GOD & TEXAS: Blind Lemon Jefferson

"See That My Grave Is Kept Clean!" If you are a Bob Dylan fan, you will recognize this phrase as the title of the last song on his debut album in 1962. But Dylan did not write it. 

Long before Dylan was singing the blues, another musician was known as the “Pioneer of Texas Blues.” Born in Couchman, Texas (Freestone County) around 1893, Lemon Henry “Blind Lemon” Jefferson would soon become the biggest selling country-blues singer in America. Before his untimely death at the age of 36, Jefferson had reached a national audience with over 100 wax recordings.

His first recordings were made in Chicago in 1925, but by then Jefferson was already an established artist in the Deep Ellum and Central Track music district of Dallas. Blind since childhood, Jefferson learned to play the guitar while listening to standard blues singers like Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Jefferson then developed his own non-traditional guitar and vocal techniques that would later influence such legendary artists as Dylan and B.B. King. 

Jefferson led a complex life that included two marriages and a son who died quite young. He spent a lot of time on the road with celebrated traveling partner and music collaborator Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. Together they played a combination of traditional rhythm and blues, gospel, soul, and doo-wop in the bars and alleys throughout East Texas. 

Some of Blind Lemon’s hits included Match Box Blues, Rambling Blues, and Sad News Blues. But his most popular original song was See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. It was also recorded by such diverse musicians as Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, and the Grateful Dead.

When Jefferson died in 1929, he was buried in the Wortham, Texas, Negro Cemetery. In 1967, the Texas Historical Commission placed a marker on his grave. By 1997, Wortham sponsored an annual blues festival and honored Jefferson by placing an ornate granite memorial on his grave. Engraved on the headstone was the title of his hit song, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.

Jefferson’s most ardent fans knew that he was deeply committed to God. In fact, Blind Lemon recorded several gospel songs using the pseudonym Deacon L. J. Bates. Two of his best known gospel songs were “I Want to be Like Jesus in My Heart,” and “All I Want is That Pure Religion.” The words of these two songs reveal a heart that sought after God. 

Blind Lemon was an imperfect man living in an imperfect world. But his desire to know God reminds us of the Old Testament King David. Though David had failed God many times, the Apostle Paul wrote in Acts 13:22 NLT, “But God removed Saul and replaced him with David, a man about whom God said, ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after My own heart. He will do everything I want him to do.’”

May we each seek the heart of God, too.

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