Blind Lemon Jefferson PDF

Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson
Author(s): David Evans

Source: Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1, Blind Lemon Jefferson (Spring, 2000), pp.
83-116
Published by: Center for Black Music Research - Columbia College Chicago and University of
Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779317
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MUSICAL INNOVATION IN THE BLUES

OF BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON
DAVID EVANS
Although a few other guitar-playing bluesmen had made records before

Blind Lemon Jefferson, it is he who wears the crown for being the first
popular star of folk (or "country") blues. His rivals for this distinction (i.e.,
his predecessors in the recording studio) either had brief and commercially unsuccessful recording careers, were accompanists to more famous
vocalists, were not solo guitarists but worked instead in combinations
with other instruments, or were professional stage entertainers and thus
did not fit easily into the model of a folk/country-blues singer-guitarist.
Nevertheless, some of these predecessors probably laid the groundwork
for Paramount Records' decision to record Jefferson and for Jefferson's
spectacular reception by African-American record buyers. His commercial
success in turn opened the door to recording opportunities for hundreds
of other guitar-playing blues singers, male and female, black and white,
and for blues-singing pianists and small combinations of singers and
instruments variously known as jug, washboard, skiffle, hokum, and juke
bands (see Oliver 1969; Dixon and Godrich 1970; Barlow 1989). It would
be well, therefore, to look at Jefferson's recorded predecessors in order to
see how he differs from them and how he became the first to epitomize the
solo guitar-playing bluesman (see Dixon, Godrich, and Rye 1997 for discographical information on these artists).
The era of blues recording began in 1920, and until Jefferson's debut in
early 1926 virtually all recorded blues singers came from the vaudeville
DAVID EVANS is professor of music at the University of Memphis and director of the doc-
tural program in ethnomusicology (regional studies). He is author of TommyJohnson(Studio

Vista, 1971) and Big Road Blues: Traditionand Creativity in the Folk Blues (University of
California Press, 1982). He has produced LPs and CDs of field and studio recordings of
blues, gospel, and folk music for the university's High Water Recording Company and
other companies and has annotated many other albums.
83
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BMR Journal
stage circuit, northern urban cabarets, and black theater shows. The vast
majority of them were female, and almost all were accompanied by a
pianist or a larger combination of instruments. When male blues singers
were recorded, it was usually in a duet with a female singer, accompanied
by one or more other musicians. These trends reflect the predominant patterns of blues performance that had been established on the vaudeville
stage in the 1910s. Although a few male blues singer-pianists became well
known on the vaudeville circuit prior to 1920, solo performers with guitar
are virtually unreported in this setting (Abbot and Seroff 1996). We know,
however, that there were plenty of them performing all over the South and
in northern cities since the beginning of the twentieth century (Evans 1982,
32-41). Undoubtedly, blues singer-guitarists served as "filler" acts on local
vaudeville stages from time to time prior to 1926, but the highest level to
which any of them could apparently aspire as a touring professional was
as a member of a medicine show or small tent show working a very limited southern circuit. If they aspired to tour otherwise, they were on their
own. Their normal venues were universally considered to be on the
fringes of popular entertainment-the realm of musical amateurs, hustlers, freelancers, or even beggars-and it is mainly for these reasons that
it took six years after they first began to record blues by black vocalists for
the record companies to discover that they could successfully market
recording artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson. The recording of guitaraccompanied blues was also greatly aided by the discovery of the electrical recording process, which came into use in 1925. One result of this was
less surface noise on the records and better recording quality of softer
voices, regional diction, and accents, as well as of instruments such as the
guitar and piano. Jefferson's initial recordings, however, were made with
the older acoustical recording process, and his immediate success, therefore, cannot be ascribed to the advantage of a new technology.
Starting in late 1923 and lasting for about a year, there was a small flurry of recording of guitar-accompanied blues. Then the sound became
scarce on records through 1925, only to burst out in a sustained fashion
with Jefferson's recordings in early 1926. The first-known guitar-accompanied blues to be recorded were made by vaudeville blues star Sara
Martin with Sylvester Weaver on guitar (Van Rijn and Vergeer 1982). On
October 24 and November 2, 1923, they recorded four blues in this format. Weaver accompanied Martin on several more recordings in 1924 and
on six tracks with added banjo and sometimes violin in 1925. On
November 2, 1923, Weaver also recorded two solo guitar instrumental
tracks, having a hit with "Guitar Rag," a tune that went on to become a
standard in the country-and-western instrumental repertoire under the
usual title of "Steel Guitar Rag." He recorded four more guitar solos in
Evans * Musical Innovation
85
1924 and six tunes as a member of a string trio in 1926, five of the latter
in accompaniment to Sara Martin. His name was listed on Martin's
records and featured on his own, and an advertisement by OKeh Records
for Martin's first-released guitar-accompanied blues named Weaver as
"the man with the talking guitar." He is without doubt well within the
stylistic spectrum of southern folk-blues guitar. If only he had recorded
as a vocalist at this time, he might receive the honor of being considered
the first important recorded folk bluesman. Ironically, he only began to
sing on recordings on April 12, 1927, a year after Jefferson had created
this opportunity for him. Weaver made fifteen vocal blues recordings by
the end of that year before fading into obscurity in his home city of
Louisville, Kentucky.
About February 7, 1924, Reese Du Pree, probably originally from
Virginia, recorded a blues and a folk ballad accompanied by two guitars,
one of them possibly his own. Du Pree was a veteran of the vaudeville
stage, however, who usually performed with piano or a small combo.
These were his only recording efforts in a guitar-accompanied format,
and his recording career did not extend beyond six issued sides. In March
or April 1924, Ed Andrews recorded two guitar-accompanied blues in
Atlanta. This record, like Du Pree's, may have been made as an experiment following the success of Sara Martin's first guitar-accompanied
recordings. Andrews was certainly a folk-blues performer; but his record
suffers from pedestrian performances, and he sank without a trace following this inauspicious session.
On May 10, 1924, a street performer called Daddy Stovepipe recorded
three blues titles for Gennett Records accompanied by his guitar and harmonica, two of which were released. Six days later a man known as
Stovepipe No. 1 (Samuel Jones) made six recordings for Gennett accompanied by his guitar, harmonica, and stovepipe, including three titles containing the word blues. They were intended as private recordings, however, presumably to be sold by the artist on the street. None of them have
been recovered, and it is not known for certain whether they were ever
actually pressed. In August 1924, Jones recorded twenty titles for
Columbia Records, five of which contain the word blues in their title.
Only six songs were released from this session, however, all of them spirituals or adaptations of fiddle tunes. Some of the unissued blues have the
same titles as recordings made by Daddy Stovepipe. This fact, along with
similarities in their voices and the type of accompaniment, suggests that
Daddy Stovepipe and Stovepipe No. 1 are the same man.1 The artist(s)
1. Tracy (1993, 11, 19) presents conflicting evidence as to whether they were the same person. Sam Jones was well known in Cincinnati but was recalled there simply as "Stovepipe."
86
BMR Journal
recorded again under both names for Gennett and OKeh in 1927, and
ironically, one of the titles was "Black Snake Blues," a cover of Blind
Lemon Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan." Daddy Stovepipe continued to
record sporadically in the 1930s, and he turned up as late as the early
1960s in Chicago's Maxwell Street Market performing with guitar and
rack harmonica, claiming to be named Johnny Watson and born April 12,
1867, in Mobile, Alabama. He also worked at this time as a religious street
singer under the name of Reverend Alfred Pitts.
Hezekiah Jenkins, a veteran of vaudeville and minstrel shows, also
recorded two blues in 1924 with guitar and harmonica accompaniment,
as well as two duets with his wife, Dorothy. He recorded a few more titles
in 1926 and again in 1931. Both he and Daddy Stovepipe played guitar in
a chordal style with a few simple bass runs, suggesting that this instrument functioned for them as background accompaniment to their singing
and harmonica playing rather than as a second voice, the way it would
for Blind Lemon Jefferson.
In March 1924, vaudeville blues singers Lottie Beaman, Ida Cox, and
Ma Rainey made a series of seven blues recordings for Paramount
Records accompanied by the Pruitt Twins, Milas and Miles, on banjo and
guitar, respectively. Perhaps these were an attempt by Paramount to
duplicate the success on OKeh of Sara Martin and Sylvester Weaver, but
the banjo is the dominant lead instrument here, providing a rather oldfashioned sound, whereas the guitar is confined to rhythmic chordal
background and bass runs. On April 14, 1924, Bessie Smith recorded
"Sorrowful Blues" for Columbia, with John Griffin on guitar and Robert
Robbins on violin, but once again the guitar is the background instrument playing chords and bass runs.
Paramount continued its experimentation with minimal stringed
instrument accompaniment in August 1924, when Ma Rainey recorded
two blues accompanied by a twelve-string guitarist, who played a continuous melodic line without much attempt to make the instrument
answer the singer's voice. This month also saw the recording debut for
Paramount of Papa Charlie Jackson, a vaudeville performer from New
Orleans who accompanied himself on a six-string banjo. Jackson recorded twenty-five titles before Blind Lemon Jefferson made his first blues
record and continued to record steadily until 1930, with some further sessions in 1934 and 1935. Although a few of his recordings could be viewed
as country-blues vocals with a responsorial "talking" instrument, on
most pieces he plays a strumming accompaniment to his singing, with
the banjo imparting an old-fashioned flavor. His music conveys the aura
of the minstrel and vaudeville stage, and it should not be surprising that
he also provided accompaniments on recordings by a number of female
87
vaudeville singers, including Ida Cox and Ma Rainey, in this early period. Nevertheless, the sound of Papa Charlie Jackson was approaching
more closely the model of the solo country bluesman than that of his predecessors on records.
Another artist who approached this model was Lonnie Johnson, also
originally from New Orleans but based in St. Louis when he began his
recording career for OKeh in November 1925. This was only a few
months before Jefferson would make his first blues recordings. Johnson's
early recordings mostly featured him singing and playing either guitar or
violin in the company of a pianist, but his "Love Story Blues," recorded
on January 20, 1926, is a solo performance with just his guitar. Lonnie
Johnson was Jefferson's main commercial rival through the remainder of
the 1920s and would sustain a recording career until his death in 1970.
Although he often recorded solo with his guitar, backed up such rural
singers as Texas Alexander, performed from time to time in rural areas
such as the Mississippi Delta, and served as an influence on many aspiring country-blues guitarists, Johnson himself was an urbane and sophisticated singer and musician who could hold his own on recordings with
such jazz figures as Charles Creath, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds,
Duke Ellington, Jimmie Noone, and fellow guitarist Eddie Lang. He
never gave the impression of being "country" or "down home," and his
recordings were always highly crafted in a clearly self-conscious manner
(Lambert 1996, 37-43). Nevertheless, he too helped to pave the way for
the rise of country blues on records by providing a model of the male guitar-accompanied blues singer in a more sophisticated form. Johnson
would not record again in a solo setting with guitar until August 1926,
very likely in response to the commercial success of Jefferson's first blues
records.
Unlike his predecessors on records, Blind Lemon Jefferson unambiguously represented the solo blues sound of the street comer, the house
party, the southern country picnic, and the honky-tonk, and he did so
with extraordinary virtuosity as a lyricist, vocalist, and guitarist. In contrast to Lonnie Johnson's rather sentimental "Love Story Blues,"
Jefferson's initial titles were virtually generic descriptions of the Deep
South folk blues and its environment: "Got the Blues" / "Long Lonesome
Blues" and "Booster Blues"2 / "Dry Southern Blues." If the titles were not
enough to convince a potential record buyer that Jefferson represented
something different, the buyer only had to listen to the first lines of these
songs followed by dazzling guitar responses: "Well, the blues come to
Texas loping like a mule"; "I walked from Dallas, I walked to Wichita
2. A "booster" is a rambler, often a hobo.
88
BMR Journal
Falls"; "My left foot itching, it's something going on wrong"; and "My
mind leads me to take a trip down south." Here was a "down home"
blues recording artist of spectacular accomplishment with a distinct
sound and a personality that shone through his songs.
That Jefferson represented something new to recording-yet something old in respect to the blues tradition-is signaled by his record company, Paramount, which advertised his first blues disc in the Chicago
Defenderof April 3, 1926, as "a real old-fashioned blues by a real old-fashioned blues singer... With his singing he plays the guitar in real southern style" (quoted in Charters 1967, 177). The "old-fashioned" quality of
Jefferson's music, however, did not prevent him from being at the same
time musically innovative and expansive. Indeed, the record industry
could have found no better candidate to demonstrate almost the full
range of possibilities of solo guitar-accompanied blues at that time. Of
course, as the first successful and extensively recorded performer of this
sort, it is only natural that in retrospect he should appear to be innovative. We know, however, that the folk-blues tradition, of which Jefferson
himself was a product, almost immediately provided many additional
talented and distinctive solo blues singer-guitarists, such as Barbecue
Bob, Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell, Furry Lewis, Robert Wilkins, and
Charley Patton, who, like Jefferson, had been performing for years in the
same kinds of venues throughout the South. While it cannot be proven,
therefore, that Jefferson actually invented any musical characteristic of
his own blues or the blues in general, a number of characteristics of his
blues are nevertheless highly distinctive, if not unique, in comparison to
the blues of others who recorded at the same time (1926-29). It is in this
somewhat-limited sense, then, that Jefferson can be considered innovative as a musician. Some of these innovations proved to be highly influential in the subsequent blues tradition, but many remained identified
only or mainly with Jefferson, representing roads not taken in the development of the music.
Blind Lemon Jefferson did not have a single approach to creating his
blues. Some of his pieces use essentially the same melodic and guitar part
with every stanza. Others contain almost no repetition of melodic and
guitar figures, presenting something new at every turn. Some are highly
rhythmic and seem to be dance-related. In others Jefferson breaks time or
displays a highly flexible approach to tempo. It seems quite clear that he
wanted at least some of his blues, if not all, to be listened to with careful
attention. In this respect also, he was an ideal candidate for stardom
through the medium of phonograph records, which could lift his sound
out of the noisy street corners and juke houses and project it through a
speaker in someone's home. Indeed, his records in a sense lifted Jefferson
89
himself out of these environments and made him welcome in more

