‘Blind Thomas’ Jefferson

Famed music producer Sam Phillips reputedly said, ‘If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars!’ But the Sun Records impresario could have in no way been thinking about the pale Ohio blues aficionado Clifford Jefferson, aka ‘Blind Thomas’ Jefferson, whose well-meaning, if ill-conceived arrogation of the African-American art form only just bordered on the mediocre and whose purported visual impairment was a wishful pretence cut almost entirely from whole cloth.*            

The history of American Caucasians culturally appropriating from their black countrymen is a long, vaguely (sometimes downright) racist, and, for the hundreds of thousands of white people affected, slightly uncomfortable one.** And in this way, romantic notions of black ‘realness’ and ‘authenticity’, so widespread among suburban whites who only experienced African-American musicians mediated via fawning magazine articles and documentaries, consumed Clifford Jefferson. He set out fervently at age 18 to be a ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ blues artist during the Folk Boom of the late-50s, sharpening his craft for no less than 10 years. Sadly, Jefferson plateaued within the first 90 days of his quest, so that the net result of a decade’s worth of diligent practice was effectively three months’ experience 40 times.

With none of the drive of Chicago Blues or rhythmic subtlety of Country Blues, Jefferson’s technique allowed one true innovation, the 13-bar blues form, which, alas, only succeeded in confusing any musicians unlucky enough to accompany him. And far from the cathartic experience usually associated with the blues, Jefferson’s music conversely made people feel more depressed than before they’d heard it. 

For such a little-known musician (there’s only one known photo extant, above), Jefferson is said to have brushed up against several major blues artist of the time and performed for many of them as they toured the US, though to little avail professionally, e.g. Canned Heat paid him $125 not to open for a 1968 Cleveland Music Hall gig. More recently, an Internet rumour (likely apocryphal) held that Jefferson traveled to the infamous Clarksdale, Mississippi crossroads in search of guitar mastery only to have the Devil turn down the proffered soul, Ol’ Nick deciding that it wasn’t worth the trade.

Clifford Jefferson released only one record during his career, the autobiographical ‘Palindrome Home Blues’ b/w ‘The I, IV, V, VI Blues’ through Arsehoolie Records in 1969 on thick 78rpm shellac, no less.*** After this, he seems to have quickly vanished.

In a career marked by squandered white privilege,  ‘Blind Thomas’ Jefferson did manage to exactly emulate his obscure blues heroes insofar as few, if any, will remember him or his music; a moral victory of sorts.   

*In order to appear blind, per some of his musical forebears, Jefferson affected glasses with extremely thick lenses making it nearly impossible for him to see to walk let alone what chords his hands were forming. He did, however, suffer from a slight astigmatism.  

**Which is precisely why US conservatives are so right to try and protect their fragile cohort from awkward facts suggested by Critical Race Theory, Beloved, The Color Purple and Inventions and Inventors by Roger Smith.

***Jefferson had originally insisted it be issued as a wax cylinder, but this proved too costly. And insane.