Blind Lemon Jefferson

 

AI-generated portrait

"Blind" Lemon Jefferson (October 26, 1894–December 1929) was a blues singer and guitarist from Texas.  He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s.  Blind Lemon Jefferson stands alone in a category of his own. 

Blind from birth, he wandered the streets of Wortham, Groesbeck, Marlin, and Kosse in Central Texas, playing his guitar and collecting contributions with his tin cup.  In 1912, he caught a train for Dallas, where he performed in the famous Deep Ellum district. He was discovered by a talent scout for Paramount Records and taken to Chicago in 1925.

His distinctive vocals and original, imaginative and inimitable guitar playing not only helped to define the ‘Texas Blues’ style with his influential single note runs, but also made him the first blues musician to enjoy major commercial success.  Jefferson's singing and self-accompaniment seemed only loosely connected, and he appeared to improvise his accompaniment. His irregular vocal style and his freely structured field holler rhythms made the tension between his guitar and his voice wildly unpredictable.

Between 1926 and his untimely death in 1929, Blind Lemon Jefferson was the largest-selling Blues singer in the United States.  His recording career lasted a mere four years, yet he managed to record nearly 100 sides in that time.

As his fame grew, so did the tales regarding his life, often personally involving the teller.  T-Bone Walker claimed that as a boy, he was employed by Jefferson to lead him around the streets of Dallas; he would have been of the appropriate age at the time.  A Paramount employee told biographer Orrin Keepnews that Jefferson was a "womanizing sloppy drunk".  On the other hand, Jefferson's neighbor in Chicago, boogie woogie pianist Romeo Nelson, remembered him as being "warm and cordial," but didn't remember him as being blind.  Victoria Spivey elliptically credits Jefferson as someone who "Could sure feel his way around!"  Most things I've read about Blind Lemon Jefferson are conjecture, contradictory, and basically legend.

The only known photograph of Blind Lemon Jefferson

Speaking of legends, Blind Lemon Jefferson died in Chicago in December 1929. The cause of death is unknown.  Some say that a jealous lover poisoned his coffee.  Others say, is that he died due to a heart attack after being disoriented during a snowstorm. There's also   a variation on the heart attack story that claims he froze to death.
Who knows?

Paramount Records paid for the return of his body to Texas by train, accompanied by pianist Will Ezell. Jefferson was buried at Wortham Negro Cemetery (now Wortham Black Cemetery).  Far from his grave being kept clean, it was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas Historical Marker was erected in the general area of his plot, the precise location being unknown.

By 1996, the cemetery and marker were in poor condition, but a new granite headstone was erected in 1997.  In 2007 the cemetery’s name was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery and keeping his wishes his grave site is being kept clean by a cemetery committee in Wortham Texas.

Today's freeloads are two of my favorites, with (relatively) good sonics.  Even the best ones sound like they were recorded while someone in the studio was frying bacon.

First up is the Yazoo records classic

Next is from Pristine Audio

This is the best sounding Blind Lemon Jefferson I've heard.  This was done by Pristine Audio founder, Andrew Rose, using the XR remastering he developed.

For the freeload, who are some of your favorite (musical and nonmusical) legendary characters?