respectable places alongside other stars of race records.
This view of Jefferson as an artist who demands to be carefully listened
to is confirmed by the great range of subject matter and poetic art of his
lyrics as well as some musical characteristics of his blues. The latter
include the striking of long sustained notes on the guitar, mandolin-like
tremolos, and even silent spaces during his singing, all of which have the
effect of shifting attention to vocal line. Other musical characteristics also
demand attention from anyone who is used to the twelve-bar AABblues
structure with its standard harmonic practices or to the usual practice of
early country-blues guitarists of establishing a basic musical pattern in
the first stanza and retaining it throughout the performance with only
minor variations. For example, the beginning of the third line of
Jefferson's three-line AABblues (that is, the line that provides the resolution to the initial lyric statement) is sometimes highlighted by an unusual underlying harmony, a VI7 chord (A7 for a piece performed in the key
of C), where a V or V7 chord would be expected. Elsewhere, Jefferson features an unusual flattened sixth note in his playing, suggesting a minor
IV chord in places where a major IV chord would normally be played.
His singing is often distinguished by a highly unusual melodic range of
as much as two octaves as well as by the practice of prolonging some
notes so that the entire structure is stretched beyond the normal length of
twelve measures. Jefferson also accomplishes this stretching of the form
by extending some of his guitar responses to the vocal lines-not simply
by extra repetitions of a short guitar riff as many other artists did but by
playing a longer-than-usual staccato response phrase on the instrument
in the manner of extended phrases played by jazz artists such as Louis
Armstrong.
I would like to illustrate these and other innovative qualities of Blind
Lemon Jefferson's music with some specific examples, beginning with his
vocal range. Jefferson made it up to a bkabove middle c on ten of his
recordings and went as low as an aban octave below middle c on three
tunes. He sounds comfortable at both ends of this range, which spans two
octaves and a minor third. All but one of his recordings have a range of
at least an octave. Many actually have a range of an octave plus a fifth or
a sixth, and three have a range of two octaves ("Struck Sorrow Blues,"
Paramount 12541, 1927; "Competition Bed Blues," Paramount 12728,
matrix 20749-2, 1928; "Peach Orchard Mama," Paramount 12801, matrix
21196-1, 1929). The consistent use of such wide-ranging melodies is quite
unusual among early blues singers (Titon 1977, 63-177). The norm is
more often an octave or less, as one might hear in the singing of Bessie
Smith or Charlie Patton, for example (Brooks, 1982; Fahey 1970). Almost
BMR Journal
90
all of Jefferson's vocal lines had a prominent high note near the beginning
and were strongly descending in character (see App.), a characteristic that
probably caused Mississippi bluesman Roosevelt Holts to state that
Jefferson "squealed" (Holts 1969). The only prominent exception to this
practice among Jefferson's blues is the unusual "Prison Cell Blues," with
its markedly ascending first line, but even in this tune, the climax is
reached on an extended high melismatic note sequence at the end of the
line (see Ex. 1, stanza 4, mm. 3-4).
Jefferson's practice of prolonging the singing of certain notes and thereby stretching the standard twelve-bar form is illustrated in virtually all of
his blues using an AABstanza pattern. In these he also contributes to the
stretching by playing extended guitar figures in response to his vocal
lines. These practices contrast with the more-common practice of his contemporary blues guitarists, who sometimes stretched their lines either
simply by striking a few extra beats of a note or chord to mark time or by
repeating a short rhythmic-melodic riff one or more times in response to
the vocal line. Jefferson also used these more-conventional practices in
some of his blues, but his long extended guitar responses consisting of a
continuous phrase of up to two full measures were quite uncommon
among blues guitarists of his time. For instance, the second stanza of his
"Blind Lemon's Penitentiary Blues," an AAB-structured piece, contains
thirteen measures (5+4+4) with beat counts per measure of 44 6 4 4 / 5 5
4 6 / 4 4 4 6-a total of sixty beats instead of the usual forty-eight beats
of a standard twelve-bar blues.
A similar pattern of stretching can be observed in "Tin Cup Blues" (see
App.). Figure 1 illustrates the number of measures per stanza and number of beats per measure of this piece. Although my placement of bar
lines in "Tin Cup Blues" may be arbitrary in some cases, and although
one might be tempted to divide a pair of six-beat measures (e.g., stanza 5,
mm. 8-9) into three four-beat measures, such variations in the interpreta-
Figure 1. Beats per mesure in Blind LemonJefferson's"Tin Cup Blues."

