August Wilson wrote that he listened to the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson, the subject of the York Theatre's musical Blind Lemon Blues, every day for five years. At the time of Blind Lemon's brief but hugely influential success in the late 1920s, he was, as Wilson wrote, "the voice of Black America." How strange and sad that Blind Lemon's work is so little known today.

Blind Lemon Jefferson (played with fierce intensity by Akin Babatunde, who is also the show's director and choreographer) was a street singer for most of his life, sitting on the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, Texas, singing his songs for the coins people would toss in his cup. He [...]