Blind Lemon Jefferson: Long Lonesome Blues
Album Description
Arbiter Records brings you an excerpt from one of their latest world music albums. Blind Lemon Jefferson performs one of his orginal blues songs Bad Luck Blues. Recorded 1926 - 1929.
Other works on the album include Black Snake Moan, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, Jack O'Diamond Blues, and other blues favorites. The whole album can be purchased online at Qualiton Imports Ltd.
Long Lonesome Blues by Blind Lemon Jefferson is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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Joe McGasko on 08/05/2009 at 09:35AM
Musicians have always used psuedonyms for one reason or another, but I think the art of self-rebranding reached a sort of apex in the 1920s and 1930s. Although there are some rappers who drop some whoppers these days, for me nothing compares with the stage names and nicknames of the bluesmen from this earlier era. A few casually gleaned favorites: Wee Bea Booze, Bumble Bee Slim, Sloppy Henry, Black Bottom McPhail, Blind Gussie Nesbit, Flat Foot Rockmore, Rabbits Foot Williams, Sweet Papa Stovepipe, and (the not-to-be-outdone) Sweet Papa Tadpole.
If you want to have a little fun, you can find out your "blues name" at one of those silly name generators that are all over the Web. There's a representative one here. I think I'll be trading under the name Boney Gumbo Lee from now on.
Among these name generators, there's one that takes as its template the name of this post's featured bluesman: Blind Lemon Jefferson. (See here.) In a way, you can't get more iconic than Blind Lemon Jefferson. His name is so well-known that it can be the basis for lame lampoons like this and everybody gets the joke.
Of course, the reason Blind Lemon Jefferson's name is so well-known has less to do with his name than with the fact that he recorded some of the best blues songs of the 20th Century. This post features one of them.
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