Alan Wilson (musician)

Wilson played House's old recordings from 1930 and 1943 for him and demonstrated them on guitar to revive House's memory.

In high school, Wilson studied James' 1931 recordings with great ardor.

Some of his first singing attempts took place behind a closed bedroom door; and when a family member overheard him, he was embarrassed.

Wilson eventually perfected the high tenor for which he would become known.

Alan Christie Wilson (July 4, 1943 – September 3, 1970), nicknamed "Blind Owl", was an American musician, best known as the co-founder, leader, co-lead singer, and primary composer of the blues band Canned Heat.

He sang and played harmonica and guitar with the group live and on recordings.

Wilson was the lead singer for the group's two biggest U.S. hit singles: "On the Road Again" and "Going Up the Country".

Alan Christie Wilson was born on July 4, 1943, to John (Jack) Wilson (1914–2000), a bricklayer, and Shirley Bingham (1922–2011), an artist.

He grew up in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Massachusetts.

He had an older sister Darrell and was of English, Scottish, and German descent.

His parents divorced when he was 3 and both later remarried.

Wilson was highly intelligent, setting him apart from his peers.

As a result, he was often bullied by his schoolmates.

His father Jack enjoyed ham radio operation.

Alan became involved as a child but soon turned his interest to music after his stepmother Barbara bought him a jazz record.

Some of Wilson's first efforts at performing music publicly came during his teen years when he learned trombone, teaching himself the instrumental parts from the aforementioned jazz record.

Later he formed a jazz ensemble with other musically oriented friends from school called Crescent City Hot Five.

Wilson was into traditional New Orleans music, and later, classical European and Indian music.

He was also on the high school tennis team.

Eventually, Wilson quit trombone.

Around the same time Wilson developed a fascination with blues music after a friend played a Muddy Waters record for him, The Best of Muddy Waters.

Inspired by Little Walter, he took up harmonica, and soon after the acoustic guitar after hearing a John Lee Hooker record.

Some of Wilson's other major influences included Skip James, Robert Johnson, Son House, Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Bukka White.

The early 1960s saw a "rediscovery" of pre-war blues artists by young, white blues enthusiasts, including Mississippi John Hurt, Booker White, Skip James and Son House.

After graduating from Arlington High School in 1961, he majored in music at Boston University.

His academics earned him a National Merit Scholarship and the F.E. Thompson Scholarship Fund from the Town of Arlington.

Wilson developed into a dedicated student of early blues, writing a number of articles for the Broadside of Boston newspaper and the folk-revival magazine Little Sandy Review, including a piece on bluesman Robert Pete Williams.

Anxious to play music rather than study it, Wilson quit school after only a year and a half.

To make ends meet, Wilson worked with his father as a bricklayer, and occasionally gave harmonica and guitar lessons.

In 1962, Wilson met Harvard student and fellow blues enthusiast David Evans in a record store, and the two began playing as a team around the Cambridge coffeehouse folk-blues circuit, with Evans on vocals and guitar, Wilson on harmonica and occasionally second guitar.

The two played a repertoire of mostly classic-era blues covers.

Heavily influenced by Skip James, Wilson eventually began singing in a similar way to James' high pitch.

In 1964, blues enthusiast Tom Hoskins located John Hurt, who at the time had been working on a local farm in his native Mississippi.

Hoskins persuaded Hurt to come north to Cambridge for a gig.

Wilson was invited to accompany Hurt on harmonica.

Said Hoskins, "He was brilliant."

Son House, considered by Wilson to be one of the greatest singers in blues history, was located in Rochester, NY in 1964, but it was evident that House had forgotten his songs due to his long absence from music.

House recorded Father of Folk Blues for Columbia Records in 1965.

Two of the selections on the set featured Wilson on harmonica and guitar.

In a letter to Jazz Journal published in the September 1965 issue, Son House's manager Dick Waterman remarked the following about wilson and the project: