Son House - Lord Have Mercy '65 (Live) EP (2025)

Son House was a towering figure in the history of Delta blues, a contemporary of Charley Patton and Robert Johnson who cut epochal recordings in the 1930s and '40s and went on to an impressive career revival after he was rediscovered in the 1960s. House's best work is among the most emotionally vivid of the country blues, with the slash and sharp strum of his guitar a powerful match for the moaning wail of his voice in his songs of love, faith, and lives gone wrong, and his original 1930s recordings for Paramount Records and his later field recordings from 1941 and 1942 for the Library of Congress can be savored on the 2004 collection A Proper Introduction to Son Hose: Delta Blues. House was also among the few blues artists of the '30s whose sides (after they were rediscovered) nearly matched the originals for emotional power and impact, and his 1965 Columbia Records album The Legendary Son House: Father of the Delta Blues was a revelatory experience for blues fans on first release. The 2003 compilation Heroes of the Blues: The Very Best of Son House includes a sampling of tracks from all three periods of his career, and 2022's Forever on my Mind made one of his first post-comeback performances available for the first time.