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AframNews
VOL. 22 ISSUE 17
AframNews
African-American News and Issues Newspaper
Did You Know? Blind Lemon Jefferson
Greater Houston Area
“
NO PLACE TO CALL HOME
I find that my skin crawls at the mention of Black-on-Black skin-color discrimination. It is difficult to understand how a people who share a history of oppression based on skin color would do unto members of their own race what others have done to them for centuries.”
- Lena Williams, “The Many Shades of Bigotry,” New York Times, November 22, 1992.
The first artist to take the blues back “down home” on a national scale was Blind Lemon Jefferson, the “King of Country Blues.” PROUD TEXAN He became the first male blues recording star, and by far the most popular country bluesman of the 1920s in terms of record sales. Jefferson, a native of Couchman, Texas, was born on Sept. 24, 1893, the blind son of Alec and Cassie Jefferson, according to the 1900 census, or Oct. 26, 1894 and according to his registration for the World War I draft (required even though he was blind). He had no formal music education and instead traveled from place to place in Freestone and Limestone counties, playing his guitar and singing songs, most of which were his own compositions. CAREER HISTORY
SEE PAGE 4
HISTORICAL EVIDENCE LEAVES MANY LIGHT SKINNED BLACKS WONDERING “WHERE DO WE FIT IN?”
By the time he was in his twenties, Lemon had moved to Dallas and had become successful enough, playing the streets, brothels, and other affairs, to buy himself a car, get married, and find himself a recording contract. Jefferson became a well-known figure in the Deep Ellum district of Dallas. There, he met Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly, and for a time they played in brothels throughout Texas. CONT. READING
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