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 Accessed: 13-05-2015 18:14 UTC
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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.
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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
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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."
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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92 Example1, continued '~
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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
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Example 2. Blind LemonJefferson,"Match Box Blues," excerpt of guitar part, stanza b, mm. 1-5 J=168 --3
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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.
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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
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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.
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Example 3. Blind Lemon Jefferson,"That Black Snake Moan no. 2," stanza 2, mm 5-8 J=102 Vocal
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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).
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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.
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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
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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-
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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"
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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).
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. 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
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Evans * Musical Innovation
111 APPENDIX
Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Tin Cup Blues"
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BMR Journal
112
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Evans * Musical Innovation
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114 33,
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Evans * Musical Innovation 45
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BMR Journal
116 f
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