Complete Recordings Volume 1: 1925-1926

Blind Lemon Jefferson was a commercial sensation, the large sales of his first releases revealing to Paramount and the other record companies the existence of a species of blues beyond the vaudeville stage, and of an untapped market waiting to buy it. This first, of Document's four volumes of Blind Lemon Jefferson's complete recorded output, serves to remind us that those sales weren't simply the result of novelty. Jefferson was also a musical sensation, combining a piercing, wide-ranging voice with deft, imaginative guitar picking. For the first purchasers of those records, the experience was altogether different; usually, the only comparison available would have been with the work of their local blues singer, and it's very difficult now to recapture the astonishment that must have resulted from putting "Long Lonesome Blues" on the wind-up record player for the first time. Nevertheless, this two excellently remastered CD does enable the listener to get some way towards re-enacting that experience. Volume 1, in particular, conveys the same sense that one gets from Robert Johnson or Louis Armstrong, that here is a musician who can do anything, and who brings to the musical tradition in which he grew up a genius that makes him it's master as well as it's heir. Useful booklet notes are included from Jefferson mavin Bob Groom, and Volume 1, at least, should ornament any blues collection worthy of the name.