Influence
House was the primary influence on Muddy Waters and also an important influence on Robert Johnson. It was House who, speaking to awe-struck young blues fans in the 1960s, spread the legend that Johnson had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical powers.
More recently, House's music has influenced the blues rock group The White Stripes, who covered his song "Death Letter" (also reworked by Skip James and Robert Johnson) on their album De Stijl, and later performed it at the 2004 Grammy Awards. The version on De Stijl contains five of the verses from the Son House original. The eighth verse (one of the ones that was left off) was added to the song "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" on their third album White Blood Cells.
The White Stripes incorporated sections of a traditional song Son House recorded—"John the Revelator"—into the song "Cannon" from their eponymous debut album The White Stripes. Jack White of The White Stripes has cited House's a cappella song, "Grinnin' in Your Face", as his favorite song.
Another musician deeply influenced by Son House is the slide player John Mooney, who in his teens learned slide guitar from Son House while House was living in Rochester, New York.
Several of House's songs were featured in the motion picture soundtrack of Black Snake Moan (2006).
Read more about this topic: Son House
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“The adolescent does not develop her identity and individuality by moving outside her family. She is not triggered by some magic unconscious dynamic whereby she rejects her family in favour of her peers or of a larger society.... She continues to develop in relation to her parents. Her mother continues to have more influence over her than either her father or her friends.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has “never had a chance, poor devil,” you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)
“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)