Forever On My Mind (Remastered) Son House

• 1Forever On My Mind05:36
• 2Preachin' Blues05:16
• 3Empire State Express04:30
• 4Death Letter05:52
• 5The Way Mother Did03:40
• 6Louise McGhee06:44
• 7Pony Blues04:48
• 8Levee Camp Moan06:38
• Total Runtime43:04

Info for Forever On My Mind (Remastered)

A new Son House album of previously unreleased recordings from the legendary “Father Of The Delta Blues” features the never before recorded track, “Forever On My Mind.” The album comes from noted blues manager and historian Dick Waterman’s archives which were the first upon Son House’s 1964 re-discovery. Restored to remarkable clarity, by producer Dan Auerbach for Easy Eye Sound, these recordings represent the earliest recordings of House upon his return to the limelight after 20+ years away.

"What threads these eight songs together into a true album rather than just a compilation is the idea – the threat, the inevitability – of leaving and being left. Partly that’s due to Auerbach’s judicious curation, but that fear of loss animates almost all of Son House’s music, if not all of the blues in general. That comes through most prominently on the title track, which opens with a stuttering guitar theme and a wave of low moans, as he ruminates on a lost lover. Perhaps it’s the same woman from “Death Letter”. “I gets up in the morning at the break of day/I be just hugging the pillow, honey/Where you used to lay,” he sings, and no other couplet on Forever On My Mind quite captures the reality of absence so beautifully. House conveys as much joy on these songs as he does pain, telling us so many years after his death that we cannot experience one without the other." (Stephen Deusner, uncut.co.uk)

Son House, guitar, vocals

Digitally remastered

Son House
Eddie James “Son” House (1902-1988) plumbs the emotional depth of the blues perhaps more than any other Delta blues artist. A preacher at times, a barrelhousing bluesman at others, House was fiercely torn between the sacred teachings of the church and the secular lure of the blues life. House, who lived in the Robinsonville-Lake Cormorant area in the 1930s and early ’40s, was a major influence on both Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.

Son House is regarded as one of the preeminent blues artists, but during his early career in the Delta, his renown was largely confined to local jukehouse audiences. He later attained international prominence during the 1960s “blues revival” through passionate,trance-like performances that highlighted his aggressive guitar style. He would occasionally rise from his chair to sing spirited a cappella gospel songs.

House was born near Lyon in Coahoma County on March 21, 1902, or by some accounts years earlier. Through his association with Delta blues legend Charley Patton, House first recorded for the Paramount label in 1930, though sales were minimal in the Depression era. Like other Robinsonville-area blues artists, including Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Brown, House performed mostly at weekend suppers and dances held at sharecroppers’ houses. Tunica County locals have recalled House living and working on the Harbert, Tate, and Cox plantations, though he preferred to sing or preach. When the spirit called, he would preach at various churches, only to resume his nightlife as a bluesman.

House was a tractor driver on the R. E. Neunlist plantation in 1941 when he was recorded for a Fisk University-Library of Congress study led by Alan Lomax and John Work III. On September 3, they recorded House, Willie Brown, Fiddlin’ Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams at Clack Store,a commissary and train station that stood at this site. (A chugging locomotive can be heard on the recordings.) Despite problems with local authorities, Lomax later recalled, “Of all my times with the blues, this was the best one.”A second Library of Congress session in Robinsonville in 1942 would be House’s last recording in Mississippi.

In 1964 a group of blues aficionados, including Dick Waterman, drove to Robinsonville to look for House, only to learn he had long retired from music and had moved in 1943 to Rochester, New York. His subsequent “rediscovery” was reported in Newsweek, and Waterman would manage House’s comeback career, often booking him as the closing act at festivals. The most notable of the albums House recorded was the 1965 Columbia LP Father of Folk Blues. House performed little after the early ‘70s, and from 1976 until his death on October 19, 1988, he lived in Detroit with his wife Evie, whom he had married in Robinsonville in 1934. He is buried in Detroit. (Mississippi Blues Commission)

This album contains no booklet.