photo courtesy Texas Music Museum and the Blues Archive, University of Mississippi (1897-1929) Birthplace: Coutchman, Texas Genre: Blues Influenced: Huddie Ledbetter ("Leadbelly"), Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Bob Dylan, and every other white bluesman

Blind Lemon Jefferson made the earliest recordings of any Texas country blues singer. Between 1925 and 1929, when he died on the streets of Chicago in a snow storm, Jefferson made nearly 80 classic recordings for Paramount Records, each of which was said to have sold at least 100,000 copies, a legacy that influenced every Texas bluesman that followed him and even a young folk singer in the 1960s who called himself Bob Dylan.

Born blind in 1897 near Wortham, Lemon Jefferson's only possible hope of making a living was as a musician, a course followed by several others, including Texas's own Blind Willie Johnson. At the age of 15 he began singing and playing guitar on the streets of Wortham and Mexia, scraping together a meager livelihood at church picnics and country dances. By the age of twenty Jefferson had moved to Dallas, singing in the cafes, saloons and brothels of Deep Ellum. His talent was appreciated, and by 1918 he had made enough money to buy a car, hire a chauffeur, and take his act on the road to other big cities of the South and Midwest. In Deep Ellum he teamed up for a while with another great bluesman named Huddie Ledbetter, who was to become famous when he was rediscovered in the fifties as "Leadbelly." The Red Light districts fostered the creation of such earthy blues classics as "Black Snake Moan" and "Mean Jumper Blues," but Jefferson was also capable of such deep-felt spirituals as "See That My Grave is Kept Clean," a tune revived by Bob Dylan on his first album in 1961.

In 1925 several northern record companies saw a market for "race" records and sent scouts into the South to discover new talent. Paramount Records found the 250-pound Jefferson in Dallas and lured him to Chicago, where he turned out song after song, almost all with his original lyrics. Some of his spirituals were also released under the pseudonym Deacon L.J. Bates. In 1929 Jefferson was found frozen in a snowbank, the victim of an apparent heart attack. He is buried in the old Negro cemetary at Wortham, where his grave is marked by a Texas historical monument dedicated in 1967.