SON HOUSE
“I wanna be a Baptist preacher, so I don’t have to work”
Forever On My Mind
EASY EYE SOUND
WHEN Son House returned to performing in the 1960s, he played “Death Letter” so often it became his signature tune. It was a highlight of every setlist, and sometimes he’d run through it multiple times during a show, as though something within the song eluded him. He sang it like he had to puzzle something out or find some dark secret at the song’s core, which made every performance sound slightly different. He would invert the guitar riff, reorder the verses, change the lyrics, borrow from different sources, vary the tempo: sometimes fast and jumpy, sometimes slow and languorous. The most popular version, which
