Artist: Blind Lemon Jefferson
Title: One Dime Blues
Format: LP
Label: Aldabra Records
Catalogue Number: ALB1006
Year of Release: 1990?*
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Tracklisting
A1 All I Want Is That Pure Religion
A2 Booster Blues
A3 Dry Southern Blues
A4 Black Horse Blues
A5 Corinna Blues
A6 Chock House Blues
A7 Wartime Blues
A8 Rabbit Foot Blues
B1 Black Snake Moan
B2 Rambler Blues
B3 How Long, How Long
B4 Matchbox Blues
B5 Hot Dogs
B6 He Arose From The Dead
B7 One Dime Blues
B8 Easy Rider Blues
I'm not going to write the definitive Blues piece on Blind Lemon Jefferson, if you want to find out more about him there are many other sources for that.
If you want to know about this specific record, then I can probably help. What we have here is 16 tracks from Lemon's earliest recording sessions with Paramount in 1925, up to his move in 1927 to OKeh records. There are a couple of numbers that show the roots of his music in gospel (A1, from his first single; B6 from later) but the remainder are straightforward blues tunes.
Many of them follow the simple form:
Oh, this thing done went happened to me the other day
Yes, this thing done went happened to me the other day
Well Lord, I guess that's the price you pay
Some woman or other left me, or did something bad
Some woman or other left me, or did something bad
That woman ain't no use, but I can't get her off my mind
(see Weenie Campbell for real life examples)
And so on and so forth. The recording quality is, in general, shockingly bad. Paramount were famous for their poor quality recordings, OKeh slightly better. But, and what I suppose is a necessary process for recordings of the period, all Aldabra have done for this compilation is have someone record the 78s playing, and then repress that on to a 33 r.p.m. album. It doesn't really stop me enjoying the tunes though.
See, I have this rose-tinted view of early recordings, probably fostered by Harry Smith Anthologies, that all of this music business stuff used to be done for fun, not profit. People sat and sang because they enjoyed it, and wanted to share their songs, rather than make millions of dollars by sponsoring perfume. And no amount of reading around the subject and finding out that my naive (and arguably, patronising) view isn't true will stop me. So I listen to Blind Lemon Jefferson et al when I need a fix of non-commercial, 80-odd year old, no-nonsense music. If you want to do that too, then I'd recommend it.
Oh, and Black Snake Moan is a clear precursor of Elvis' début single That's All Right Mama, so that's not a bad reason to listen to this either.
*I'm guessing the year of release as there's very little information available about this particular label. they put out some Robert Johnson in 1989 - Delta Blues Volume One, CAT ALB1001 - and I've just guessed at 1990 from that.
