Thursday, January 28, 2010  Rochester, NY -  I had been a blues fan for some time before I realized how important Eddie “Son” House was to American music. For a long time, I was also unaware that House — perhaps the most crucial architect of the blues form and its baby, rock ‘n’ roll — lived in Rochester for 33 years.
 

            Actually, very few people in Rochester knew that House lived here, that he left the steamy Mississippi delta and the oppression of Jim Crow in 1943 to come to Rochester, that he grew to love his adopted hometown.
 

            Much of House’s undeserved anonymity sprang from the relatively small popular interest in the blues. Over the decades, Black America — especially young African-Americans — abandoned the blues for the ever-evolving popular music at the time, from rhythm and blues to rock ‘n’ roll to soul to funk to hip hop. By the time House finally left Rochester in 1976, the blues were almost an embarrassment to the modern black population, a reminder of the years of segregation and subservience it provoked. The blues was music for the old folks, the ones who subjected themselves to institutional racism instead of fighting it.
 

            White culture, meanwhile, either ignored the blues (at best) or thought it was devil music (at worst). Whites didn’t truly accept the blues until the 1960s, when the interest in acoustic folk music led young whites to classic country bluesmen like House, Leadbelly, Skip James and others. By the late 60s, a whole new generation of white British rockers —from the Rolling Stones to Eric Clapton to Led Zeppelin — had embraced the type of electric blues proffered by greats like Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker.
 

            But even then, by the 1970s most of White America, like their black counterparts, abandoned the blues, this time for straight up rock. Younger and younger generations of white music fans became unaware that Zeppelin ripped off “Whole Lotta Love” from Muddy Waters (among other musical thefts perpetrated by that wholly overrated band) or that Janis Joplin was hugely influenced by classic blues and soul singers like Bessie Smith, Etta James and Erma Franklin (whose “Piece of My Heart” Joplin famously covered). By the 1980s the blues had simply become a niche music genre in the U.S.
 

            But on top of that, even many the few blues fans that still existed didn’t know who Son House was. They knew about legends like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, and they knew that that pair directly inspired whole generations of rock ‘n’ rollers, from Chuck Berry to Keith Richards to Ozzy Osbourne.
 

But blues fans had no idea that House was the one who personally taught Johnson and Waters how to sing and play the blues. They didn’t know that without Son House, rock ‘n’ roll — a quintessentially American art form — probably wouldn’t have evolved the way it did, that the multitudinous branches of the rock ‘n’ roll tree — from soul to hip hop, from rockabilly to heavy metal — might not exist without Son House.
 

And so Son House lived in obscurity in Rochester for more than three decades. Even when several devoted fans tracked him from the Delta to his modest house on Greig Street in 1964 and helped bring him back into the blues spotlight for a few years, House stayed under the radar in Rochester. He eventually grew more comfortable with the city and his return to music that he became a regular on the local bar and café circuit that included gigs at places like the Genesee Co-op and the Wine Press.
 

Through that modest concert schedule, House became friends with many members of Rochester’s small blues circle. A few years ago, when I wrote an article for Blues Revue magazine about Son House’s time in Rochester, I had the opportunity to interview many of those Rochester artists — John Mooney (who’s now relocated to New Orleans), Aleks Disljenkovic, Ted Mosher and the godfather of Rochester blues, Joe Beard. To those blues acolytes, House was everything.
 

“To many Rochesterians,” I wrote in Blues Revue, “House was just another old black guy. But to Rochester’s small population of blues fanatics, he was simply the Master, a living legend whose performances still rattled windows and sent shivers up the spine.”

Disljenkovic told me about the first time he met Son House, when he trekked to Danforth Towers (another House residence), saw House sitting on a chair near the security door and delighted as House broke, unprompted, into one of his favorite songs, “Grinnin’ in Your Face,” on the spot.
 

Mosher related how House required him and other fans to bring alcohol with them when they visited him. “He liked his beer in quarts, and he liked it warm,” Mosher told me. “We had to get it from the shelf, not the cooler.”
 

Then Mooney told me about the first time he jammed with the blues legend at House’s home, when House almost literally blew the youngster away. “When he opened his mouth to sing,” Mooney related, “he was louder than anything I’ve ever heard. The windows were literally rattling.”
 

Then there was Beard, a former neighbor of House’s whom the legend took under his wing and taught how to play guitar. Beard told me about how House — a one-time Baptist minister — worried about going to hell for playing the blues. He related how much of a regular guy House was, how he was “a real gentleman. He was a wonderful person.” Beard even revealed that his idol at times let alcohol get the best of him, a fact that only humanized the living legend even more.
 

House left Rochester in 1976 for Detroit, where he died in 1988. Since he departed for the Midwest, and continuing after his death, the Rochester print media have done a fairly good job of trying to remind the city that a legend roamed among them for 33 years; the Democrat & Chronicle and City Newspaper have published multiple stories over the last several decades.
 

In addition, local blues enthusiasts have done their part to keep House’s memory and legacy alive; for the last three years, fans have sponsored a fundraiser called “Hot Blues for the Homeless: A Tribute to Son House,” held at Water Street Music Hall.
 

But even with all those efforts, a man who so monumentally contributed to the last 80 years of American music is still unknown in Rochester. A lot of that is assuredly due to the still-limited popularity of the blues.
 

But much of House’s obscurity stems directly from the lack of official recognition from local and state governmental bodies, none of which have done anything at all to formally recognize House and his life here. House’s Greig Street home was razed long ago, to be replaced by more modern development in the Corn Hill neighborhood. Now, no historical placard or sign marks the spot; Corn Hill residents and the world at large walk by the location with no clue about who lived there.
 

A few years ago, I, Mosher, Disljenkovic and a few other fans launched an effort to get a sign or plaque erected on Greig Street in honor of Son House. We gathered for a handful of meetings at The Keg and other hangouts and brainstormed, but nothing came of it. I enlisted City Councilman Adam McFadden — who himself at first didn’t know Son House was — and he did his best to get things moving in the Byzantine bureaucracy of city government, but the effort fizzled.
 

And we’re not the only ones who tried; other devotees and committed fans have tried to scrape up support for formal recognition of House, but to no avail.
 

So yes, I guess this article is an open letter to city and state officials, a plea for the formal recognition of a man who truly deserves it. I know the mayor and City Council have a slew of other issues to deal with (including Bob Duffy’s harebrained and illegal effort to take over the city school system), but it doesn’t have to be much. Maybe a small historical marker on Greig Street, with maybe an official ceremony, maybe even a little music from local bluesmen and women.
 

Rochester has done an excellent job of recognizing other local musical heroes, including Cab Calloway and (ugh!) Lou Gramm, but their influence and legacy simply pale in comparison to House’s importance.

(Let’s face it: Much of Calloway’s fame is due to the Blues Brothers movie, while Foreigner? Please.)
 

So now it’s time for our civic leaders to finally, at long last, recognize Son House. The fact that they have so far failed to do so is shameful and insulting and ignorant and disrespectful. It’s about time that changed.