Blind Lemon Jefferson, guitar symphonist

I've been working on Blind Lemon Jefferson's "One Dime Blues." It is a solo guitar/vocal performance recorded in Texas in 1927.



For quite a few years I've had a Stefan Grossman transcription book called Texas Blues, with tunes by Jefferson, Mance Lipscomb, Little Hat Jones and others. I learned out tune out of it when I was a teenager, "Bad Luck Blues" which has become transmogrified over the years.

Lately I've been focusing on Blind Lemon Jefferson's music a bit - he's one of my favorite blues performers. His voice is refined, his lyrics are droll, and his guitar playing is top-notch fingerstyle ragtime blues.

After working on the tune for a while, I took a look at versions on YouTube while my right-hand fingertips recovered. There is this excellent interpretation by "Freddie 12 String":


Damn close to note-for-note on the guitar. The vocal less so, unfortunately. But still nice to listen to and great for cribbing fingerings. Etta Baker's modern version, seemingly as famous as the original on the web, is a lovely gloss on the Blind Lemon arrangement, though it lacks the inventiveness of Lemon's performance - his weird little bass lines under the vocal, the use of an alternating root-seventh during the first solo. These little touches, and the almost orchestral use of a single downmarket acoustic guitar, really make Blind Lemon Jefferson's music worth checking out, in my opinion.