📍Robinsonville, MS 38664, USA
1930 – 1943“I was born Eddie James House Jr. in Mississippi, near Clarksdale, around 1902, and as a young man I was a Baptist preacher, and I thought the blues was the devil's music. But in my mid-twenties I heard a man playing slide guitar with a bottleneck, and I couldn't resist, and I learned to play. Around 1930 I came to Robinsonville, in the flat cotton country of the northern Delta near the Mississippi River, where I worked on the plantations, drove a tractor and played the blues at night. In 1930 Charley Patton took me, Willie Brown and the pianist Louise Johnson to Grafton, Wisconsin, to record for Paramount, and I cut songs like Preachin' the Blues and My Black Mama, but they sold poorly in the Depression. Back in Robinsonville, I played with Willie Brown at juke joints, house parties and fish fries all through the 1930s. A young fellow named Robert Johnson used to follow us around, pestering us to let him play, and he wasn't very good at first, but when he came back after a time away, he could play better than any of us. I still preached when the spirit called me, then played the blues on Saturday nights. In 1941 and 1942 Alan Lomax recorded me for the Library of Congress near Robinsonville. In 1943 I moved to Rochester, New York, and gave up music for years, until in 1964 young blues fans found me there. I recorded again, Father of Folk Blues, and played at the Newport Folk Festival, and my music, full of preaching and passion, inspired Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and the White Stripes.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today