Eddie "Son" House and Booker T. Washington "Bukka" White were giant figures in the annals of American music. Both were passionate purveyors of their native Mississippi delta music and of slide guitar. Both were seminal figures, not only through their association with legendary blues pioneer Charlie Patton, but also in the strong influence Mississippi blues has had on this century's music from Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters, all the way to Eric Clapton. In the early part of this century Mississippi still retained characteristics of a frontier state, physically, socially and politically. The delta region, which had only recently cleared out of the wilderness in the late nineteenth century, was a rich, fertile area that attracted black labor to share crop on the burgeoning cotton plantations. Jim Crow laws, expressly aimed at tying blacks to the lowest level of society and to the plantation system, left them little mobility or redress against the social order. Amidst this backdrop, a new type of secular music was evolving in black culture and taking center stage. Chiefly played on the recently popularized guitar, the blues quickly displaced most earlier styles and became the dominant medium for black musical expression and entertainment. It spread through Mississippi like a high water flood. This video is of prime importance. Muddy Waters called Son House one of his greatest influences and indeed this video clearly shows why.