Before his death in 1988, the legendary bluesman Son House only made it as far as Grafton, Wisconsin, recording at Paramount. Sunday, July 16, at Acoustic Fest, House finally made it all the way to Manitowoc through the incredible performance of John Hammond.
Hammond has spent 45 years playing the blues from all of the past masters, channeling their songs, styles, emotions, energy, and times. Near the end of his headlining set in Washington Park, Hammond brought Son House to Manitowoc by letting loose the fast jump rhythm of House’s “Preaching the Blues.” It was as if House himself was here as the stage lights flashed off Hammond’s National Steel guitar.
House was born in Mississippi somewhere around the turn of the twentieth century and became one of the most influential country bluesmen, teaching Robert Johnson a thing or two about playing slide guitar. “Preaching the Blues” tells the story of the spiritual challenge House faced when discovering the blues.
House had been brought up in a Baptist church which emphasized needing a personal experience of the Holy Spirit. Having finally had such an experience, House became a preacher. However, the song says coyly, “I wanna be a Baptist preacher, just so I won’t have to work.” The blues, women, and alcohol were a heavy temptation for House, and he had trouble fully dedicating himself to the church. As House had been taught, the church had no room for the blues, and so he sang, “The blues come along, and they blowed my spirit away.”
The blues are raw with emotion conjured up from life’s pains and pleasures. If Son House hadn’t been taught to stress the personal experience as the basis of his faith, perhaps there would have been room for both faith and the blues, the Holy Spirit and the combative spirit of the world.
One verse of “Preaching the Blues” hints at what House needed: an outside God for the internal temptations—“Oh, I’d-a had religion, Lord, this every day/But the women and whiskey, well, they would not set me free.” The Christian faith seems to have given House hope until the internal struggles with sin started to become louder than his internal spiritual experience.
In “Preaching the Blues,” House prays to an outside God who has power over things that the heart cannot defeat. Through Hammond’s playing on Sunday night, “Preaching the Blues” resonated with how House and many bluesmen were looking to hold onto some kind of hope outside of themselves. Their preachers may not have given them this direction, but the bluesmen certainly were crying out for Jesus who saves us from the internal blues with His external Gospel.
This article is reprinted with kind permission from the Manitowoc Herald-Times Reporter, Saturday, July 22, 2006. www.htrnews.com John Hammond picture courtesy of Sugar Magnolia Photography.