Stanza
1
2
3
4
5
No. of Measures
4+4+4 =12
5+4+5 =14
4+4+5=13
41 41 4=12
5+3+5 =13
Beats per Measure

64441444414444
4444414444144444
464514444164444
64641646414646
444441446164446
TotalBeats
50
56
57
60
58
91
Example 1. Blind Lemon Jefferson,"Prison Cell Blues," guitar introduction,

stanza 4, and guitar tag, indicating harmoniesimplied by the guitar. Originally
transcribedby the authorfor DocumentaryArts, Inc. Reprintedby permission.
Intro
II7
iv
?t[
l
~K ij'
V~~~~~~~~~~~~~l
--
Stanza 4
Vocal
I get
-tig d
I'm
4#
get- ting
- i nt s
tired
of
in
sleep-ing
i^^
f
'
low - down
lone
some
-1
r'
cell.
IV
Lord, I
this
S^
iv
A-StV
[4U
Guitar
Guitar
II7
wouldn't have
been_
here_
if it
had
_'i
BMR Journal
92
Example1, continued
'~
~'
'I
Nlf
nobeenSW
not
been
=#
SnS
r
Nell.
for_
K
9
e
--fn X1
Ot
I asked the
r r
Tag
t
Guitar
V7
VI7
?T ",:4 r I I
-V
1I7
V7
tt
7r
O
7
r-I I,I =-
1-
tion of Jefferson's measure counts do not affect the total number of beats
per stanza. One will notice that this number differs with each stanza and
that all of the stanzas contain more than the standard forty-eight beats.
This piece also illustrates how Jefferson could constantly vary the
response figures on his guitar throughout a piece. Although he employs
only a few basic ideas, each guitar response is different in its execution
and specific musical line.
Some of Jefferson's guitar figures seem quite clearly to be drawn from
piano ragtime and boogie-woogie figures. For example, during his
singing in "Match Box Blues," he plays a variant of a common eight-tothe-bar piano boogie-woogie bass figure (see Ex. 2), followed by a common three-against-four piano ragtime figure. This boogie-woogie figure,
however, was not popularized on the piano until the recording of Pine
Top Smith's "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" on December 29, 1928, whereas
93
Example 2. Blind LemonJefferson,"Match Box Blues," excerpt of guitar part,

stanza b, mm. 1-5
J=168
--3
GuitariJ
S--3-
-3-
4X
-3-l
1J
--3-
- -3
J2J2J
3
3-
-3
Jefferson recorded "Match Box Blues" nearly two years earlier, on March
14, 1927.3Jefferson even used the term boogiewoogie in 1926 in his "Booger
Rooger Blues," although he meant it as a place or occasion for a dance
rather than as a genre of music. Texas pianist Sammy Price claimed that
he heard Jefferson use this term and play "that boogie-woogie rhythm"
as early as 1916-17 (Palmer 1981, 106-107; see also Price 1990, 29-30).
Another notable feature of Jefferson's guitar playing is his extreme use
of string bending. This can be seen in the appendix, where every d#
marked with an upward-pointing arrow represents a note played by
bending a string. Other early blues guitarists would bend strings but
rarely to the extent that Jefferson did. Just as often, they would play a
note followed by another a semitone higher, or even the two notes simultaneously, to suggest a "blue note." Or they would use the slide technique
with a knife, bottleneck, or metal tube. Although he reputedly often featured "Hawaiian" slide-style guitar playing in the 1910s, Jefferson used a
slider on only one of his recordings from the 1920s, "Jack o' Diamond
Blues."
Most solo country-blues guitar playing has a very steady beat, and
some other players criticized Jefferson for "breaking time," making it difficult to dance to his music. By this they seem to mean both his tendency
to stretch individual measures and entire song structures and his flexible
3. A version of this boogie-woogie figure was played on guitar even earlier by Papa
Charlie Jackson on "Jackson's Blues," recorded circa January 1926 (Smith 1991). Jefferson's
playing, however, is closer to a typical piano treatment.
94
BMR Journal
approach to tempo. When I asked Mississippi bluesman Eddie "Son"

House, who was the best blues singer at the time that he began playing
blues (ca. 1927), he remarked, "Well, at that particular time I thought that
Blind Lemon Jefferson was the best. But I knew that he wasn't the best in
his playing, his music, because he breaks time a whole lot. He don't play
right steady 'long" (House 1964). Jefferson certainly demonstrated often
enough on his records that he could keep a beat, but it is true that he used
some devices that downplay the beat and force attention to the singing
and the message of the lyrics. In general, he displays a rather flexible
approach to tempo, speeding up and slowing down slightly to emphasize
lyrical or musical points. "Tin Cup Blues" (see App.), for instance, is one
of his more flexible pieces in this respect, with the metronome reading
fluctuating between J = 98 and J = 106, tending overall to accelerate from
the slower to the faster tempo. Other devices that Jefferson uses include
sustained notes or even silent gaps on the guitar behind his singing, as if
the guitar actually drops out only to come back as a dramatic response to
the vocal line (see App., stanza 1, mm. 6 and 9; stanza 3, m. 6; stanza 4,
mm. 1, 8, and 9; and stanza 5, mm. 2-3, 7, and 9).
Another technique that functions similarly is Jefferson's playing of
mandolin-like tremolos during his singing, where once again the
rhythmic pulse seems suspended. These tremolos can be noted in "Tin
Cup Blues" in the opening notes of every stanza but also in measure 4
of stanza 3 and measures 4-5 of stanza 4. Other guitarists, such as
Charlie McCoy, James "Yank" Rachell, and Johnny Young, all of whom
were also mandolin players, would use this same technique on the
guitar, but usually when playing with another musician who would
be helping to keep the steady beat. Jefferson used it often as a solo
guitarist.
With respect to Jefferson's harmonic understanding of the blues, there can
be little doubt that he was aware of the standard three-line, twelve-bar blues
harmonic scheme, with the lines beginning respectively with the tonic (I),
subdominant (IV), and dominant (V) harmonies or chords. By 1926,
Jefferson must have heard thousands of examples in live performances and
on records. He uses or implies this scheme himself in a number of his blues.
He also appears to have been aware of the VI-II-V-I circle-of-fifths
harmonic progression typically found in many ragtime tunes, the chords
often containing the flat seventh note as a lead-in to the next chord, this
VI7-II7-V7-I.Jazz bands and pianists often inserted this progression into
the twelve-bar blues form, starting with a VI7 harmony in the last measure of line 2 (m. 8) and then beginning the third line (m. 9) with the II7
harmony, followed by the V7 (m. 10) and back to the tonic (I) chord for
measures 11 and 12. Jefferson, however, reinterprets this device in most
95
of his blues performed in the key of C.4In these, he moves to the VI or VI7
(A or A7) harmony at the end of the second line in the usual manner.
Then, however, rather than moving to the II or II7(D or D7) harmony for
the beginning of the third line, he stays on the VI7 (A7) harmony for the
first measure of the line. In the next measure, he moves to the IV (F) or
IV7 (F7) chord, a chord that would normally be played at this point in a
twelve-bar three-line blues without the circle-of-fifths interpolation.
Jefferson returns to the I (C) chord for the final two measures. This pattern is found in all stanzas of "Tin Cup Blues" except the first, which is
closer to the standard harmonic pattern. That Jefferson plays the IV or IV7
(F or F7)chord in the second measure of the third line of the form, shows
clearly that the VI7 (A7) chord in the previous measure is not simply some
sort of "incorrect" continuation of the use of this same chord from the
measure before that (the last measure of the second line), but that it is
instead a substitute for the dominant V (G) chord that would normally be
played here in a standard twelve-bar blues. Jefferson's VI7 chord, of
course, contains the dominant note (g) of the tune's key. This pattern of
substitution is Jefferson's unique way of solving the problem of how to
avoid playing the seventh degree of the scale (b), a problem that Kubik
(1999, 126-145) has observed in much traditional blues music. Most other
blues artists simply play a flatted or "blue-note" seventh, suggesting a
modified dominant chord but not a real substituted chord. Jefferson himself suggests this more standard solution in measure 9 of the first stanza
of his "Tin Cup Blues" (see App.) and in measure 5 of his "Prison Cell
Blues" (see Ex. 1).
As for the missing II or II7chord in his circle of fifths, Jefferson shows elsewhere that he was certainly familiar with it. It occurs, however, as a brief
allusion in a number of his blues played in the key of E,5during introductory and closing figures (see Ex. 1) and in runs at the ends of the verse pattern.
One final unusual substitution is Jefferson's use of the minor subdominant harmony for the regular, major subdominant harmony in places
where the latter would be expected. The minor subdominant chord can
either precede the major subdominant chord (see Ex. 1, m. 2), follow it
(see Ex. 3, m. 6), or stand alone as the entire expression of the subdominant harmony (see Ex. 4, mm. 4-5). In the latter case, it occurs in conjunction with a prominent flattened sixth in the vocal melody.
4. Jefferson did not always tune his guitar to standard pitch. I use the term key of C to refer
to those songs on which he played his guitar in C position of standard tuning. On these, his
actual key ranged between B-flat and D. On "Beggin' Back," a non-blues ragtime tune, his
actual key was E-flat, probably the result of placing a capo on the neck of his instrument.
5. Key of E here refers to those songs on which Jefferson played the guitar in the E position of standard tuning. On these, his actual key ranged between D and F.
BMR Journal
96
Example 3. Blind Lemon Jefferson,"That Black Snake Moan no. 2," stanza 2,
mm 5-8
J=102
Vocal
----^
A
I
lI' T
snake is so
black
Mmmm
hard_
S I
i1
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to
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iv
IV
Guitar
WE
Ia
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I am wor - ried
------- ,
I*3,-3
-3
crc
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3 - --3---,
IV7
2W
z#
l-
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bt
All of these harmonic substitutions were quite unusual for Blind

