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

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.

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.