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| A strong riff on the original photo. |
There’s an entire book written about 1920s blues legend, Blind Lemon Jefferson, but there isn’t a whole lot about him online. Don’t expect this post to improve much on Wikipedia's entry, basically; a couple decent quotes notwithstanding, it provides the bulk of this post. That said, and because I have them, let's start with one of those quotes (from Oldies.com):
“He had a good vocal range, honed by use in widely different venues, and a complicated, dense, free-form guitar style that became a nightmare for future analysts and copyists due to its disregard for time and bar structure.”
One more, this one’s from Wikipedia:
“It is likely that he moved to Deep Ellum on a more permanent basis by 1917, where he met Aaron Thibeaux Walker, also known as T-Bone Walker. Jefferson taught Walker the basics of playing blues guitar in exchange for Walker's occasional services as a guide.”
To answer the first question, yes, Jefferson was really blind. Born in 1893 (or 1894), the seventh (or eighth) child of sharecroppers Alex and Clarissa Jefferson in Coutchman, Texas, his lack of sight precluded working as a farm-hand, which, if nothing else, freed up his hands for the guitar. He started playing at an early age, first at parties and picnics near home; his late teens saw him busking on street corners in the cities of East Texas, all the way up to Dallas. Most accounts agree that Jefferson traveled widely - presumably, with someone standing in for T-Bone Walker at each stop - without his blindness getting in any part of his way (as noted most succinctly on Blackpast.org):
“It was widely thought that he played in every Southern state at one time or another and several artists recount stories of playing with him multiple times. Lemon was a firm businessman, playing only for money, with a reputation for stopping as soon as it did.”
Among those “several artists”: the famous Huddie William Ledbetter, aka, Lead Belly. Beyond a collection of names and places, tracing Jefferson’s footsteps involves jumping over some gaps. It’s unclear, for instance, who discovered him or how, but the fact he lived and worked in Deep Ellum feels like the likeliest answer to how - i.e., the gathering of blues artists drew music industry interest looking for people to record. Some things never change...
Paramount Records found Blind Lemon Jefferson first and, in 1926, made arrangements to get him to Chicago for a recording session. For his first releases, a decision was made to put out a pair of gospel numbers - “I Want to Be Like Jesus in My Heart” and “All I Want Is That Pure Religion” - both credited to a pseudonymous, “Deacon L. J. Bates.” The book might cover the thinking behind those choices, but the handful of sources I read did not.
Jefferson turned to the blues next - the “Texas blues,” specifically - and released “Booster Blues” and “Dry Southern Blues” as Blind Lemon Jefferson. As you’ll hear when (or if) you listen to most anything by Jefferson, Paramount’s recording equipment/technique sucked (the same goes for Ma Rainey, another Paramount artist). He found some success with the label - enough to afford a car of his own, plus chauffeurs to drive it -but Jefferson thought they stiffed him on royalties he felt he'd earned. Jefferston still stuck with Paramount for most of his career, if with a one-time hiatus, one encouraged by Paramount's "connection to the black community," Mayo Williams. The break lasted only long enough for Jefferson to record one (78 rpm) record with Okeh, i.e., two sides. Fortunately for Okeh, he recorded his two biggest songs - “Black Snake Moan” and “Matchbox Blues” - in that one session. It was back to Paramount after that, and for the rest of his career - which, sadly, did not lost much longer.
Jefferson died in Chicago in 1929. The death certificate showed “probably acute myocarditis” as the cause of death, though the actual cause remains a mystery. Theories run from the glamorous (e.g., poisoned by a jealous lover) to the tragic (e.g., the strain and panic of getting lost during a Chicago snow-storm) to the perfidious (e.g., he was robbed of a large royalty check) to the implausible (e.g., attacked by a dog in the middle of the night...which one would think would leave marks). Whatever happened, Paramount had the decency to return Jefferson’s body to his family in Texas.
Blind Lemon Jefferson’s early death spared him from the crash in record sales brought on by The Great Depression, but it sadly did not spare him from sharing the fate that befell fellow Black artists like Scott Joplin and Bessie Smith. His body was laid to rest at the Wortham Black Cemetery, only no one knows exactly where. Even that unknown grave went unacknowledged until 1967, when Texas placed a historical marker “in the general area of his plot.” Both the cemetery and the site fell to disrepair over the following 30 years, which ultimately lead to the placement of a granite tombstone in 1997. The inscription on that tombstone read, “Lord, it’s one kind favor I’ll ask of you, see that my grave is kept clean,” a nod to one of the first songs Jefferson recorded on his return to Paramount, “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” Which, for whatever (damn) reason, he recorded as Deacon L. J. Bates.