Lemon Jefferson's time, especially for solo blues guitarists. One must ask,
therefore, where he got these and his other musical ideas. Or did he
invent them out of thin air? The latter possibility appears unlikely.
Although Jefferson may have been the first to adapt many of these ideas
successfully to solo guitar for accompanying blues singing, most of them
were around already in the lead lines and solos of jazz horn players and
in ragtime, jazz, and blues piano playing. Jefferson himself is not known
to have played a horn or piano, and he only played guitar once on record
with another musician-a duet in 1928 with a pianist on "How Long
How Long," a rather unsuccessful attempt to cover a recent hit record by
pianist Leroy Carr and guitarist Scapper Blackwell. Jefferson is known to
have performed with other musicians such as Leadbelly, especially in the
early part of his career before 1920, but he is best remembered as a selfaccompanied solo performer. Nevertheless, he must have had plenty of
opportunities to listen to pianists and jazz musicians in theaters and clubs
and to translate their musical ideas into his solo-guitar idiom. He is
known to have frequented Dallas off and on for at least fifteen years
before his recording debut in 1926. Even his home town of Wortham,
Texas, and the neighboring towns of Mexia and Groesbeck had become
small cities in the early 1920s as a result of the discovery of oil there. In
these locations, Jefferson would undoubtedly have heard all sorts of
popular music, including some of the best early jazz musicians.
#88
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97
Example4. Blind LemonJefferson,"WartimeBlues," stanza 1, mm 1-7

J= 118 -
Vocal
y uEtt
rf
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'
What you
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Guitar
130
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your
to
to
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I II b II I
II
-iI
gon'
war?_
when they send
IS
Il
What you gon'
do,
send
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to
war?
send
your
man
to
war?
i
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--
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##
ah
--
D,
The Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson is often given credit for

adapting the harmonic and rhythmic ideas, as well as specific melodic
patterns, of pianists and swing bands to the guitar in his remarkable 1936
and 1937 recording sessions. It is frequently stated that Johnson synthesized much that had gone before in the blues and pointed the way to the
future of this music, as witnessed by his influence on Muddy Waters,
Elmore James, and a host of other blues figures (Palmer 1981, 95-277;
Guralnick 1989, 75-83; Komara 1998, 204-206; Evans 1999, 652-654). But
98
BMR Journal
Blind Lemon Jefferson was doing many of these same things ten years
before Johnson, synthesizing a somewhat different and older set of musical ideas and suggesting new directions. Of the two artists, both of whom
died at early ages after recording an impressive body of work, it would
be fair to say that Jefferson is more in the mainstream of influence on contemporary blues guitar than Johnson, although the latter is today more
acclaimed and more often heard.
The artist who most of all carried the musical essence of Blind Lemon
Jefferson into the future was Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, who, beginning in
the early 1940s, influenced virtually every electric blues guitarist who
ever played lead guitar in a band (Fig. 2). Jefferson's influence on Walker
should come as no surprise. Walker grew up in Dallas and frequently saw
Jefferson, who was a friend of Walker's family (O'Neal and O'Neal
1972-73, 20-22; Dance 1987, 11; Dance 1990, 1; Smith 1999, 37). Walker
was born in 1910, and at the age of eight and perhaps intermittently for a
few years thereafter, he led Jefferson around Dallas. He did not play with
Jefferson but did claim to have learned some guitar from him, most likely through observation. He was only beginning to play music at this time,
and his first interest was the tenor banjo. Walker played in his stepfather's family band and was drawn to blues as well as popular songs. He
claimed to have taken up guitar at the age of thirteen and turned professional at the age of sixteen, which would have been about a year after
Jefferson's recording career began. Once Jefferson began recording, he
became a national star and spent much less time in Dallas. Walker too
was often on the road, making it unlikely that their paths crossed much,
if at all, after 1925. Walker never recorded any of Jefferson's songs, on
borrowing an occasional lyric phrase, nor does one hear specific guitar
figures of Jefferson in the younger man's playing. He was too much of an
innovative artist himself to copy directly; but at a more general level, the
influence of Jefferson on Walker is pervasive. Walker's guitar playing,
always within an ensemble and always in a twelve-bar blues setting or
some other standard popular song structure, is shot through with string
bending, long, dazzling, improvised staccato melodic lines, sustained
notes, harmonic substitutions, and a flexible approach to rhythm. These
are precisely the same characteristics that were so innovative in
Jefferson's earlier solo playing, characteristics that were harnessed and
then developed by Walker for use in more standardized song structures
backed by an ensemble.
The influence of Blind Lemon Jefferson on T-Bone Walker may even
extend to the way they both held the guitar almost horizontally or perpendicular to the chest (cf., the frontispiece photo of Jefferson with Fig. 2).
A number of musicians who saw Jefferson play have commented on this
99
Figure 2. Aaron "T-BoneWalker,"ca. 1950-53. ImperialRecordspublicity

photograph.Courtesyof Billy Vera.
playing position, usually attributing it to his corpulence, claiming that he

