A blues mystery: how did Blind Lemon Jefferson die?
Blind Lemon Jefferson entered and left the world shrouded in mystery, like a true blues legend. It’s unknown if he was the youngest of seven of eight children and when exactly he was born, but we know it was in Texas because he was proclaimed the ‘Father of the Texas Blues‘. Jefferson’s unmistakable wail, one so uniquely high-pitched his contemporaries didn’t even attempt imitating him, was often touched by a certain fear. It appealed to the inherent darkness of the blues, but it wasn’t stylistic posturing. Jefferson quite openly speculated he might die young, asking only one thing if he did in the title of a song: ‘See That My Grave’s Kept Clean’.
Jefferson was born blind, and little is known about how he learned to play the guitar. Whenever and however he did, people quickly realised he was good. Impossibly good, with a gritty warble to match. He started playing at picnics and parties, eventually becoming a street musician around East Texan towns. In the liner notes to Classic Sides, his cousin Alec Jefferson notes that his audiences were often “rough” but softened under the hold of his guitar.
“They were rough,” he said. “Men were hustling women and selling bootlegs, and Lemon was singing for them all night. He’d start singing about eight and go on until four in the morning; mostly, it would be just him sitting there and playing and singing all night.” Jefferson’s voice was the backdrop to mysterious moments in the early hours.
In the 1910s, Jefferson was a frequent face around Dallas and could often be found playing with Lead Belly, whose track ‘In the Pines’ made him a posthumous blues titan after Nirvana covered it with the revamped ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’. The same should be true for Jefferson, whose anxious track ‘See That My Grave’s Kept Clean’ was covered by Bob Dylan. But he remains on the enigmatic fringe of blues roots, beloved by deeply invested fans but unknown to most.
The “unknown” element followed Jefferson like a dark cloud his entire career, brief as it was. It’s thought he became so successful at one point in the early 1920s that he was able to support a family, but there’s no evidence of a wife or children to be found. His death remains just as mysterious and continues to elude the blues fans who fell in love with the gravelly sound of this enigmatic man.
The only unstable certainty is that Jefferson died in Chicago. Even on his death certificate, questions loom. It was decided he died from: “probably acute myocarditis” in 1929. If you’re cherry-picking theories (yes, there are that many), the most tragic is the one that insists he was on his way to a show. A blind Jefferson was said to have gotten lost and disoriented and died shivering on the street during a snowstorm. Others are more dramatic, swearing his coffee was poisoned by the husband of one of his lovers or that a rabid dog bit him.
Jefferson’s grave was unmarked, set up in a plot in Freestone Country. It was shoddily kept until a new headstone was put up in 1997. It read: “Lord, it’s one kind favour I’ll ask of you, see that my grave is kept clean.”
