Lead Belly

Music career By 1903, the fifteen year-old Ledbetter was already a "musicianer", a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed to Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, a notorious red-light district. He began to develop his own style of music after exposure to the various musical influences on Shreveport's Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms. This area is now referred to as Ledbetter Heights.

In 1915, he briefly served on a Texas chain gang, from which he escaped. In 1918, under the name of Walter Boyd and living in Bowie County, Texas, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After writing a song pleading for clemency, Ledbetter was pardoned by Governor Pat Morris Neff in 1925. In 1930, he was arrested, convicted of attempted murder, and sentenced to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as the Angola Penitentiary, where he was "discovered" in a 1933 visit by folklorists John Lomax and his teenaged son, Alan. They were recording varieties of folk music in the South as a project to preserve traditional music for the Library of Congress. This was one of numerous cultural projects sponsored by the federal government during the Great Depression to advance social welfare through job creation.

Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him in 1933 on portable but permanent aluminum disc recording equipment. They returned with new and better equipment in July 1934, capturing numerous additional songs. While in prison, Ledbetter may have first heard the traditional prison song "Midnight Special"; his versions became famous. On August 1, Ledbetter was released after having served nearly all of his minimum sentence. The Lomaxes had taken a record and a petition seeking his release to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at Ledbetter's request, but there is no evidence that this had any effect on his release. In fact, a prison official later wrote to John Lomax denying that Ledbetter's singing had anything to do with his release from prison. (State prison records confirm he was eligible for this due to good behavior.) But, both Ledbetter and the Lomaxes promoted the mythos that Ledbetter had yet again sung his way to freedom.

With the Great Depression ongoing and Alan Lomax ill According to the authors, the work was not an "accurate biography" but a "loosely woven texture of unreconstructed stories."

In January 1936, Ledbetter returned to New York on his own, without John Lomax, in an attempted comeback. He performed twice a day at Harlem's Apollo Theater during the Easter season. He developed a live dramatic recreation of the March of Time newsreel (itself a recreation), which was about his prison encounter with John Lomax, when he was still wearing uniform stripes. By this time, he was no longer associated with Lomax.

Ledbetter at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. between 1938 and 1948 Life magazine ran a three-page article titled "Lead Belly: Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel" in its issue of April 19, 1937. It included a full-page, color (rare in those days) picture of him sitting on grain sacks playing his guitar and singing. Also included was a striking photograph of his wife Martha Promise (identified in the article as his manager). Other photos showed Ledbetter's hands playing the guitar (with the caption "these hands once killed a man"), Texas Governor Pat M. Neff, and the "ramshackle" Texas State Penitentiary. The article attributes both of his pardons to his singing his petitions to the governors, who were so moved that they pardoned him. The article closed by saying that Lead Belly "may well be on the brink of a new and prosperous period."

In 1941, Ledbetter was introduced to Moses "Moe" Asch by mutual friends. Asch owned a recording studio and small record label, which mainly released folk records for the local New York City market. He later founded Folkways Records. Between 1941 and 1944, Ledbetter released three albums under the Asch Recordings label.

In 1944, he went to California, where he recorded strong sessions for Capitol Records. He lodged with a studio guitar player on Merrywood Drive in Laurel Canyon. Later he returned to New York City. In 1949, Lead Belly had a regular radio show, Folk Songs of America, broadcast on station WNYC in New York, on Henrietta Yurchenco's show on Sunday nights. Later in the year, he began his first European tour with a trip to France, but fell ill before its completion and was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease (a motor neuron disease).

In June 1918, he was imprisoned at the Shaw State Prison Farm outside Dekalb, and later (May 1920) transferred to Imperial Farm (Central Unit) in Sugar Land, Texas, after being convicted of killing a relative, Will Stafford. In 1925, he was pardoned and released after writing a song to Texas Governor Pat Morris Neff seeking his freedom, having served the minimum seven years of a 7-to-35-year sentence. He was credited with good behavior, which included entertaining the guards and fellow prisoners. He also appealed for mercy to Neff's known religious beliefs. It was a testament to his persuasive powers, as Neff had run for governor on a pledge not to issue pardons (most Southern judicial systems had no provision for approving parole from prison). After meeting Ledbetter in 1924, Neff returned to the prison several times after he was incarcerated again. He brought guests to the prison on Sunday picnics to hear Ledbetter perform. Another theory is that the name refers to his ability to drink moonshine, the homemade liquor that Southern farmers, black and white, made to supplement their incomes.