laid the guitar on his protruding belly. Lightnin' Hopkins, for example,
stated, "He was a great big fat dark man with a big stomach. He lay that
guitar across his stomach, man, it was a shame. See, the guitar stick way
up toward his chin. Yeah, he had that much stomach. Rared way back"
(Hopkins 1968). There is no doubt that Jefferson was fat, perhaps even
obese, but it would be absurd to think that he was incapable of holding
the guitar against his chest. The best known of the two photographs of
100
BMR Journal
Jefferson shows him holding the guitar almost horizontally but certainly
not "up toward his chin." The other photograph shows him holding the
instrument in the normal position, flat against his chest (Swinton 1997,4).
T-Bone Walker was quite skinny by comparison, but he often used precisely the same playing position, although he too could hold the guitar in
the normal position. Contemporary blues guitarist Duke Robillard, a disciple of T-Bone Walker, says of Walker's horizontal playing position:
"When you hold the guitar out from yourself, like he did, against your
chest, your hand just rests on the strings, and it seems good. You get a real
loose feeling" (quoted in Dance 1987, 240). The horizontal position seems
to have had some currency among blues and jazz guitarists in Texas and
the Southwest. It can be seen in Govenar's illustrated book on Texas blues
in photos of Henry "Buster" Smith (1988, 38), Zu Zu Bollin (73), an
unidentified guitarist in Milton Larkin's Orchestra (84), and Pee Wee
Crayton (172), but Walker's most-likely inspiration would have been his
childhood image of Blind Lemon Jefferson.
When he was only nineteen years old and using the pseudonym Oak
Cliff T-Bone, Walker recorded two blues in Dallas on December 5, 1929,
less than three weeks before Jefferson's death. On one of them, "Trinity
River Blues," Walker displays a vocal range of an octave and a fifth. On
the other, "Wichita Falls Blues," he sings a variant of the opening stanza
of one of Jefferson's first big hits, "Long Lonesome Blues." Walker's closing stanza of this song is as follows:
If anybody should happen to ask you, baby,who composed
this song, (x2)
Just tell 'em "SweetPapa T-Bone,he been here and gone."
Walker's guitar is difficult to hear on these two recordings, obscured by
a more-prominent second guitar, probably played by bluesman Willie
Reed, and by the piano of Doug Finnell. At this early stage, Walker was
mainly known for his singing, acrobatic dancing, and tenor banjo playing
(O'Neal and 0' Neal 1972-73, 22).6He did not come into his own as a guitarist and recording artist with a sustained career until the early 1940s,
when he emerged once again on records, based in California, playing an
electric guitar, and fronting a large ensemble. His work from that time
forward, although not borrowing specific musical figures from Jefferson,
nevertheless displays most of the general traits discussed here as innovative in Jefferson's recordings made between 1926 and 1929: constant
6. Walker is quite possibly the tenor banjo player on four blues recorded the following
day by Lillian Glinn as well as the player of what sounds like a mandolin-banjo on two
recordings by the Dallas String Band and Coley Jones. Jones plays lead mandolin on the latter two pieces, while Walker's stepfather Marco Washington plays a bowed bass.
101
variation in the guitar responses, extended staccato single-note runs,

extreme use of string bending, sustained notes and silences behind the
singing, and the use of substitute and minor chords.
It was T-Bone Walker's genius to recognize the appropriateness of
Blind Lemon Jefferson's solo blues innovations for a band setting, once
the guitar could be amplified to the point where it could be heard within
a band, something that was impossible during Jefferson's lifetime and
when Walker made his first recordings in Dallas. This was Walker's own
great innovation, and it came some fifteen years after Jefferson had introduced his innovations on records and some twenty years or more after
Walker had watched Jefferson perform them in person on the streets of
Dallas. Surely, if T-Bone Walker is the father of modern lead guitar in the
blues and its derivative genre, rock and roll (its "baby," to quote a popular catch phrase), then Blind Lemon Jefferson is its godfather.
Jefferson's pervasive influence may not be restricted to blues and rock
and roll. One of the great figures of jazz history is Charlie Christian, who,
in the opinion of virtually all jazz critics and historians, is recognized as
having revolutionized the sound, style, and role of jazz guitar (Avakian
and Prince 1960; Feather 1965, 114-117; Blesh 1971, 161-186; Russell 1971,
229-231; Collier 1978, 342-346; Schuller 1989, 562-578; Berendt 1992,
306-307; Oliphant 1996, 195-203).7 This revolution took place during
Christian's career with the Benny Goodman Sextet from 1939 until the
guitarist's death in 1942. Christian's innovations are generally described
as the early (although not the first) use of electronic amplification, resulting in a horn-like sound; incessant riffs and variations; racing single-note
staccato runs with an even flow of eighth notes; long, wide-ranging,
improvised, horn-like melodic lines, often of "irregular" length, interspersed with sustained notes and chords; thoroughly blues-inflected
melodies; "new" harmonies, featuring extended, altered, augmented,
and diminished chords; and subtle accenting with great flexibility of the
beat, a kind of "mobile swing." With the exception of the use of electronic amplification, these are precisely the innovative traits of Blind Lemon
Jefferson's blues. Charlie Christian even held his guitar, like Jefferson,
with the bottom severely angled outward from his chest, as can be seen
in numerous photographs of him (e.g., Collier 1978, 344; Govenar 1988,
36). Besides the use of amplification, the obvious differences between
Christian and Jefferson were that Christian did not sing (at least on his
recordings), that he played guitar in ensembles rather than as a soloist,
7. I am grateful to my colleague Jack Cooper, as well as to Richard Raichelson, Chris
Smith, and Konrad Nowakowski, for suggesting sources of information on Charlie
Christian.
102
BMR Journal
and that he played mostly popular tunes with fixed and complex structures, rather than blues with their often loose and open-ended structures
(particularly in solo performance).
There has been much discussion of the possible musical influences on
Charlie Christian that led to his innovations. Ralph Ellison, who knew
Christian as they were growing up together in Oklahoma City and aspiring to be musicians, takes a broad view, citing the rich local blues, jazz,
and church music scene, Christian's father and older brothers who were
professional musicians, popular music via radio and recordings, blues
and jazz recordings, and Christian's exposure to music theory and classical music from his high school teacher Zelia Braux (Ellison 1964, 233-240;
Blesh 1971, 163-164). The main specific influence Ellison suggests is tenor
saxophonist Lester Young, who brought a revolutionary style on his
instrument to Oklahoma City in 1929 and stayed for a while (Ellison 1964,
236-237; Blesh 1971, 171). Other writers have agreed that Young was a
major influence on Christian as a model for the horn-like sound and the
use of long, fluid melodic lines and subtle accenting (Russell 1971, 230;
Berendt 1992, 307). As for specific guitarists who might have influenced
Christian, Berendt (310) suggests Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang (who
was himself influenced by Johnson), whereas Martin Williams (1985, 37)
suggests a longer list of precursors that includes Johnson and Lang and
stretches through Django Reinhardt, Floyd Smith, and Eddie Durham.
Gunther Schuller (1989, 563-565) adds to this list various unspecified
Texas and southwestern blues guitarists and even western swing guitarists such as "Zeke" Campbell, Bob Dunn, and Leon MacAuliffe, who
were pioneers in the use of electronic amplification in a jazzy setting.
Most of these suggestions are simply intelligent speculation. These
sounds were no doubt in the air during Christian's youth, and he could
have heard some of the specific artists through radio, recordings, and at
live shows in Oklahoma City. But his playing does not sound especially
like that of Johnson, Lang, Reinhardt, or the western swing guitarists,
except in the most general manner. The only two artists mentioned with
whom Christian is known to have had some significant early contact are
Lester Young and Eddie Durham. As already noted, Lester Young was
clearly a significant inspiration and influence on Christian, but he was
after all not a guitarist. Christian needed a means of transition between
horn and guitar and found this person in Eddie Durham, a pioneer of the
electric guitar and a fine trombonist and arranger. Durham told Leonard
Feather in an interview:
Touringwith the band I ran into CharlieChristianin OklahomaCity.He was
playing piano when I first saw him, but I never in my life heard a guy learn
to play guitar faster than he did. It was around the latterpart of 1937, and
103
I'll never forgetthatold beat up five-dollarwooden guitarthathe took to the

