Blind Lemon Jefferson - King of the Blues

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Music reviews of King of the Blues

Music Review: One of America's Finest
Rating: 5 Stars

This is evidenced by the fact that virtually every blues musician after 1930 cites him as an influence or inspiration, but none of them sound remotely like him.

Thankfully, because many of Jefferson's recordings are still intact and in some degree of listenability, we can judge for ourselves. While the audio quality of many of his recordings are criminally decrepit, his personality and musicianship manage to cut through and reveal a confident and highly skilled artist and performer whose songs still resonate today.

Jefferson's recordings were not made as "field recordings" a la Alan Lomax visiting a poor, unknown musician in a sharecroppers' house. Jefferson's songs were recorded in Chicago by Paramount Records in the mid 1920s by producers who clearly appreciated Jefferson's talent and professionalism and ability to sell lots of records.

Blind Lemon Jefferson is interesting and important because his music contradicts almost every false cliche about blues musicians. He was very literate as a person and a musician. As a guitar player and singer he was technically gifted, rarely if ever hit a wrong note, and achieved performance standards as high as any classically trained musician of his time. Yet he also made his music and singing sound very informal and spontaneous, as if he had just made it up.

In this release, two of his most interesting works are "Hot Dogs" and "Beggin' Back", in which Jefferson appears to provide improvised, bantering spoken vocals over very challenging guitar accompaniments of established rag-time influenced standards of the time.

The measure of Blind Lemon Jefferson's recorded work can be weighed in that few, if any, subsequent blues musicians have even attempted to cover his songs in the way he recorded them. After trying, they simply gave up.

Strangely, the one contemporary musician who most reminds me of Blind Lemon Jefferson is Ali Farka Toure of Mali.

I have always liked and admired this man's music because in a strange way, it does not seem old at all, but very fresh and new.

Description of King of the Blues

Blues CDs

• Music > Styles
• Folk
• Pop