Blues singer Big Bill Broonzy thought it came from a supposed tendency to lie about as if "with a stomach weighted down by lead" in the shade when the chain gang was supposed to be working.

Technique

Lead Belly styled himself "King of the Twelve-String Guitar", and despite his use of other instruments, such as the accordion, the most enduring image of Lead Belly as a performer is wielding his unusually large Stella twelve-string. This guitar had a slightly longer scale length than a standard guitar, increasing the tension on the instrument, which, given the added tension of the six extra strings, meant that a trapeze-style tailpiece was needed to help resist bridge lifting. It had slotted tuners and ladder bracing.

Ledbetter played with finger picks much of the time, using a thumb pick to provide walking bass lines described as "tricky" and "inventive", and occasionally to strum. This technique, combined with low tunings and heavy strings, gives many of his recordings a piano-like sound. Scholars have suggested much of his guitar playing was inspired equally by barrelhouse piano and the Mexican Bajo Sexto, a type of guitar that he encountered in Texas and Louisiana.

Ledbetter's tunings are debated by both modern and contemporary musicians and blues enthusiasts alike, but it seems to be a down-tuned variant of standard tuning. Footage of his chording is scarce, so trying to decode his chords is difficult. It is likely that he tuned his guitar strings relative to one another, so that the actual notes shifted as the strings wore. Such down-tuning was a common technique before the development of truss rods, and was intended to prevent the instrument's neck from warping.

Ledbetter's playing style was popularized by Pete Seeger, who adopted the twelve-string guitar in the 1950s and released an instructional LP and book using Lead Belly as an exemplar of technique. In an April 1963 interview on Folk Music Worldwide, Seeger characterized Lead Belly as his silent mentor: "Yeah, and when I stop to think of it, he was my main music teacher although he didn't know it. I'd follow him around and watch his hands closely. I admired him so."

In some of the recordings in which Ledbetter accompanied himself, he made an unusual type of grunt between his verses, sometimes described as "haah!" Songs such as "Looky Looky Yonder", "Take This Hammer", The "haah" sound can also be heard in work chants sung by Southern railroad section workers, "gandy dancers", in which it was used to coordinate work crews as they laid and maintained tracks.

Legacy

In 1976, a highly fictionalized biopic titled Leadbelly was released, directed by Gordon Parks and featuring Roger E. Mosley as Lead Belly.

Richard Walters portrays Lead Belly in episode 21 of season 15 "Devil Music" (March 21, 2022) of the Canadian television period detective series Murdoch Mysteries.

In 1950, The Weavers' recording of their arrangement of Lead Belly's "Irene", released as "Good Night, Irene", was the first folk song to reach number one on the U.S. charts, selling some two million copies.

Kurt Cobain promoted the legacy of Lead Belly, and some modern rock audiences owe their familiarity with Lead Belly to Nirvana's performance of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" (which Lead Belly called "In the Pines") on a televised concert later released as MTV Unplugged in New York. Cobain listed Lead Belly's Last Session Vol. 1 as one of the 50 albums most influential in the formation of Nirvana's sound. It was included in NME's "The 100 Greatest Albums You've Never Heard list".

Ram Jam, an American rock band, had a hit with the song "Black Betty", which they adapted into a rock song in 1977. "Black Betty" was recorded by Lead Belly in 1939.

Bob Dylan credits Ledbetter for getting him into folk music. In his Nobel Prize lecture, Dylan said "somebody – somebody I'd never seen before – handed me a Lead Belly record with the song 'Cotton Fields' on it. And that record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I'd never known. It was like an explosion went off. Like I'd been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times." Dylan also pays homage to him in "Song to Woody" on his self-titled debut album.