jam session where I heard him play. I told Charliethe way to sound like an
instrument,staccato,was to use all down strokes.Most of the guys at that
time played alternatingup and down strokesacross the strings.The downstrokesgave a sharpertone like a saxophone,but when you come back up,
while the stringsarebouncingback,it gives you a more legato effect.I don't
think Christianhad ever seen a guitar with an amplifieruntil he met me. It
was a year before they got on the marketgenerally,and then he got one for
himself. (Quotedin Feather1965,114)8
Durham's statement explains how Christian came in contact with an
amplified guitar, which led to his horn-like tone and perhaps the staccato quality of his playing, but Durham may have exaggerated his own
influence in the latter instance and is certainly wrong about Christian's
rapid learning following his tutelage. Charlie Christian had been playing
guitar for about ten years before 1937 and was already a working professional musician!
Other likely sources of inspiration and musical ideas for Charlie
Christian before his encounter with Eddie Durham are T-Bone Walker and
Chuck Richardson. Walker came to Oklahoma City from Dallas in 1933 as
a member of Lawson Brooks' jazz band (O'Neal and O'Neal 1972-73,
22-23). When he left for the West Coast the following year, he gave up the
guitar chair in the band to Christian. This was apparently Christian's first
work with a professional jazz outfit that was prepared to go on the road.
Walker was already a touring professional when he came to Oklahoma
City and six years Christian's senior, making it likely that he had some
influence on the younger guitarist, although with characteristic modesty
he never claimed it. The two musicians performed together often, alternating on guitar and string bass, while Charlie's older brother Edward
played the piano. Their act included singing and tap dancing. Helen
Oakley Dance (1990, 1) claims that Walker and Christian both took guitar
instruction and learned chords from a local Oklahoma City reading musician named Chuck Richardson, who taught Christian "everything on the
guitar." This information came from singer Melvin Moore, who knew all
three men, but Walker himself apparently never mentioned it, and its significance need not be overemphasized. Both musicians no doubt heard,
met, and discussed music with many other guitarists.
Curiously, the association (and possible influence) of T-Bone Walker
with Charlie Christian has been all but ignored by the jazz community,
although the information has been in print since the 1940s (Greenough
1947). If one searches for associations and influences elsewhere in the
8. For a similar statement by Durham many years later, see Govenar (1988, 36).
104
BMR Journal
world of blues, some in the jazz community even begin to become defensive. This is especially the case if the name of Blind Lemon Jefferson is
raised. Ralph Ellison, recalling a time when Christian made cigar-box guitars in school at the age of twelve or thirteen (ca. 1928-29), stated, "So
when Charlie Christian would amuse and amaze us at school with his first
guitar-one that he had made from a box-he would be playing his own
riffs. But they were based on sophisticated chords and progressions that
Blind Lemon Jefferson never knew" (quoted in Blesh 1971, 164, see also
171). The superficial truth of Ellison's statement, that Jefferson did not use
"sophisticated" chords, conveniently serves to dismiss the possibility of
any other influences from the blind bluesman. James Lincoln Collier (1978,
342-343) is a bit more charitable, squeezing Jefferson's large presence
between two jazz guitar "giants" when he states that Christian "undoubtedly heard Lonnie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Eddie Lang, all of
whom were cutting large numbers of records while Christian was growing up." Ross Russell (1971, 229), however, draws a circle around guitarists in the jazz community only, positing a "southwestern guitar
school" of Eddie Durham, Efferge Ware, Jim Daddy Walker, Floyd Smith,
and Charlie Christian. Only Texas jazz historian Dave Oliphant (1996, 196,
see also 45-48, 121, 199) has unreservedly suggested Jefferson as a significant influence, stating that "it was the southwestern melodic singing style
of the blues and the riff phrasing developed by Blind Lemon Jefferson that
formed the basis of Charlie Christian's innovative approach."
We know that Charlie Christian was born in Bonham, Texas, on July 29,
1916, but we know unfortunately little about his musical upbringing. The
most-detailed account comes from his childhood friend, the writer and
one-time fellow musician Ralph Ellison, who was born in 1914 and who
was two years older than Christian. In his own writing (1964, 233-240)
and in an interview with Rudi Blesh (1971, 161-186), Ellison gives a few
tantalizing facts. Christian spent some early years in Dallas, although
Ellison states that Christian's family moved to Oklahoma City when
Charlie was two years old and that he himself had known Charlie since
1923. Ellison's primary memories, however, appear to stem from 1928
into the early 1930s. The early move to Oklahoma City may or may not
be contradicted by Sammy Price's statement that he saw Charlie
Christian in Dallas "when he was just a kid playing around in the mud,"
adding that "I think Harry, his brother, probably started him off, encouraged him" (1990, 80). The 1920 U.S. census lists the family living in
Oklahoma City.9
9. I am grateful to Alan Govenar and Jay Brakefield for checking census information on
the Christian family. Special thanks also go to Tony Russell and Karl Gert zur Heide for further suggestions on this topic.
105
Immediately following Ellison's statement excluding Blind Lemon

Jefferson from Christian's musical consciousness, Blesh (1971, 164-165)
states the following:
All membersof Charlie'sfamily were musical.Beforeleaving for Oklahoma
City (when Charliewas two), Mr. and Mrs. Christianhad provided all the
music in a silent movie theatrein Dallas;she on piano, he on trumpet.Mr.
Christian,Ellisonsays, had becomeblind sometimein those years aftermoving to Oklahoma,but he still played, strumminga guitaror a double-necked
mandolin.Charliehad two brothers,Clarence,and the eldest, Edward,who
was about four years older than Charlie.Mr. Christianand his three sons
made up a strolling quartet with Mr. Christian and Charlie on guitars,
Edwardon string bass, and Clarencedoubling on violin and mandolin. By
that time Charliehad acquireda real guitar.They all sang and the relative
pitches of their voices blended into a male quartet.They played opera or
blues, but even on some sentimental ballad they would insinuate some
rathersophisticatedchords into the orthodox "barbershop"harmony.
Here is the young Charlie Christian singing and playing guitar on the
streets, balancing a repertoire of blues with sentimental "barbershop"
songs and operatic selections, even leading a blind guitarist from Dallas
(his father) all at the very time when Blind Lemon Jefferson was perhaps
the biggest-selling guitarist on race records. We cannot say for sure
whether Charlie Christian ever saw and heard Jefferson in person, but he
undoubtedly heard his records, heard about him from his parents, heard
other guitarists trying to perform his pieces, was known by one of
Jefferson's best friends (Sammy Price), and certainly heard and performed with one of Jefferson's chief guitar proteges, T-Bone Walker.
Rather than asking the question, "Could Charlie Christian have heard
Blind Lemon Jefferson?" we should be asking, "How could he not have
heard him?"
That the central and primal position of Blind Lemon Jefferson in the
development of blues, jazz, and rock guitar has not been more recognized
in recent years appears to be due to a series of alienating circumstances,
beginning with his blindness and the image it created for others, an
image with which many have become increasingly uncomfortable as this
affliction becomes both rarer and more treatable. The alienation continues
through Jefferson's status as a solo performer, not tied to the rhythm,
melody, or harmonic structure of any other musician or to any sort of
group ethos, on to the obnoxious surface noise heard on many of his
recordings, and finally to his music itself, which no one yet has come
close to imitating.
This alienation has not prevented other musicians from loving Blind
Lemon Jefferson's music, but it has led to a pattern of qualifying the love
106
BMR Journal
with a bit of criticism, probably much like the reaction of many who saw
him in person on the streets, stopping a bit to listen and admire his music,
dropping a nickel in his tin cup, and walking on, a bit shaken up emotionally and perhaps muttering some aesthetic evaluation, but "blind" to
the music that was still ringing in their heads as the singer called out after
them "Don't play me cheap!" For Son House, he was "the best," but he
"broke time," whereas for Lightnin' Hopkins, he just had a bit too much
stomach. For Roosevelt Holts, his high notes were a "squeal." For Ralph
Ellison, his chords and progressions were not "sophisticated" enough.
Even T-Bone Walker, who said "I was really crazy about him," claimed
that his favorite guitarists when he was first learning were Lonnie
Johnson and Scrapper Blackwell (O'Neal and O'Neal 1972-73, 20-21).
Walker reserved most of his praise for Jefferson's singing (Greenough
1947, 5-6). Mississippi bluesman Rubin Lacy, who worked with Jefferson
for a week or two in theaters in the Delta around 1928, thought that
Jefferson had a fine voice but "had everything in the same tune," actually referring to his "loping play," a clearly outrageous generalization
(quoted in Evans 1971, 242). Lacy claimed that he could play Jefferson's
pieces but that Jefferson could not play his. Texas singer and guitarist
Mance Lipscomb stated:
Wellnow, I liked BlindLemonJefferson'splayin' an his kind a blues. He was
a clairpicka.He sung like he played and played like he sung. He had a good
gittah an a good loud mouth. But the technicianswas diffunt;it wadn no
rhythmto it. He jest sung like he wanta, because he had his own beat. Now
he had double notes in his music. You know, jest hit about in spots. Break
time. Sometimehe put too miny bars in his song: he sung foe or five beats
before he turn his song an change codes [i.e., chords].You couldn time his
music. Jest rock up an down, an didn keep a steady beat goin, an give the
people the motion while they was dancin. People would jest stand around
an listen at im.... See, I play straighttime. (Quotedin Alyn 1993,203-204)
Influential Chicago blues-rock guitarist Mike Bloomfield, although
admitting that Jefferson was one of his earliest influences and that he had
even made a special trip to visit his grave in Texas, nevertheless felt compelled to disparage the bluesman's singing, guitar playing, and even his
size: "He was so fat that he had to play a small ladies' guitar on top of his
sumo wrestler's belly. And he was really a great player, very fast, very
strange. Blind Lemon didn't play with a beat-you couldn't dance to his
music. I don't know how he got so popular. He also had a very high, emotional, whiny voice-really a blind man's voice" (quoted in Wheeler 1993,
265).
Perhaps the strangest comment of all was made by jazz tenor saxo-
107
phonist Archie Shepp, speaking of the free harmonic conception of