I would have liked to have more on Jefferson, but the little poking around I’ve done convinced me that that book is the only place I’m likely to find it. Most of the online sources don’t go far beyond embellishing the same details. Then again, regardless of how unique and ground-breaking he was - “Jefferson did what few had ever done before him – he became a successful solo guitarist and male vocalist in the commercial recording world” - his popular/recording career lasted only three years or so, from his first recordings to his death. Though largely forgotten, he wasn’t entirely forgotten; he bubbled up in pop culture now and then. For reasons I can’t fully express, I got a kick out of this anecdote:
“A practical joke played on Down Beat magazine editor Gene Lees in the late 1950s took on a life of its own and became a long-running hoax when one of his correspondents included a reference to the blues legend "Blind Orange Adams" in an article published in the magazine, an obvious parody of Jefferson's name. References to the nonexistent Adams appeared in subsequent articles in Down Beat over the next few years.”
About the Sampler
While I included the songs referenced in the sources I read - most of them laced in the above, but there’s also “Got the Blues” and “Long Lonesome Blues” - I took a slightly different tack this time around to build out the rest of the sampler. For all its good qualities, a lot of the Blind Lemon Jefferson catalog sounds the same to untrained ears - and doubly so thanks to the sub-par recording quality. After a week of bouncing from one unfinished collection to another, I finally found a set of remastered versions of the recordings Jefferson made from 1926 to 1929, and that’s the source for the rest of the songs on the sampler. Those recordings are broken up according to the year and city of recording, but here’s the rest of what shows up in the sampler, in no particular order: “Jack O’Diamond Blues,” “Beggin' Back,” “Blind Lemon’s Penitentiary Blues,” “Lemon’s Worried Blues,” “Change My Luck Blues,” and “Long Lastin’ Lovin’.”
Won't lie: getting through an entire collection of Blind Lemon Jefferson takes a little work. Better recording certainly wouldn't have hurt, but it also probably takes a musician's ear to pick out the nuance in songs that, I'll just say it, sound like a fair amount of the same thing to a layman - or just this one. That said, a reasonable remaster of any of the above reveals a remarkable solo artist laying down the foundation for a popular genre of American music. You'll hear some fantastic flourishes on the guitar between the verses and his vocals have this quality of floating over the basic structure in a way that feels remarkably free, but that always....just fits.
“He had a good vocal range, honed by use in widely different venues, and a complicated, dense, free-form guitar style that became a nightmare for future analysts and copyists due to its disregard for time and bar structure.”
One more, this one’s from Wikipedia:
“It is likely that he moved to Deep Ellum on a more permanent basis by 1917, where he met Aaron Thibeaux Walker, also known as T-Bone Walker. Jefferson taught Walker the basics of playing blues guitar in exchange for Walker's occasional services as a guide.”
To answer the first question, yes, Jefferson was really blind. Born in 1893 (or 1894), the seventh (or eighth) child of sharecroppers Alex and Clarissa Jefferson in Coutchman, Texas, his lack of sight precluded working as a farm-hand, which, if nothing else, freed up his hands for the guitar. He started playing at an early age, first at parties and picnics near home; his late teens saw him busking on street corners in the cities of East Texas, all the way up to Dallas. Most accounts agree that Jefferson traveled widely - presumably, with someone standing in for T-Bone Walker at each stop - without his blindness getting in any part of his way (as noted most succinctly on Blackpast.org):
“It was widely thought that he played in every Southern state at one time or another and several artists recount stories of playing with him multiple times. Lemon was a firm businessman, playing only for money, with a reputation for stopping as soon as it did.”
Among those “several artists”: the famous Huddie William Ledbetter, aka, Lead Belly. Beyond a collection of names and places, tracing Jefferson’s footsteps involves jumping over some gaps. It’s unclear, for instance, who discovered him or how, but the fact he lived and worked in Deep Ellum feels like the likeliest answer to how - i.e., the gathering of blues artists drew music industry interest looking for people to record. Some things never change...
Paramount Records found Blind Lemon Jefferson first and, in 1926, made arrangements to get him to Chicago for a recording session. For his first releases, a decision was made to put out a pair of gospel numbers - “I Want to Be Like Jesus in My Heart” and “All I Want Is That Pure Religion” - both credited to a pseudonymous, “Deacon L. J. Bates.” The book might cover the thinking behind those choices, but the handful of sources I read did not.
