Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902[a] – October 19, 1988) was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.

He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom.

In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accompany him to a 1930 recording session for Paramount Records.

Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton's associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County.

In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax and John W. Work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University.

Wilson even played second guitar on “Empire State Express” and the harp on ”Levee Camp Moan”.

After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, "I left her hanging on the gatepost, with her father tellin' me to come back so we could plow some more."

[8] In 1927, at the age of 25, House underwent a change of musical perspective as rapid and dramatic as a religious conversion.

[12] He credited his re-examination and release to an appeal by his family, but also spoke of the intervention by the influential white planter for whom they worked.

[13] The date of the killing and the duration of his sentence are unclear; House gave different accounts to different interviewers, and searches by his biographer Daniel Beaumont found no details in the court records of Coahoma County or in the archive of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Coincidentally, the great star of Delta blues, Charley Patton, was also in virtual exile in Lula,[15] having been expelled from his base on the Dockery Plantation.

With his partner Willie Brown, Patton dominated the local market for professional blues performance.

He observed House's showmanship attracting a crowd to the café and bootleg whiskey business of a woman called Sara Knight.

[12] In 1964, after a long search of the Mississippi Delta region by Nick Perls, Dick Waterman and Phil Spiro, House was "rediscovered" in Rochester, New York working at a train station.

He had been retired from the music business for many years and was unaware of the 1960s folk blues revival and international enthusiasm for his early recordings.

[20] House performed with Wilson live, as can be heard on "Levee Camp Moan" on the album John the Revelator: The 1970 London Sessions.

On an appearance on the TV arts show Camera Three, he was accompanied by the blues guitarist Buddy Guy.

Members of the Detroit Blues Society raised money through benefit concerts to put a monument on his grave.

There are some railway noises in the background on some titles, as the store (which had electricity necessary for the recording) was close to a branch line between Lake Cormorant and Robinsonville.