Ornette Coleman (who was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1930, the year
after Jefferson died):
It was Coleman who, in my opinion, revitalized and refurbishedthe blues
idiom without destroyingits simplisticmilieu. Farfrom taking it beyond its
original intentions, Coleman restored [the blues] to their free, classical
[African]unharmonizedbeginnings. I have always felt that this early work
of Ornette'swas much closer to the "old thing"-hoedowns, foot-tappin'than the new. CertainlyBlind Lemon Jeffersonand Huddie Ledbettermust
have played thirteen,seventeen, twenty-five bar blues. Regardless;no pundit would have been foolish enough to label them avant-garde.(Quoted in
Berendt1992,122)
No musician, of course, no matter how great, should be immune to criticism when it is warranted. It is true that Jefferson's harmonies were not
"advanced" by the standards of Charlie Christian or even of T-Bone
Walker. And although Jefferson was admired by other musicians as much
as Walker and Christian were, he did not create a style that others could
imitate with some success. Instead, Jefferson's approachto blues guitar
playing was developed by others, especially Walker and Christian, with
the pickup and the amplifier acting as the catalyst in this process. We cannot tell what Jefferson's sound or status in the music world might have
been if he had lived and remained musically active into the 1950s, when
the concept of a musical avant-garde gained currency. Would he have
switched to the electric guitar? Perhaps. It is doubtful, although possible,
that he would have adapted successfully to an ensemble setting. The
ensemble more likely would have had to adapt to him. But if musicians
could adapt to Orette Coleman and the result be called avant-garde,
why not to Blind Lemon Jefferson? Was he not avant-garde before "avantgarde" was invented?
Only a few fellow musicians have been absolutely unreserved in their
praise of Jefferson. One of these was Texas bluesman Tom Shaw, who followed Jefferson around in Dallas in the 1920s. He stated:
Lemon was strictly a blues man.... And he was the kinda blues man you
didn't have every day on the street.He was the king. Whereverhe pull his
guitarout, he was the king there.Wasn'tno use for anybody else to come up
talkin'about playin' againsthim, 'cause they couldn't even do what he was
doin'-all they could do was look and wonder how in the hell he done it...
. He played all the time by his-self, wasn't nobody could play with him ....
He'd play whatever you wanted him to play for you, for the money. When
you got throughpayin' him he got throughplayin'.... It was hard to dance
by anybody's music like that .... It's listening music .... He had more
"break-aways"[i.e., riff variations]than anybody, . .. more "break-aways"
BMR Journal
108
than anybody else ever gonna get, too. ... I never heard him criticize
nobody, 'cause wasn't nobody else playin' when he played; everybody else
was standin' around him, hopin' they could do what he could do.... What
made him so popular .... His style was different from all the players.
(Quoted in Calt [1984])
The last word should be given to the ever-gracious B. B. King, the most
influential living blues singer and guitarist. King listened to Jefferson's
records when he was growing up and numbered him among his three
favorite blues artists, saying, "Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon. Those
were my people, along with T-Bone Walker" (quoted in Obrecht 1993,
149). Summing up his appreciation for Jefferson's music, King stated:
He had something in his phrasing that's so funny. He had a way of doubletime playing. Say, like, one-two-three-four, and then he'd go [in doubletime] one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. And the time was still right
there, but double-time. And he could come out of it so easy. And then when
he would resolve something, it was done so well. I've got some of his records
now-I keep them on cassette with me. But he'd come out of it so smooth.
His touch is different from anybody on the guitar-still is. I've practiced,
I've tried, I did everything, and still I could never come out with the sound
as he did. He was majestic, and he played just a regular little 6-string guitar
with a little round hole. It was unbelievable to hear him play. And the way
he played with his rhythm patterns, he was way before his time, in my opinion. (Quoted in Wheeler and Obrecht 1993, 141)
DISCOGRAPHY
Andrews,Ed. Barrelhouse blues / Timeain't gonna make me stay.OKeh8137 (1924).

Carr,Leroy,and ScrapperBlackwell.How long-how long blues. Vocalion1191(1928).
Daddy Stovepipe.Sundownblues / Stove pipe blues. Gennett5459 (1924).
.Tidewaterblues. Unissued (1924).
Du Pree,Reese.Norfolkblues / One more roundergone. OKeh8127 (1924).
Jackson,PapaCharlie.Jackson'sblues. Paramount12348(1926).
Jefferson,BlindLemon.Beggin'back.Paramount12394(1926).
Blind Lemon'spenitentiaryblues. Paramount12666(1928).
Boogerroogerblues. Paramount12425(1926).
Boosterblues. Paramount12347(1926).
Competitionbed blues. Paramount12728(1928).
Dry southernblues. Paramount12347(1926).
Got the blues. Paramount12354(1926).
How long how long. Paramount12685(1928).
.Jack o' diamondblues. Paramount12373(1926).
.Long lonesomeblues. Paramount12354(1926).
Matchbox blues. OKeh8455,Paramount12474(1927).
109
. Peach orchard mama. Paramount 12801 (1929).

. Prison cell blues. Paramount 12622 (1928).
. Struck sorrow blues. Paramount 12541 (1927).
. That black snake moan no. 2. Paramount 12756 (1929).
. Tin cup blues. Paramount 12756 (1929).
Wartime blues. Paramount 12425 (1926).
Johnson, Lonnie. Love story blues. OKeh 8282 (1926).
Jones, Samuel [Stovepipe No. 1]. Black snake blues. Gennett 6212 (1927).
Rainey, Ma. Shave 'em dry blues / Farewell daddy blues. Paramount 12222 (1924).
Smith, Bessie. Sorrowful blues. Columbia 14020-D (1924).
Smith, Pine Top. Pine Top's boogie woogie. Vocalion 1245 (1928).
Walker, Aaron "T-Bone" [Oak Cliff T-Bone]. Trinity River blues. Columbia 14506-D (1929).
.Wichita Falls blues. Columbia 14506-D (1929).
Weaver, Sylvester. Guitar rag. OKeh 8109 (1923).
REFERENCES
Abbott, Lynn, and Doug Seroff. 1996. "They cert'ly sound good to me": Sheet music, southern vaudeville, and the commercial ascendancy of the blues. American Music 14, no. 4:
402-454.
Alyn, Glen. 1993. I say mefor a parable:The oral autobiographyof Mance Lipscomb,Texasbluesman. New York: W. W. Norton.
Avakian, Al, and Bob Prince. 1960. Charlie Christian. In The art of jazz, edited by Martin T.
Williams, 181-186. New York: Random House.
Barlow, William. 1989. Looking up at down: The emergence of blues culture. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
Berendt, Joachim E. 1992. Thejazz book:From ragtime tofusion and beyond.6th ed. Revised by
Giinther Huesmann, translated by H. and B. Bredigkeit with Dan Morgenstern and Tim
Nevill. New York: Lawrence Hill Books.
Blesh, Rudi. 1971. ComboUSA: Eight lives in jazz. Philadelphia: Chilton.
Brooks, Edward, 1982. The Bessie Smith companion.New York: Da Capo.
Calt, Stephen. [1984]. Liner notes, Blind LemonJefferson:King of the country blues. Yazoo 1069.
Charters, Samuel. 1967. The bluesmen.New York: Oak.
Collier, James Lincoln. 1978. The making of jazz: A comprehensivehistory. New York: Delta.
Dance, Helen Oakley. 1987. StormyMonday: The T-BoneWalkerstory. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press.
1990. Booklet notes, The completerecordingsof T-BoneWalker1940-1954. Mosaic MR
9-130.
Dixon, Robert M. W., and John Godrich. 1970. Recordingthe blues. New York:Stein and Day.
Dixon, Robert M. W., John Godrich, and Howard W. Rye. 1997. Blues and gospel records
1890-1943. 4th ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon.
Ellison, Ralph. 1964. Shadowand act. New York: Random House.
Evans, David. 1971. Rubin Lacy. In Nothing but the blues, edited by Mike Leadbitter, 239-245.
London: Hanover.
1982. Big road blues: Traditionand creativity in thefolk blues. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
.1999. Robert Leroy Johnson, essays. In Internationaldictionaryof blackcomposers,edited by Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.,2: 652-656. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn.
Fahey, John. 1970. CharleyPatton. London: Studio Vista.
Feather, Leonard. 1965. The bookof jazz from then till now. New York: Bonanza.
110
BMR Journal
Govenar, Alan. 1988. Meeting the blues. Dallas: Taylor Publishing.

