{"id":4022,"date":"2018-10-20T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-20T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=4022"},"modified":"2020-10-02T18:23:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T22:23:08","slug":"black-horse-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-horse-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Horse Blues (Lemon Jefferson)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Black Horse Blues\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hzHwdV33__Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I always appreciated Blind Lemon Jefferson&#8217;s records, but didn&#8217;t attempt to learn his guitar style until shortly before recording my CD, <em>Street Corner Cowboys<\/em> &#8212; and then went through a crash course and ended up recording two of his songs, playing a bunch of others, and eventually teaching his style at a couple of blues camps.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-4061 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/lemon-jefferson.jpg?resize=300%2C282&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"282\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/lemon-jefferson.jpg?resize=300%2C282&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/lemon-jefferson.jpg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Jefferson was the defining &#8220;down home blues&#8221; artist &#8212; quite literally, since as far as I can tell that phrase was first used in print to advertise his records. That was in 1926, when the blues record business was still dominated by women like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/send-lectric-chair\/\">Bessie Smith<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/johnson-city-blues\/\">Ida Cox<\/a>. The only significant male artist was Lonnie Johnson, who had a smooth urban style like the blues queens &#8212; but a Dallas record store employee wrote to Paramount Records saying there was a street singer there who was very popular and suggesting they take a chance on him.<\/p>\n<p>That was Jefferson, and I&#8217;m guessing the Paramount folks were dubious when they heard him. His guitar playing was quirky and idiosyncratic, with an odd, jerky rhythm, and his voice was a full-throated street corner shout. To everyone&#8217;s surprise, his records instantly took off, selling spectacularly to black consumers throughout the South and Midwest, and soon scouts were combing the South for other quirky street corner guitarists. The result was one of the richest periods of American recording, preserving the music of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/southern-rag\/\">Blind Blake<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/statesboro-blues\/\">Blind Willie McTell<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/richlands-woman\/\">Mississippi John Hurt<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/kansas-city-blues\/\">Jim Jackson<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/ragtime-millionaire\/\">William Moore<\/a> and myriad others&#8230; a world of astonishingly varied and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/richlands-woman\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3901\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=224%2C281&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"281\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=239%2C300&amp;ssl=1 239w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?w=250&amp;ssl=1 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/><\/a>creative musicians reaching from the Southwest to the Atlantic Coast. None of them equaled Jefferson&#8217;s sales figures, but they redefined blues as a rural style with guitar as its main instrument &#8212; an image that would fade on the African American market a few years later with the arrival of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/midnight-hour-blues\/\">Leroy Carr<\/a>, but remains central to folk-blues and blues-rock.<\/p>\n<p>Getting back to my own experience&#8230; I learned a bunch of Jefferson&#8217;s pieces and it was a thrilling and liberating project. His guitar work was brilliant and opened up new possibilities in several keys, exercising my fingers and my mind, and I loved playing his stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, over the next few years most of his songs drifted out of my repertoire. They were fun and interesting to play, but somehow never felt natural to me, and most of his arrangements were developed to fit his singing, which I couldn&#8217;t begin to match. So I went back to listening and admiring his work, and just kept a couple of his pieces in my repertoire: &#8220;Bad Luck Blues,&#8221; which I&#8217;ve used in this series as the accompaniment to &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/keep-it-clean\/\">Keep It Clean<\/a>,&#8221; and &#8220;Black Horse.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Black Horse Blues&#8221; was one of Jefferson&#8217;s first recordings and is unusual because the guitar part stands alone. Usually he played licks that followed or answered his voice, but for this one he created a quirky but thoroughly developed instrumental composition, full enough to serve both as accompaniment and an instrumental break . <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-4082 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Woody-Guthrie.jpg?resize=148%2C153&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"148\" height=\"153\" \/>That meant I could learn it, then come up with a different way to sing the song rather than trying to imitate his vocals. It struck me that Jefferson was from Texas, and one of the things about his guitar playing, compared to players from further east, is that he sometimes relaxes into a kind of cowboy strumming &#8212; so I went with that, and sing in a cowboy-blues style, closer to someone like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/hard-travelin\/\">Woody Guthrie<\/a>, who came from Oklahoma and grew up on Jefferson&#8217;s records.<\/p>\n<p>The lyric is also interesting as an example of an American singer borrowing and reshaping an English ballad verse for blues performance. I noticed this <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4062 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/bluesintrohi.jpg?resize=140%2C220&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"140\" height=\"220\" \/>when I was writing a chapter on blues poetry for my pocket guide for Oxford: <em>The Blues: A Very Short Introduction<\/em>. In the ballad of Gypsy Davy&#8211;which I first heard on one of Woody&#8217;s records&#8211;a woman runs off with a troupe of Gypsies and her husband follows her and tries to convince her to come home. Being a lord, he has servants, and when he finds his wife is gone he cries:<\/p>\n<p><em>Go saddle me my old grey horse, the black one\u2019s not so speedy.<\/em><br \/>\n<em>I\u2019ll ride all day and I\u2019ll ride all night, until I find my lady.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jefferson reworked those lines for his title verse:<\/p>\n<p><em>Go get my black horse, saddle up my grey mare<\/em><br \/>\n<em>I\u2019m going after my good gal, she\u2019s in the world somewhere.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I always appreciated Blind Lemon Jefferson&#8217;s records, but didn&#8217;t attempt to learn his guitar style until shortly before recording my CD, Street Corner Cowboys &#8212; and then went through a crash course and ended up recording two of his songs, playing a bunch of others, and eventually teaching his style at a couple of blues &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/black-horse-blues\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Black Horse Blues (Lemon Jefferson)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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I've kept playing his\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson-239x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3898,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/johnson-city-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4022,"position":1},"title":"Johnson City Blues (Clarence Greene, Ida Cox)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"August 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Along with all the great African American blues artists who recorded in the 1920s, there were also some interesting Euro-American players who came up with distinctive styles. The most famous was Jimmie Rodgers, but the best guitarists tended to come from around the mountain communities of Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/clarence-greene-300x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5350,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/bad-luck-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4022,"position":2},"title":"Bad Luck Blues (Lemon Jefferson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 14, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been playing Lemon Jefferson's \"Bad Luck Blues\" for at least thirty years, and recorded it on my Street Corner Cowboys CD, but it wasn't until maybe seven years ago that I figured out the opening lick. The clue was a bass note he doesn't play -- the dog that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5344,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crawling-baby\/","url_meta":{"origin":4022,"position":3},"title":"That Crawling Baby Blues (Lemon Jefferson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Lemon Jefferson was an incredibly varied and idiosyncratic guitarist, and \"That Crawling Baby Blues\" is without doubt the most idiosyncratic guitar arrangement I've ever learned -- or at least ever retained -- with a lyric to match. As a result, I've never performed it in public, but always enjoyed playing\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5186,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/early-morning-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4022,"position":4},"title":"Early Morning Blues (Blind Blake)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 4, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Early Morning Blues\" was almost certainly the first Blind Blake guitar part I learned, and I learned it not from Blake's recording, but from Woody Mann's tablature (a source I've cited before)... which leads to a funny story... ...because over and over, decade after decade, I have decided to work\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/blindblake.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2884,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/statesboro-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":4022,"position":5},"title":"Statesboro Blues (Willie McTell)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm not sure exactly how I learned \"Statesboro Blues\" -- of course I listened to the original recording by Blind Willie McTell, and I know Woody Mann's tablature played a part, but I don't recall playing it much until I was touring in the early 1980s, and even then I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Willie-McTell2-300x277.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4022"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4338,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions\/4338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}