Son House had been in the ground for over a decade when he enjoyed a rebirth through the namechecks of Jack White. The White Stripes bandleader had discovered House through the Scotland-based reissues label Document (“I did whatever I could to get hold of that stuff”) and by 1999, he had fallen sufficiently under his spell to dedicate the duo’s self-titled debut to the late Mississippi legend. “By the time I was 18,” White once reflected, “somebody played me Son House. That was it for me.”
In the 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud, White was still more effusive, dropping the needle on the holler and handclaps of Grinnin’ In Your Face and sitting in a reverential hush. “This [song] spoke to me in a thousand different ways,” he noted.