Greenough, Jane. 1947. T-Bone blues: T-Bone Walker's story in his own words. Record
Changer(October): 5-6, 12.
Guralnick, Peter. 1989. Searchingfor RobertJohnson.New York: E. P Dutton.
Holts, Roosevelt. 1969. Interview with the author. Bogalusa, La., April 2.
Hopkins, Lightnin'. 1968. Reminiscences of Blind Lemon. In The roots of Lightnin' Hopkins.
Folkways FTS 31011. (Recorded January 15, 1959.)
House, Eddie "Son." 1964. Interview with the author. Cambridge, Mass., November 4.
Komara, Edward. 1998. Postscript. In Chasin'that devil music: Searchingforthe blues, by Gayle
Dean Wardlow, 203-206. San Francisco: Miller Freeman.
Kubik, Gerhard. 1999. Africa and the blues. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Lambert, Dan. 1996. From blues to jazz guitar. In The guitar in jazz: An anthology, edited by
James Sallis, 33-44. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Obrecht, Jas. 1993. B. B. King and John Lee Hooker. In Blues guitar: The men who made the
music, edited by Jas Obrecht, 144-151. San Francisco: Miller Freeman.
Oliphant, Dave. 1996. Texasjazz. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Oliver, Paul. 1969. The story of the blues. London: Barrie and Rockliff.
O'Neal, Jim, and Amy O'Neal. 1972-73. Living Blues interview: T-Bone Walker. Living Blues
11 (winter): 20-26; 12 (spring): 24-27.
Palmer, Robert. 1981. Deep blues. New York: Viking.
Price, Sammy. 1990. What do they want? A jazz autobiography,edited by Caroline Richmond.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Russell, Ross. 1971. Jazz style in Kansas City and the Southwest. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Schuller, Gunther. 1989. The swing era: The developmentof jazz 1930-1945. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Smith, Chris. 1991. Booklet notes, Papa CharlieJackson,Volume1. Document Records DOCD5087.
1999. T-Bone Walker: The man who changed the blues. Juke Blues 44 (summer):
36-40.
Swinton, Paul. 1997. A twist of Lemon. Blues and Rhythm:The GospelTruth121 (August): 4-9.
Titon, Jeff Todd. 1977. Early downhome blues: A musical and cultural analysis. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Tracy, Steven C. 1993. Going to Cincinnati: A history of the blues in the Queen City. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Van Rijn, Guido, and Hans Vergeer. 1982. Liner notes, Sylvester Weaver:Smoketownstrut.
Agram Blues AB 2010.
Wheeler, Tom. 1993. Michael Bloomfield. In Blues guitar: The men who made the music, edited
by Jas Obrecht, 260-267. San Francisco: Miller Freeman.
Wheeler, Tom, and Jas Obrecht. 1993. B. B. King. In Blues guitar: The men who made the music,
edited by Jas Obrecht, 122-143. San Francisco: Miller Freeman.
Williams, Martin. 1985. Jazz heritage.New York: Oxford University Press.
111
APPENDIX
Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Tin Cup Blues"
J=98 -
Vocal
Guitar
106 (fluctuates)
'
~ ^
'
'
T~1
I was down_
1.
45
jbf
,
A AI I
4 4 4
_ and I cried;
A;
my so-da cake
would-n't come
out
nice._
5I
{j.
:, -
and I
cried;
my
so - da cake
1-
won't
IV7
was
come
down_
up_
nice.
rp
(to
-3---'
-3
j
rm
~1~~~And
-~~~~~~~~~~~-
>?
r. r
it's tough
hr
Harmonies implied by the guitar Originally transcribedby the authorfor DocumentaryArts, Inc.
Reprintedby permission.
BMR Journal
112
aru
h 7
D1
p ,,,L?h
3
see a man
go
to the rack_
J
al - most
and
13r
starve
and
die.
@j
nr17r
-^/~~~~-
~2.
16
I-
stood on__
the cor-ner,
and
al
most bust
'
18
head._
my
I stood on_
r
---- 3
13--
the
cor -ner
al - most bust my
and
IV7
f0f
'
l1 ;
1-P
113
r p1;
1i-
head.
r-3--
could -n't earn
-VI7
e- nough mo - ney
to
me
buy
loaf
of__
bread._
IV7
- I
'
1-
e-nough^~~~
n
f:F
3.
U
is
so
"
Ba - by,
times_
i,4,i7
hard,
'
, \
al - most call
?r'-- r
i.>
J.'
'mh
it tough.
I said, the times is so hard,
IfW^ ?
\pr-6nt
f,d
114
33,
BMR Journal
,
~,
I al
call
most
36
it
tough._
I can't earn mo-ney to buy no bread;

VI7
38
il
+
can't buy
my
snuff._
IV7
4,
I?
?
41
4,
a house - maid,
a43
and she
It
4. My gal's
ft
you know I
dol - lar
t:,
earns_
, JI
week.
Sff
Dz
KLL

45
115
A1'
7n4
I said
r'
j
h^
gal's a house - maid,
my
7 ) -} i?
and she earns
IV7
47
t+
Sj^
Ir)j
dol - lar
week.
49
I'm
so
hun
gry on pay - day,
V17
can't hard
ly
speak.
r~77
'-3--'
534,
4,
4,
-
-.
flr
5. Now ga- ther

?
~n,~t,
AW
E~4
i .ron
'round me,
4,
pe p
Ft
people;
let me
------- - - 0
7 :--
BMR Journal
116
f
56
'- 3---
tell you
true
fact__
58
~7
~--
said,
I
'J,
ga-ther
'round me,
'-W~
peo - pie,
and
IV7
60
-^
-J
AK
p r;
let
r!
.
me_
---
1V;rJ
tell you a
true_
fact.
I
3-
1'
62
TI":7Z}:
if1
That hard luck has struck
me,
and the rats
is
sleep-ing
in
my
hat._
64
O_
? -
^WH^^Cr
h-XJ^hr^
VJ
J1 MT
t'i
1-

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Musical Innovation in the Blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson

Author(s): David Evans

MUSICAL INNOVATION IN THE BLUES

Although a few other guitar-playing bluesmen had made records before

tural program in ethnomusicology (regional studies). He is author of TommyJohnson(Studio

Evans * Musical Innovation

Evans * Musical Innovation

Evans * Musical Innovation

himself out of these environments and made him welcome in more

Figure 1. Beats per mesure in Blind LemonJefferson's"Tin Cup Blues."

Beats per Measure

Evans * Musical Innovation

Example 1. Blind Lemon Jefferson,"Prison Cell Blues," guitar introduction,

Evans * Musical Innovation

Example 2. Blind LemonJefferson,"Match Box Blues," excerpt of guitar part,

approach to tempo. When I asked Mississippi bluesman Eddie "Son"

Evans * Musical Innovation

All of these harmonic substitutions were quite unusual for Blind

Evans * Musical Innovation

Example4. Blind LemonJefferson,"WartimeBlues," stanza 1, mm 1-7

when they send

What you gon'

The Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson is often given credit for

Evans * Musical Innovation

Figure 2. Aaron "T-BoneWalker,"ca. 1950-53. ImperialRecordspublicity

playing position, usually attributing it to his corpulence, claiming that he

Evans * Musical Innovation

variation in the guitar responses, extended staccato single-note runs,

Evans * Musical Innovation

I'll never forgetthatold beat up five-dollarwooden guitarthathe took to the

Evans * Musical Innovation

Immediately following Ellison's statement excluding Blind Lemon

Evans * Musical Innovation

phonist Archie Shepp, speaking of the free harmonic conception of

Andrews,Ed. Barrelhouse blues / Timeain't gonna make me stay.OKeh8137 (1924).

Evans * Musical Innovation

. Peach orchard mama. Paramount 12801 (1929).

Govenar, Alan. 1988. Meeting the blues. Dallas: Taylor Publishing.

Evans * Musical Innovation

Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Tin Cup Blues"

Evans * Musical Innovation

could -n't earn

I said, the times is so hard,

I can't earn mo-ney to buy no bread;

Evans * Musical Innovation

gal's a house - maid,

gry on pay - day,

5. Now ga- ther

That hard luck has struck

and the rats

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