Blind Lemon Jefferson burial site

During a recent trip to Houston, I made a detour off the interstate and headed toward the town of Wortham, Texas. This detour wasn't taken to skirt the endless traffic bottlenecks or the constantly recurring speed traps along I-45 between Ennis and Houston; it was to pay my respects to a true icon of Texas music. Hailing from Coutchman, Texas (now a ghost town) as the child of sharecroppers, Lemon Henry "Blind Lemon" Jefferson, along with Lead Belly and T-Bone Walker, was one of the pioneering forces in the development of the original Deep Ellum music scene during the 1920s and '30s. Beginning as a street musician in East Texas towns and later ending up in Dallas by (probably) 1917, Jefferson would go on to graduate from street busker to eventual successful recording artist courtesy of a contract with Paramount Records. Along with the aforementioned Lead Belly, Walker, and others, he became one of the progenitors of a long tradition of highly influential Texas musicians who put us on the map beginning in the late 1910s and continuing through to modern times.

The grave marker lies inside the eponymous Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery (known historically as Wortham Negro Cemetery), located some 76 miles south of Downtown Dallas toward the northern limits of Wortham. It's just to the north of present-day Wortham Cemetery and it's easy to miss the turn-in in favor of the much nicer and better maintained entrance to the "non negro" graveyard just to the south. A sign on Highway 14 announcing the presence of a historical marker helps guide visitors to the correct place. In keeping with a historical "negro cemetery," there isn't an actual paved path to navigate on the inside; I drove a short distance via the tracks left by previous visitors, stopped, got out of the car, and walked straight ahead to the marker. There, some 300 feet farther along, was the commemoration of Blind Lemon Jefferson's final resting place. It isn't necessarily the actual interment site, as no one knows the exact plot which constitutes his final resting place. A busker's hat, collection of coins and guitar picks, and sundry small items adorned the headstone.

I'm not really the kind of person to frequent graveyards. But having been a part of my local music scene for a number of years as a concert photographer, and being a connoisseur of many varied musical genres, including (sometimes) the blues, it was fitting that I make a stop to honor one of our local greats.