by Jonny Meister, Host/Producer of The Blues Show on WXPN

In March 1926 Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded “Long Lonesome Blues.” The record changed the course of blues history. Blues before that, beginning with the first blues hit, “Crazy Blues” by Mamie Smith in 1920, generally featured female singers backed by sophisticated, uptown ensembles. Many of the singers seemed to be named Smith (Mamie, Bessie, Clara, Laura). Lemon Jefferson was the first rural blues artist to be a hit. “Long Lonesome Blues” is a masterpiece of interplay between voice and guitar and is really the first major recording to feature improvised lead guitar. The record was so popular that Jefferson had to go back and record it two more times, because the metal masters from which the 78 rpm records were made wore out. In 1935, an artist known as The Mississippi Moaner did a version of it called “It’s Cold In China Blues.” That title comes from one of the verses in the original song about it being so cold in China that the birds couldn’t sing. Apparently the winter 1926 was a very cold one in China and that had been reported in the news here. Since then, the song has usually been recorded under that title and credited to The Mississippi Moaner, or his real name Isaiah Nettles. Nettles got the credit for it when Ladell McLin cut it in 2005.

It was Lemon Jefferson’s fate to have much of his stuff covered under different titles and his role in the songs forgotten. A verse would be lifted from a Jefferson song and adapted into a new song. The most memorable image in Robert Johnson’s song “Love In Vain” is the verse about the train with the red and blue light on it. This comes directly from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s song “Dry Southern Blues.” The first song that Elvis Presley recorded for commercial release was “That’s All Right” that he learned from Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup. But the title verse of that song was first recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson in another song, “That Black Snake Moan.” Only “Match Box Blues” seems to have passed on with its original title, to artists such as Albert King, and Carl Perkins. The Beatles credited Carl Perkins for it when they covered it. Why was Lemon’s role in so many songs forgotten? The answer is probably that many of the songs “didn’t make sense” in that they didn’t tell a coherent story. They truly derived from the work songs from which blues itself emerged. Scholars have had fun with this, describing the songs as “athematic,” meaning that they don’t have a central theme or storyline. Some writers talk about “stanzaic disjunction” — the verses don’t seem to connect with each other. Thus many of his stanzas were pulled and turned into new songs, with recognition of his crucial role in spreading this music lost in the process. Jefferson was the key influence to most of the blues musicians who went on to become the key influences to modern blues and rock. Lemon was influential not only to generations of blues musicians after him including B. B. King, who lists him as one of his earliest favorites, but also to people in the folk revival such as Bob Dylan, who covered Jefferson’s recording of “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” on his very first album.

Three and a half years after “Long Lonesome Blues” Jefferson died, the Depression was on, and true rural blues never again achieved quite so much commercial success. First-time listeners to Blind Lemon Jefferson may find both the lack of coherent storylines and the poor quality of the recordings to be significant obstacles. Even for their times, these records were poorly made, as they were “race records”– records aimed at the black community. Moreover, because Jefferson was so popular, the surviving copies are usually pretty well-worn. They were definitely played a lot. One writer described the poor audio as “the price of admission to Jefferson’s art.” As far as I’m concerned, that’s a bargain, well worth the investment of your time and attention.