Forever on my mind

"The tape, which predates Son's 1965 debut album for Columbia (...), finds House on spine-chilling form with clear vocals and stunning slide guitar on tracks such as Pony Blues, Preachin' Blues and Death Letter. The re-mastering, courtesy of The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, is also superb".

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"The power, pain, and suffering of the original Delta blues from perhaps its singly most important innovator is here to be appreciated in better sound quality than it ever has. What little I remember from over fifty years ago, was the incredible, almost spiritual quality of a performer completely consumed by his music. Given that this is Son House at his peak, this is one to savor and cherish. It will likely become his legacy recording".

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"Though [producer Dan] Auerbach has cleaned up the audio, these tracks are still thrillingly spare, just House's voice and guitar as he makes his way through eight classic songs, often in versions considerably longer than would have fit on a 78 in 1931. Much of the time, he sounds as if he's barely aware that anyone is listening; the tapes lack a sense of theatricality, as if House simply strolled into the room, saw a guitar, and decided to play a few tunes. The intimacy of the recordings is electrifying, and if his vocals lack a bit of the power he summoned as a younger man, his phrasing and sense of storytelling is all there, and audible without the noise common to the few surviving copies of his Paramount recordings ... The unforced naturalism (...) demonstrates why Son House had one of the strongest post-rediscovery bodies of work during the era of the blues revival. This is the kind of music only a tiny handful of people are ever fortunate enough to witness, and Forever on My Mind allows us to share that rare privilege".

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"A previously unreleased performance from 1964: the show of a lifetime and [a] significant historical document of the Delta blues revival".

"What threads these eight songs together into a true album rather than just a compilation is the idea - the threat, the inevitability - of leaving and being left. Partly that's due to Auerbach's judicious curation, but that fear of loss animates almost all of Son House's music, if not all of the blues in general. That comes through most prominently on the title track, which opens with a stuttering guitar theme and a wave of low moans, as he ruminates on a lost lover. Perhaps it's the same woman from "Death Letter". "I gets up in the morning at the break of day/I be just hugging the pillow, honey/Where you used to lay," he sings, and no other couplet on Forever On My Mind quite captures the reality of absence so beautifully. House conveys as much joy on these songs as he does pain, telling us so many years after his death that we cannot experience one without the other".