11. BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON
Chortle all you want at the blues-name-generators, but Jefferson’s given name was Lemon and he was blind, so there’s something to be said for being first. Jefferson was a quintessential songster, who wrote and/or gathered and popularized all manner of lyrics that codified into blues and then rock ’n’ roll, from lyrical requests for gravesite cleanliness to having so few possessions that a matchbox could play the part of a suitcase. He was born near Wortham and played around Dallas as a teen before becoming truly footloose. He made around 100 recordings between 1926 and 1929 that proved influential on nearly a century of popular vocal music. Most Texas musical moment: Jefferson defined a sound that other Texas blues players carried on for years, that of an agitated soul.