Birthplaces of the Blues
The Texas Roots Of Ten Men Who Produced Some Of The Greatest Music Of The Twentieth Century Can Be Found In Towns With Names Like Elmo, Jewett, And Big Sandy. Come Along On A Road Trip To A Rich And Soulful Past.
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Take Texas Highway 7 west back to Robbins and then FM 39 north for seven miles — past the old slumping barns that look like they’re about to collapse under rotting roofs — to tiny Jewett, home to another of Hopkins’ influences, his cousin Alger “Texas” Alexander (some sources have Alexander coming from Leona, six miles south of Centerville). Born on September 12, 1900, Alexander was a street singer, a cannonball of a man, maybe five feet tall, with a deep, resonant, mournful voice. He began singing at parties and picnics in the area and soon became an itinerant, drifting and sometimes following and singing for migrant cotton pickers. He wound up in New York, where he recorded with jazz and blues greats King Oliver, Eddie Lang, and Lonnie Johnson; he also recorded in San Antonio. He spent time singing with Hopkins in Houston and touring with future blues legends Howlin’ Wolf and Lowell Fulson, and he also spent time in a Paris, Texas, prison in the early forties for killing his wife. Alexander sang in the free rhythm of the work songs he had heard growing up, and it’s amusing to hear the accompanists try to keep up with him on his recordings. They had no choice but to follow the singer — there was no way to compete with that big, thick voice. It served him well on the streets, where he often performed with guitarists J. T. “Funny Papa” Smith or Dennis “Little Hat” Jones. A friend remembered how Alexander would mark the street-corner spot where he was going to sing by sticking a tiepin into the wall. He died of syphilis on April 16, 1954.
From Jewett take U.S. 79 south for 11 miles to Marquez, then head west on 7 for 38 miles to Marlin. One of the larger towns in the area, Marlin is known for its natural mineral waters and the majestic eight-story Falls Hotel, now closed. A colorful downtown mural (“Welcome to Marlin, Tex., Famous for Health”) spotlights local heroes and history but fails to include Blind Willie Johnson, the town’s most famous son, believed to have been born on a nearby cotton farm in 1902 or 1903. Johnson was blinded at age seven when his stepmother, infuriated because his father had beaten her for being with another man, threw lye in the boy’s face — whether she was aiming at Willie or his father is unclear. He had wanted to be a preacher from an early age, but he settled for singing gospel songs (traditional ones as well as his own) on street corners in Marlin, a tin cup tied around the neck of his guitar. Listeners who liked his deep, raspy voice deposited nickels. Johnson may have been a gospel singer but he played like a blues musician, his thumb keeping rhythm on the low strings as he played slide on the higher ones. His haunting slide playing is still studied by modern guitarists; he had an uncanny way of echoing and repeating the vocal hook. He crafted his songs as pop musicians would years later — rhythm, melody, and harmony (many of his recordings feature a female background singer) — and once he had an arrangement down, he rarely strayed from it. Johnson spent much of his time traveling around Central and East Texas, playing at church affairs and on street corners on Saturdays, when farmers and their families would come into town. When he started recording, in 1927, he immediately became one of the biggest sellers in the “race records” genre, outselling popular artists like Bessie Smith. Still, Johnson is known to have recorded only 29 songs (he did one of them twice), and he died of pneumonia in Beaumont in the winter of 1949, after the house that he and his wife, Angeline, lived in burned down.
