Riding the Blues Train with Lemon Jefferson

In these pages is the account of 50 years of the personal, casual searching out a trail of blues music from the American South. It is also the story of one writer's chase through the years to the meaning of puzzles that confront us in our lives.



It begins with remembered AM radio from the early 1960's, then to reading the backs of record albums in college town record stores, and finally to gaining some recognition for the grave-site of one of the Delta Blues founders, which had been previously unacknowledged. It is the story of an everyman who sought meaning in the music he heard and found something of himself in the bargain.



This slender volume is dedicated to Speedy Perez and Ronnie Hughes, wherever they are today, who in the late 1960s, worked at Wayne's Records on Broadway Street next to the old Broadway Drug in Lubbock, Texas. They unselfishly ran an informal Blues Symposium for at least one neophyte record listener wanting to learn something about the music and its mysterious practitioners. Records from far-off places would be listened to, discussed, and occasionally purchased as the future author walked back and forth past their shop from home to a college class and back again for a couple of years. Their encouragement motivated 50 years of sustained interest and discoveries that helped to make a life.