"Blind" Lemon Jefferson (October 26, 1894 – December 1929) was an influential blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s.Despite his commercial success, Jefferson stands alone in a category of his own. His musical style was extremely intense and individualistic, bearing little resemblance to the typical Texas blues style of the 1930s. 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. He was not influential on younger blues singers as they did not seek to imitate him as they did other commercially successful artists. On the other hand, the white North Carolina performer Arthel "Doc" Watson credited listening to Jefferson's recordings as his first exposure to the blues, which would powerfully influence his own style.Jefferson is believed to have been born in the now-defunct town of Coutchman, Texas, near Wortham, the son of Alex and Clarricy (or Clarrisa or Clarisa) Jefferson. It was long believed by most that he was born in 1897 (although some accounts varied the date by up to 10 years), but later research has refuted that date. The 1900 U.S. Census indicates a September 1893 birth, with the family farming southeast of Streetman, Texas.In 1910, the census gave his birth date as 1894, indicating the family was now farming northwest of Wortham, near where Jefferson was born.In 1917, he gave his birth date as October 26, 1894, when he registered for the draft, further stating that he currently lived in Dallas, Texas and had been blind from birth.(The cause of his blindness is unknown.) By 1920, according to census records, he had returned to the Freestone County-Navarro County area where he had grown up, and was living with his half-brother Kit Banks on a farm between Wortham and Streetman.There is nothing unusual about his given name Lemon. It was a common given name at the time of his birth, there being thousands of boys and girls named Lemon in the 1900 census, over a hundred boys and girls in Texas alone.Where, how, and from whom he learned to play guitar and learned his songs is unknown. Around 1912, he began performing at picnics and parties. He also became a street musician, playing in East Texas towns. According to his cousin, Alec Jefferson, quoted in the notes for Blind Lemon Jefferson, Classic Sides:They was rough. Men was hustling women and selling bootleg and Lemon was singing for them all night... he'd start singing about eight and go on until four in the morning... mostly it would be just him sitting there and playing and singing all night.
By 1917, Jefferson had moved more or less permanently to Dallas, where he is reputed to have met and played with Lead Belly and was one of the early and prominent figures in the notable blues movement developing in Dallas' Deep Ellum area. It is unknown whether Jefferson ever married. It has been suggested that he did marry, and had a son in 1922, but firm evidence is unavailable.Unlike many artists who were "discovered" and recorded in their normal venues, in December 1925 or January 1926, he was taken to Chicago, Illinois, to record his first tracks. Uncharacteristically, Jefferson's first two recordings from this session were gospel songs ("I Want to be like Jesus in my Heart" and "All I Want is that Pure Religion"), released under the name Deacon L. J. Bates. This led to a second recording session in March 1926. His first releases under his own name, "Booster Blues" and "Dry Southern Blues," were hits; this led to the release of the other two songs from that session, "Got the Blues" and "Long Lonesome Blues," which became a runaway success, with sales in six figures. He recorded about 100 tracks between 1926 and 1929; 43 records were issued, all but one for Paramount Records. Unfortunately, Paramount Records' studio techniques and quality were infamously bad, and the resulting recordings sound no better than if they had been recorded in a hotel room. In fact, in May 1926, Paramount had Jefferson re-record his hits "Got the Blues" and "Long Lonesome Blues" in the superior facilities at Marsh Laboratories, and subsequent releases used that version. Both versions appear on compilation albums and may be compared.It was largely due to the popularity of artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and contemporaries such as Blind Blake and Ma Rainey that Paramount became the leading recording company for the blues in the 1920s.[citation needed] Jefferson's earnings reputedly enabled him to buy a car and employ chauffeurs (although there is debate over the reliability of this as well); he was given a Ford car "worth over $700" by Mayo Williams, Paramount's connection with the black community. This was a frequently seen compensation for recording rights in that market. Jefferson is known to have done an unusual amount of traveling for the time in the American South, which is reflected in the difficulty of pigeonholing his music into one regional category. He sticks to no musical conventions, varying his riffs and rhythm and singing complex and expressive lyrics in a manner exceptional at the time for a "simple country blues singer." According to North Carolina musician Walter Davis, Jefferson played on the streets in Johnson City, Tennessee during the early 1920s at which time Davis and fellow entertainer Clarence Greene learned the art of blues guitar.Jefferson was reputedly unhappy with his royalties (although Williams said that Jefferson had a bank account containing as much as $1500). In 1927, when Williams moved to OKeh Records, he took Jefferson with him, and OKeh quickly recorded and released Jefferson's "Matchbox Blues" backed with "Black Snake Moan," which was to be his only OKeh recording, probably because of contractual obligations with Paramount. When he had returned to Paramount a few months later, "Matchbox Blues" had already become such a hit that Paramount re-recorded and released two new versions, under producer Arthur Laibly.In 1927, Jefferson recorded another of his now classic songs, the haunting "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" (once again using the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates) along with two other uncharacteristically spiritual songs, "He Arose from the Dead" and "Where Shall I Be." Of the three, "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" became such a big hit that it was re-recorded and re-released in 1928.As his fame grew, so did the tales regarding his life, often personally involving the teller. T-Bone Walker states 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, Romeo Nelson, reports him as being "warm and cordial," and singer Rube Lacy states that Jefferson always refused to play on a Sunday, "even if you give me two hundred." He is claimed to have earned money wrestling before his musical success, which is further claimed as proof that he was not blind at the time (something of a non sequitur). Victoria Spivey elliptically credits Jefferson as someone who "could sure feel his way around."Jefferson died in Chicago in December 1929. The cause of death is unknown, and though rumors swirled that a jealous lover poisoned his coffee, a more likely scenario is that he died due to a heart attack after being disoriented during a snowstorm (another scenario is that he froze to death). 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 gravesite is being kept clean by a cemetery committee in Wortham.
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