Blind Lemon Jefferson

Blind Lemon Jefferson | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 11, 1991)
• Original Release Date: February 10, 1992
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Milestone
• ASIN: B000000XW6
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,064 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #50 in Music > Blues > Regional Blues > Texas Blues
  • #57 in Music > Blues > Acoustic Blues
  • #84 in Music > Blues > Traditional Blues

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Jefferson is considered to be the father of Texas blues, and with good reason. Unlike many early blues legends that lived and died in relative obscurity, Lemon was highly popular during his lifetime. Not only did he influence other bluesmen, but he also left quite an impression on country music father Jimmie Rodgers and western swing pioneers Bob Wills and Milton Brown. As a guitarist, Jefferson had few peers. His capability to throw off unexpected and complex phrases was legendary. Lemon's playing was accompanied by a high and lonesome voice that complemented his formidable songwriting skills. This CD is a reissue of a '70s double vinyl disc set, and it contains most of his best work including his only slide piece "Jack O' Diamonds," one of his many versions of "Matchbox Blues," and the amazing "Rabbit Foot Blues." One would be hard-pressed to find a bluesman of greater depth and skill than Mr. Jefferson. --Lars Gandil

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb sound, imperfect track list, April 4, 2004

By 

Docendo Discimus (Vita scholae) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blind Lemon Jefferson (Audio CD)

Milestone's Blind Lemon Jefferson-collection gathers 25 of the seminal Texas bluesman's best songs, including the eerie "Black Snake Moan", the macabre "Hangman's Blues", and the classic "Jack O' Diamonds Blues", and the sound is surprisingly good. (Yes, I wish it had been better, too, but the original masters are long lost, and compared to other Blind Lemon-compilations, this one is actually very impressive.)

The only downside is that the song selection is not as good as it could have been...several of Lemon's best songs are missing, including "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and "'Lectric Chair Blues". But the sound? Really good.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blues this great deserves better remastering,no?, January 29, 2002

By 

Peter Acebal (Christiansburg, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blind Lemon Jefferson (Audio CD)

First off,Lemon is justly named among the greats of Blues history and for good reason,-his stunning guitar fingerpicking and intricate (and odd) rhythmic measures are set to play alongside of unabashed pure emotional vocals and lyricism;from the playful air of "Crawling Baby Blues" to the haunted "Back water Blues" here was a simon-pure gifted musical artist;THAT said,there are problems here...Like a lot of Blues greats Jefferson recorded for Paramount and therein is the curse for Paramount discs were (are) the cheapest sort of bargain-basement records ever made,their cheap and rough-surfaced discs wore out pretty easily,so I'm not really blaming the folks here for the digital restoration job presented here but it makes a concerted effort to hear Lemon's guitar intricacies through the hiss and pops(though the restoration here is better than Columbia's recent reissue of the first Robert Johnson "King of the Delta Blues Singers",...the less said about THAT travesty the better!!)so if you love the Blues any which way you can get 'em then BUY THIS CD NOW! Lemon's greatness is such that it cant be snuffed out through noisy 78s,although it can be muffled a bit in spots,....

3.0 out of 5 stars Least Surface Noise, Worst Underlying Sound, January 17, 2012

By 

Thin Man (Planet Earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blind Lemon Jefferson (Audio CD)

When it comes to these pre-war recordings culled from poorly manufactured 78s (it didn't get any worse than Paramount), surface hiss, crackle and pop and other distortion are unavoidable. If you want to listen to Blind Lemon Jefferson, you have little choice in this regard. This CD, however, has the most noise-reduction of any CD I've heard. If the remaining hiss, crackle and pop are still too much for you, hang it up. Jefferson (and Skip James and Ma Rainey and Charley Patton and other Paramount recording artists) are not for you. The trade-off, though, is that Jefferson's voice and guitar are muted on this CD. I preferred this approach when I started listening to blues music many years ago. But I now prefer remasterings that leave more surface noise and allow the underlying music to shine through in a much more vibrant tone. I don't notice the surface noise as much anymore on these other recordings, as it has become almost "white noise" that I can mentally tune out. The best recordings in this latter respect are:
1. Black Swan's Blind Lemon Jefferson collection Blind Lemon Jefferson
2. Yazoo's "Best of" CD The Best Of Blind Lemon Jefferson
A better attempt than the Milestone CD at removing some of the surface noise while retaining more of the underlying music might be Pristine Audio's CD, which appears to be available only as a download at its website. The extent to which Pristine Audio has succeeded in this regard has been debated at blues websites.