Son House — Clarksdale / Lyon, Mississippi

Eddie James 'Son' House Jr. played and lived in the Lyon and Robinsonville areas of Coahoma and Tunica Counties in the 1930s — the Delta communities where his music and his towering personality had their most decisive influence on the young Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, both of whom watched him play and were shaped by his raw, emotionally intense slide guitar style. Son House recorded for Paramount Records in 1930, producing a small number of sides that are now considered foundational documents of the Delta blues. He was already a fully-formed master by then, having developed his style in the churches and juke joints of the Delta.

House is one of the great figures in American music — a preacher who loved whiskey and the blues and could never fully reconcile the two, a guitarist of extraordinary power who played with a ferocity that seemed to come from somewhere beyond ordinary technique. His key recordings — 'Preachin' Blues,' 'My Black Mama,' 'Death Letter' — are raw and shattering in a way that most recorded music is not. Like Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt, he was rediscovered by folk revival researchers in the 1960s (found in Rochester, New York, in 1964) and spent his final active years performing at festivals and recording for Columbia. He died in Detroit in 1988.

A Mississippi Blues Trail marker in the Clarksdale/Lyon area acknowledges House's presence in the Delta during his formative and peak years. The specific communities where he played — Robinsonville, Lyon, Lula — are in the flat Delta farmland of Tunica and Coahoma Counties. The area around Robinsonville is also associated with Robert Johnson, who was known to have followed House from venue to venue in his teens, absorbing everything he could before his own mysterious transformation into the master guitarist he became.