared to the set)is mandatory.
