15. He served as Blind Lemon Jefferson’s guide and ‘minder’ around Dallas
During these early minstrel years, Leadbelly fell in with another young travelling bluesman known as Blind Lemon Jefferson. So-called because he had lost his sight during childhood, Jefferson was another African-American musician eking out a living on the poverty line. It was inevitable that the pair’s paths would cross, and they began performing together around Dallas, Texas. Jefferson’s eyesight meant that he needed a guide at all times, and this role was ably filled by the strapping, slightly older kid from Louisiana. Though at least 4 years younger than him, Jefferson was an important influence on Leadbelly’s musical development.
According to Leadbelly, Jefferson did not let his disability get in the way of having a good time. Drinking, gambling, and hitching rides on trains, at Silver City Leadbelly remembered that ‘we had twenty-five or thirty girls each out there’. Unfortunately, though, what should have been a mutually profitable partnership came to an abrupt end when Leadbelly’s legal troubles began. While Jefferson went on to sell a million records in the 1920s, before his untimely death aged 36, Leadbelly’s temper and penchant for violent retribution was to land him a succession of jail terms. What could have been!