Jefferson turned to the blues next - the “Texas blues,” specifically - and released “Booster Blues” and “Dry Southern Blues” as Blind Lemon Jefferson. As you’ll hear when (or if) you listen to most anything by Jefferson, Paramount’s recording equipment/technique sucked (the same goes for Ma Rainey, another Paramount artist). He found some success with the label - enough to afford a car of his own, plus chauffeurs to drive it -but Jefferson thought they stiffed him on royalties he felt he'd earned. Jefferston still stuck with Paramount for most of his career, if with a one-time hiatus, one encouraged by Paramount's "connection to the black community," Mayo Williams. The break lasted only long enough for Jefferson to record one (78 rpm) record with Okeh, i.e., two sides. Fortunately for Okeh, he recorded his two biggest songs - “Black Snake Moan” and “Matchbox Blues” - in that one session. It was back to Paramount after that, and for the rest of his career - which, sadly, did not lost much longer.
Jefferson died in Chicago in 1929. The death certificate showed “probably acute myocarditis” as the cause of death, though the actual cause remains a mystery. Theories run from the glamorous (e.g., poisoned by a jealous lover) to the tragic (e.g., the strain and panic of getting lost during a Chicago snow-storm) to the perfidious (e.g., he was robbed of a large royalty check) to the implausible (e.g., attacked by a dog in the middle of the night...which one would think would leave marks). Whatever happened, Paramount had the decency to return Jefferson’s body to his family in Texas.
Blind Lemon Jefferson’s early death spared him from the crash in record sales brought on by The Great Depression, but it sadly did not spare him from sharing the fate that befell fellow Black artists like Scott Joplin and Bessie Smith. His body was laid to rest at the Wortham Black Cemetery, only no one knows exactly where. Even that unknown grave went unacknowledged until 1967, when Texas placed a historical marker “in the general area of his plot.” Both the cemetery and the site fell to disrepair over the following 30 years, which ultimately lead to the placement of a granite tombstone in 1997. The inscription on that tombstone read, “Lord, it’s one kind favor I’ll ask of you, see that my grave is kept clean,” a nod to one of the first songs Jefferson recorded on his return to Paramount, “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” Which, for whatever (damn) reason, he recorded as Deacon L. J. Bates.
I would have liked to have more on Jefferson, but the little poking around I’ve done convinced me that that book is the only place I’m likely to find it. Most of the online sources don’t go far beyond embellishing the same details. Then again, regardless of how unique and ground-breaking he was - “Jefferson did what few had ever done before him – he became a successful solo guitarist and male vocalist in the commercial recording world” - his popular/recording career lasted only three years or so, from his first recordings to his death. Though largely forgotten, he wasn’t entirely forgotten; he bubbled up in pop culture now and then. For reasons I can’t fully express, I got a kick out of this anecdote:
“A practical joke played on Down Beat magazine editor Gene Lees in the late 1950s took on a life of its own and became a long-running hoax when one of his correspondents included a reference to the blues legend "Blind Orange Adams" in an article published in the magazine, an obvious parody of Jefferson's name. References to the nonexistent Adams appeared in subsequent articles in Down Beat over the next few years.”
About the Sampler
While I included the songs referenced in the sources I read - most of them laced in the above, but there’s also “Got the Blues” and “Long Lonesome Blues” - I took a slightly different tack this time around to build out the rest of the sampler. For all its good qualities, a lot of the Blind Lemon Jefferson catalog sounds the same to untrained ears - and doubly so thanks to the sub-par recording quality. After a week of bouncing from one unfinished collection to another, I finally found a set of remastered versions of the recordings Jefferson made from 1926 to 1929, and that’s the source for the rest of the songs on the sampler. Those recordings are broken up according to the year and city of recording, but here’s the rest of what shows up in the sampler, in no particular order: “Jack O’Diamond Blues,” “Beggin' Back,” “Blind Lemon’s Penitentiary Blues,” “Lemon’s Worried Blues,” “Change My Luck Blues,” and “Long Lastin’ Lovin’.”
Won't lie: getting through an entire collection of Blind Lemon Jefferson takes a little work. Better recording certainly wouldn't have hurt, but it also probably takes a musician's ear to pick out the nuance in songs that, I'll just say it, sound like a fair amount of the same thing to a layman - or just this one. That said, a reasonable remaster of any of the above reveals a remarkable solo artist laying down the foundation for a popular genre of American music. You'll hear some fantastic flourishes on the guitar between the verses and his vocals have this quality of floating over the basic structure in a way that feels remarkably free, but that always....just fits.
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