Deep Ellum: The Other Side of Dallas

Chapter 6. Blind Lemon Jefferson: Downhome Blues

Blind Lemon Jefferson Downhome Blues t he Model Tailors in Deep Ellum was where the black and white worlds of Dallas converged. The customers included underworld characters Benny Binion and his number two man, Harry Urban; George “Machine Gun”Kelly; and Joe Civello, a local Mafia boss. But a cross-section of upstanding Dallas men bought clothes there as well, including prominent blacks: civil rights leader A. Maceo Smith and blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson. To many blacks, clothing from The Model Tailors was a status symbol. “They had to have a Model Tailors suit,” Isaac Goldstein recalled. “Good slides [shoes], a good hat, and a Model Tailors suit.”1 The suit Blind Lemon Jefferson was wearing in the only documented photograph of him was likely from The Model Tailors, and for him it was emblematic of his newfound success in the mid1920s . By then, Jefferson had become the most significant blues singer to perform in Deep Ellum. His life and career epitomize the downhome blues of his generation. Lemon Jefferson was born September 24, 1893, to Alec and “Classy” Banks Jefferson on a farm in Couchman, a small community near Wortham, which was a stop on the Houston & Texas Central (H&TC) line seventyfive miles south of Dallas. The H&TC carried the crop from Wortham’s cotton gins to market in Dallas. Little is known about Jefferson’s early life, though he probably heard songsters and bluesmen, such as Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas2 and Alger “Texas” Alexander. Both Thomas and Alexander traveled around East Texas and performed a variety of blues and dance tunes. The cause of Jefferson’s blindness isn’t known, or whether he had some sight. Why would a blind man wear glasses, as he does in the only known publicity photo of him? Jefferson came from a large family that included children from his mother ’s first marriage. How he learned to play guitar is still not entirely clear, but c h A p t e r 6 Blind Lemon Jefferson, ca. 1927. Courtesy of Documentary Arts. 81 Blind Lemon Jefferson two of his childhood friends, Hobart Carter and Quince Cox, said that his parents bought him an instrument when he was child. Reportedly, he did get some schooling and was especially astute at listening to others. Carter attributed Jefferson’s songwriting prowess to his almost uncanny ability to “keep in mind” what he heard around him. Clearly, the far-reaching thematic range of Lemon’s songs attests to the breadth of his understanding of the cultural traditions of the world in which he lived.3 Jefferson showed an aptitude for music at an early age and learned to get around the nearby little towns of Wortham, Kirvin, Streetman, and Groesbeck . “Lemon started out playing his guitar on these streets, and I was on those same streets,” said Quince Cox, born in 1903, who once served as caretaker in the Wortham cemetery, where Jefferson is buried. “I pitched quarters and nickels to him, and he’d play his guitar at any time of night. He used to play at Jake Lee’s barbershop every Saturday, and people from all over came to hear him play. Then he’d get on this road at ten or eleven o’clock, and he’d walk to Kirvin, seven or eight miles. He’d play and keep walking, but he knew where he was going.”4 Alec Jefferson told writer Sam Charters that his mother wouldn’t let him go to the country suppers where his cousin Lemon was playing. “They was rough. Men was hustling women and selling bootleg, and Lemon was singing for them all night. They didn’t even do any kind of dancing, just stompin’.” Hobart Carter said that Lemon often played “breakdowns out in the woods near Couchman” and that he was sometimes accompanied by a fiddler named Lorenzo Ross. “They had a hallelujah time. We had our suppers and things. Saturday nights and things like that. All through the winter, we’d have some cold nights and some rainy nights. We had plenty of chock houses at that time. You get some sugar, put it in a crock. Let it set three days and go to drinking it. Chock houses were everywhere at that time.”5 Quince Cox maintained, “Lemon played anything he had to play. And he played pretty good, too. What did we call them songs? Reels. . . . He could play anything you asked...