Musical innovation in the blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Although a few other guitar-playing bluesmen had made records before Blind Lemon Jefferson, it is he who wears the crown for being the first popular star of folk (or "country") blues. His rivals for this distinction (i.e., his predecessors in the recording studio) either had brief and commercially unsuccessful recording careers, were accompanists to more famous vocalists, were not solo guitarists but worked instead in combinations with other instruments, or were professional stage entertainers and thus did not fit easily into the model of a folk/country-blues singer-guitarist. Nevertheless, some of these predecessors probably laid the groundwork for Paramount Records' decision to record Jefferson and for Jefferson's spectacular reception by African-American record buyers. His commercial success in turn opened the door to recording opportunities for hundreds of other guitar-playing blues singers, male and female, black and white, and for blues-singing pianists and small combinations of singers and instruments variously known as jug, washboard, skiffle, hokum, and juke bands (see Oliver 1969; Dixon and Godrich 1970; Barlow 1989). It would be well, therefore, to look at Jefferson's recorded predecessors in order to see how he differs from them and how he became the first to epitomize the solo guitar-playing bluesman (see Dixon, Godrich, and Rye 1997 for discographical information on these artists).

The era of blues recording began in 1920, and until Jefferson's debut in early 1926 virtually all recorded blues singers came from the vaudeville stage circuit, northern urban cabarets, and black theater shows. The vast majority of them were female, and almost all were accompanied by a pianist or a larger combination of instruments. When male blues singers were recorded, it was usually in a duet with a female singer, accompanied by one or more other musicians. These trends reflect the predominant patterns of blues performance that had been established on the vaudeville stage in the 1910s. Although a few male blues singer-pianists became well known on the vaudeville circuit prior to 1920, solo performers with guitar are virtually unreported in this setting (Abbot and Seroff 1996). We know, however, that there were plenty of them performing all over the South and in northern cities since the beginning of the twentieth century (Evans 1982, 32-41). Undoubtedly, blues singer-guitarists served as "filler" acts on local vaudeville stages from time to time prior to 1926, but the highest level to which any of them could apparently aspire as a touring professional was as a member of a medicine show or small tent show working a very limited southern circuit. If they aspired to tour otherwise, they were on their own. Their normal venues were universally considered to be on the fringes of popular entertainment--the realm of musical amateurs, hustlers, freelancers, or even beggars--and it is mainly for these reasons that it took six years after they first began to record blues by black vocalists for the record companies to discover that they could successfully market recording artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson. The recording of guitar-accompanied blues was also greatly aided by the discovery of the electrical recording process, which came into use in 1925. One result of this was less surface noise on the records and better recording quality of softer voices, regional diction, and accents, as well as of instruments such as the guitar and piano. Jefferson's initial recordings, however, were made with the older acoustical recording process, and his immediate success, therefore, cannot be ascribed to the advantage of a new technology.

Starting in late 1923 and lasting for about a year, there was a small flurry of recording of guitar-accompanied blues. Then the sound became scarce on records through 1925, only to burst out in a sustained fashion with Jefferson's recordings in early 1926. The first-known guitar-accompanied blues to be recorded were made by vaudeville blues star Sara Martin with Sylvester Weaver on guitar (Van Rijn and Vergeer 1982). On October 24 and November 2, 1923, they recorded four blues in this format. Weaver accompanied Martin on several more recordings in 1924 and on six tracks with added banjo and sometimes violin in 1925. On November 2, 1923, Weaver also recorded two solo guitar instrumental tracks, having a hit with "Guitar Rag," a tune that went on to become a standard in the country-and-western instrumental repertoire under the usual title of "Steel Guitar Rag." He recorded four more guitar solos in 1924 and six tunes as a member of a string trio in 1926, five of the latter in accompaniment to Sara Martin. His name was listed on Martin's records and featured on his own, and an advertisement by OKeh Records for Martin's first-released guitar-accompanied blues named Weaver as "the man with the talking guitar." He is without doubt well within the stylistic spectrum of southern folk-blues guitar. If only he had recorded as a vocalist at this time, he might receive the honor of being considered the first important recorded folk bluesman. Ironically, he only began to sing on recordings on April 12, 1927, a year after Jefferson had created this opportunity for him. Weaver made fifteen vocal blues recordings by the end of that year before fading into obscurity in his home city of Louisville, Kentucky.

About February 7, 1924, Reese Du Pree, probably originally from Virginia, recorded a blues and a folk ballad accompanied by two guitars, one of them possibly his own. Du Pree was a veteran of the vaudeville stage, however, who usually performed with piano or a small combo. These were his only recording efforts in a guitar-accompanied format, and his recording career did not extend beyond six issued sides. In March or April 1924, Ed Andrews recorded two guitar-accompanied blues in Atlanta. This record, like Du Pree's, may have been made as an experiment following the success of Sara Martin's first guitar-accompanied recordings. Andrews was certainly a folk-blues performer; but his record suffers from pedestrian performances, and he sank without a trace following this inauspicious session.

On May 10, 1924, a street performer called Daddy Stovepipe recorded three blues titles for Gennett Records accompanied by his guitar and harmonica, two of which were released. Six days later a man known as Stovepipe No. 1 (Samuel Jones) made six recordings for Gennett accompanied by his guitar, harmonica, and stovepipe, including three titles containing the word blues. They were intended as private recordings, however, presumably to be sold by the artist on the street. None of them have been recovered, and it is not known for certain whether they were ever actually pressed. In August 1924, Jones recorded twenty titles for Columbia Records, five of which contain the word blues in their title. Only six songs were released from this session, however, all of them spirituals or adaptations of fiddle tunes. Some of the unissued blues have the same titles as recordings made by Daddy Stovepipe. This fact, along with similarities in their voices and the type of accompaniment, suggests that Daddy Stovepipe and Stovepipe No. 1 are the same man. (1) The artist(s) recorded again under both names for Gennett and OKeh in 1927, and ironically, one of the titles was "Black Snake Blues," a cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan." Daddy Stovepipe continued to record sporadically in the 1930s, and he turned up as late as the early 1960s in Chicago's Maxwell Street Market performing with guitar and rack harmonica, claiming to be named Johnny Watson and born April 12, 1867, in Mobile, Alabama. He also worked at this time as a religious street singer under the name of Reverend Alfred Pitts.

Hezekiah Jenkins, a veteran of vaudeville and minstrel shows, also recorded two blues in 1924 with guitar and harmonica accompaniment, as well as two duets with his wife, Dorothy. He recorded a few more titles in 1926 and again in 1931. Both he and Daddy Stovepipe played guitar in a chordal style with a few simple bass runs, suggesting that this instrument functioned for them as background accompaniment to their singing and harmonica playing rather than as a second voice, the way it would for Blind Lemon Jefferson.

In March 1924, vaudeville blues singers Lottie Beaman, Ida Cox, and Ma Rainey made a series of seven blues recordings for Paramount Records accompanied by the Pruitt Twins, Milas and Miles, on banjo and guitar, respectively. Perhaps these were an attempt by Paramount to duplicate the success on OKeh of Sara Martin and Sylvester Weaver, but the banjo is the dominant lead instrument here, providing a rather old-fashioned sound, whereas the guitar is confined to rhythmic chordal background and bass runs. On April 14, 1924, Bessie Smith recorded "Sorrowful Blues" for Columbia, with John Griffin on guitar and Robert Robbins on violin, but once again the guitar is the background instrument playing chords and bass runs.