Retrace Highway 7 east for 15 miles to Kosse, then head north on Texas Highway 14 for 35 miles, the terrain becoming flat and scrubby as you drive parallel to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks all the way to Wortham, the home of the fiercest bluesman of all. Blind Lemon Jefferson was born on September 24, 1893, in Coutchman, a village six miles northeast of Wortham that no longer exists. Some said he was blind from birth, others that he had partial sight. The youngest of seven children, he began playing the guitar at fourteen and soon was taking the train south to play in towns like Groesbeck and Kosse, especially on Saturdays. Sometimes when he played on one street corner in Marlin, Willie Johnson would be playing on another. Jefferson wouldn’t accept less than a nickel and would throw pennies back. He was a songster first, but as he sang his rags, hollers, and hymns on the Texas streets in the teens, he also became one of the first to consistently play the blues (most of his songs have “Blues” in their title), hammering it into the twelve-bar A-A-B verse form we know today. His voice was high and mournful, and he would answer it with guitar riffs; he sang about women, trouble, and a peculiar “black snake moan.”
Jefferson moved to Dallas, got married, became a bootlegger and a wrestler, and spent much of his time in the red-light district. During that time, he traveled with Leadbelly and by himself through the South, following the migrant cotton pickers. In 1925 he began going to Chicago to record for Paramount, and his 78’s became so popular that Paramount created a bright yellow label just for him. Many of his songs — “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” “Matchbox Blues,” “Easy Rider Blues” — would become blues and rock standards. But Jefferson also became a poster boy for bad behavior, leaving his wife and country ways behind on his frequent Chicago trips, drinking and whoring and getting paid for his recording sessions with a few dollars and cheap whiskey. He froze to death, drunk, in a Chicago snowstorm after a session in December 1929. Or perhaps he had a heart attack and died where he fell, guitar by his side. Or maybe he was poisoned by a jealous woman. Jefferson was the first true bluesman, famous as much for his short, wild life and mysterious death as for his singing, his playing, and his songs. He became a model for almost every bluesman who came after, from T-Bone Walker (who claimed he used to help lead the blind man around Deep Ellum in Dallas) to Robert Johnson (who learned to play in Mississippi from Son House, who learned to play from a man who was called Lemon because he had learned to play from Jefferson’s 78’s) to every white kid with a guitar over the past forty years who was hungry for the blues experience. It’s not Jefferson’s fault that so many of his apprentices have been so predictable in their interpretations of that experience.
On the way out of town on Highway 14, stop at the weedy, dilapidated “colored” cemetery on your left, across a scrubby field from the clean, symmetrical white cemetery, which sports an American flag at its front gate. In 1930, according to historian Charters, Jefferson was buried in an unmarked grave between his mother and sister toward the front of the cemetery. In 1996 some blues fans from Dallas and Austin raised money for a tombstone memorial to be placed in the cemetery. It sits in the back, however, where some old-timers remembered Jefferson’s being buried. Its inscription: “Lord, it’s one kind favor I’ll ask of you — see that my grave is kept clean.” Two hundred feet away, a highway sign welcomes travelers to Wortham, “Home of the Bulldogs.” No mention is made of the first and perhaps the greatest country blues musician ever.
From Wortham, take 14 north for ten miles to Richland, hop on I-45 north for thirteen miles to Corsicana, and then take Texas Highway 22 west for ten miles to tiny Barry, the childhood home of Melvin “Lil’ Son” Jackson, born on August 17, 1916. Jackson’s father was a farmer who taught him to play the guitar, his mother played guitar in church, and Jackson sang in the choir as a boy. He moved to Dallas to become a mechanic and worked various jobs during the Depression, also singing and playing in church. He was drafted and served in Europe during World War II before returning to Dallas. At some friends’ urging, Jackson sent Gold Star Records a 25-cent amusement-park novelty disc he had made of “Roberta Blues.” The company liked it and put out several of his 78’s; he later recorded for Imperial. Jackson played simple, hypnotic guitar, often repeating stock riffs to keep the lazy beat moving. He sang lazy too, in a warm, resonant voice. In 1956, after a car wreck put him in the hospital, he left music and returned to being a mechanic. Jackson wanted anonymity and didn’t list his name in the phone book, but in 1960 Strachwitz tracked him down and recorded him. The bluesman — always more at home in the garage than onstage — never grabbed for the brass ring again and died of cancer on May 30, 1976, at the V.A. hospital in Dallas.
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