Audio: Son House performing County Farm Blues

County Farm Blues by Son House

Library of Congress

Allan Lomax 1941 Field Sessions

Running time: 2 minutes

~~~

Country Farm Blues

Down South, when you do anything that’s wrong
Down South, when you do anything that’s wrong
Down South, when you do anything that’s wrong
They’ll sure put you down on the county farm

[Verse 2]
Put you down under a man they call “Captain Jack”
Put you under a man called “Captain Jack”
Put you under a man they call “Captain Jack”
He’ll sure write his name up and down your back

[Verse 3]
Put you down in a ditch with a great long spade
Put you down in a ditch with a great long spade
Put you down in a ditch with a great long spade
Wish to God that you hadn’t never been made

[Verse 4]
On a Sunday the boys’ll be lookin’ sad
On a Sunday the boys’ll be lookin’ sad
On a Sunday the boys’ll be lookin’ sad
Just wonderin’ about how much time they had

Edward James “Son” House Jr. (1902 – 1988) was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing.

After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. 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.

Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell and did not lead to national recognition. Locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Patton’s associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was a formative influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. 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. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, and gave up music.

In 1964, House was rediscovered and encouraged to return to music by figures such as Alan Wilson, co-founder of the band Canned Heat. The following year, House released Father of Folk Blues (1965). He relearned his repertoire and established a career as an entertainer, performing for young, mostly white audiences in coffeehouses, at folk festivals and on concert tours during the American folk music revival, billed as a “folk blues” singer. He recorded several albums and some informally taped concerts have also been issued as albums. In 2017, his single “Preachin’ the Blues” was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. [bio adapted from Wiki]