Pioneering American singer and slide blues guitarist, Eddie James “Son” House recorded in the 1930s and again in the 1040s for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress, but he retired from music to work for the New York Railroad. The legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil for his guitar prowess is alleged to have started with Son House. House was an obscure figure before a renewed interest in the blues saw a career revival in the 1960s and performances before audiences worldwide.

A Son House performance in Leicester, England, was described by Bob Groom in in Blues World magazine in 1967:

It is difficult to describe the transformation that took place as this smiling, friendly man hunched over his guitar and launched himself, bodily it seemed, into his music. The blues possessed him like a ‘lowdown shaking chill’ and the spellbound audience saw the very incarnation of the blues as, head thrown back, he hollered and groaned the disturbing lyrics and flailed the guitar, snapping the strings back against the fingerboard to accentuate the agonized rhythm. Son’s music is the centre of the blues experience and when he performs it is a corporeal thing, audience and singer become as one.

Ill health sidelined Son House again in the early 70s and he died, at the age of 86 in 1988. In recent years, Jack White’s advocacy for his music—the White Stripes recorded a cover of “Death Letter” and performed it on the Grammy Awards—has led a new generation of listeners to his work.
 

 
Son House explains the B-L-U-S-E: