See That My Grave is Kept Clean

Before Blues greats Big Bill Broonzy or Robert Johnson, there was a visually impaired country-blues guitarist from Texas who was talented and resourceful and who influenced all who followed.  Blind Lemon Jefferson was the first and possibly the most influential of the modern bluesmen. His birth date is disputed, either 1893 or 1894 on a farm near Worthan, Texas, just south of Dallas. Blind Lemon was the best-selling country-blues musician of the 1920's. He recorded a total of ninety songs, the majority for Paramount Records.

His intensely personal style and a powerful singing voice were something new. It was the music from the street corners and the rural South.  In 1925, a Dallas talent scout suggested that Paramount record Blind Lemon. Consequently, Paramount brought him to Chicago for his first recordings. His greatest hit was in 1927 with "That Black Snake Moan." Other songs include "Match Box Blues," "Jack O'Diamonds," and "See That My Grave is Kept Clean." He was so successful that he made enough money not only to buy a Ford automobile but also to hire a chauffeur.

On September 24, 1929, Blind Lemon Jefferson took the train to the Penn Station in Richmond, Indiana, for a full-day of recording at the Gennett studio. Gennett was used because a new Paramount studio was under construction in Grafton, Wisconsin. This now famous country-bluesman cut twelve songs that day. As it turned out, these were his final recordings.

Three months later he was dead. It is not entirely clear what happened after he left a house party in Chicago, but it was late at night in December during a snowstorm. It is believed he became disoriented and lost. The next morning, Blind Lemon Jefferson was found, guitar in hand, frozen to death on a Chicago sidewalk.

Thirty-eight years after his death, the state of Texas finally recognized his talent and influence by properly marking his gravesite. Texas later renamed it the Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery. On Bob Dylan's first album in 1962, he included the song "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean." The rock bands Blind Melon and Jefferson Airplane were named in his honor. Among those he influenced included Doc Watson, Carl Perkins and Van Morrison. Other Texas bluesmen that Blind Lemon worked with or who saw him perform included his protégé Leadbelly, T-Bone Walker, and Lightin' Hopkins. T-Bone Walker would go on to become the first great electric-blues guitarist after WW II, but as a teenager, T-Bone Walker befriended Blind Lemon and would lead him from job to job in the Dallas area.

Blind Lemon Jefferson was the first in a great line of Texas musicians. And like so many blues musicians, he was cut down in his prime. The search for the successor to Blind Lemon leads Paramount to the greatest Mississippi Delta Bluesman, Charley Patton.

Author:Bob Jacobsen, July 2008

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