Blind Lemon Jefferson
On a street corner in Dallas's Deep Ellum district around 1912, a blind teenager from a Texas sharecropping family started drawing crowds with a guitar he'd taught himself to bend and holler over. Lemon Henry Jefferson, born September 24, 1893, near Coutchman, had been playing picnics and barbershops since his early teens; in Deep Ellum he found a partner in Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, and the two worked the same corners for tips. A Paramount scout found him in 1925, and over four years in Chicago he cut 110 sides, his shouting high tenor and imitative, bent-note guitar becoming the sound a generation of Texas blues singers reached for. He died in Chicago on December 19, 1929. Historians call him an heir to the blues songster tradition, but concede the specifics of his musical training are vague — the trail runs out at the county line.
we haven’t charted Blind Lemon Jefferson yet
this stretch of the river isn’t mapped. we trace the watershed one artist at a time — and we’re always heading further upstream.