Lead Belly recordings were instrumental in starting the British skiffle revival, which in turn produced several musicians prominent during the British Invasion. Lonnie Donegan's recording of "Rock Island Line", released as a single in late 1955, signaled the start of the skiffle craze. George Harrison of The Beatles was quoted as saying, "if there was no Lead Belly, there would have been no Lonnie Donegan; no Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles. Therefore no Lead Belly, no Beatles." In a BBC tribute in 1999, which marked the 50th anniversary of Ledbetter's death, Van Morrison – while sitting alongside Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones – claimed that the British popular music scene of the 1960s wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Lead Belly's influence. "I'd put my money on that," he said. Wood concurred.

Indian singer Bhupen Hazarika—who was, in general, influenced by spirituals during his days as a student in the US—transcreated Lead Belly's singing of "We're in the Same Boat Brother" into the Assamese language as "Ami ekekhon nawore zatri" (আমি একেখন নাৱৰে যাত্ৰী). Later, he also released a Bengali language version as "Mora jatri eki toronir" (মোরা যাত্রী একই তরণীর).

In 2001, English-Canadian blues singer Long John Baldry released his final studio album, Remembering Leadbelly. It contains cover versions of Lead Belly songs, and features a six-minute Alan Lomax interview.

George Ezra developed his singing style from trying to sing like Lead Belly. "On the back of the record, it said his voice was so big, you had to turn your record player down," Ezra says. "I liked the idea of singing with a big voice, so I tried it, and I could."

In 2015, in celebration of Lead Belly's 125th birthday, several events were held. The Kennedy Center, in collaboration with the Grammy Museum held Lead Belly at 125: A Tribute to an American Songster, a musical event featuring Robert Plant, Alison Krauss, and Buddy Miller with Viktor Krauss as headliners and Dom Flemons as host, with special appearances by Lucinda Williams, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Billy Hector, Valerie June, Shannon McNally, Josh White Jr., and Dan Zanes, among others. Also, in Washington, D.C., Bourgeois Town: Lead Belly in Washington DC by the Library of Congress was held where Todd Harvey interviewed Ledbetter's family members about their relative, his contributions to American culture and world music and an overview of the significant Lead Belly materials in the center's archive. In London, England, the Royal Albert Hall held Lead Belly Fest, a musical event featuring Van Morrison, Eric Burdon, Jools Holland, Billy Bragg, Paul Jones, and more.

The Titanic Influenced by the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, Ledbetter wrote the song "The Titanic", his first composition on the twelve-string guitar, which later became his signature instrument. Initially played when performing with Blind Lemon Jefferson (1893–1929) in and around Dallas, Texas, the song is about champion African-American boxer Jack Johnson's being denied passage on the Titanic. Johnson had in fact been denied passage on a ship for being black, but it was not the Titanic. Still, the song includes the lyric "Jack Johnson tried to get on board. The Captain, he says, 'I ain't haulin' no coal!' Fare thee, Titanic! Fare thee well!" Ledbetter later noted he had to leave out this passage when playing in front of white audiences.

"Stay woke" In possibly the earliest audio recording of the phrase, Ledbetter urged Black listeners to "stay woke" in the spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys". The song tells the story of nine Black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. Ledbetter warns his listeners, "So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there—best stay woke, keep their eyes open."

Discography

Singles +Release yearTitle March 25, 193516678-1 Don't You Love Your Daddy No More?BluebirdB-8550June 15, 1940, June 17, 1940051505 0513251940Alberta T.B. BluesBluebirdB-8559June 15, 1940051507 0515031940Easy Rider Worried BluesBluebirdB-8570June 17, 1940051322 0513241941Roberta The Red Cross Store BluesBluebirdB-8709June 15, 1940051506 0515041941New York City You Can't Lose-a Me ChollyBluebirdB-8750June 17, 1940051323-1 051326-11941Good Morning Blues Leaving BluesBluebirdB-8791June 15, 1940051501 October 27, 1944398-3A1 5130–11946Roberta 51331946Where Did You Sleep Last Night? 51321946Bill Brady 51311946 Easy Rider 416-3A1948 Digging My Potatoes D-386

Albums

Posthumous discography

The Library of Congress recordings The Library of Congress recordings, made by John and Alan Lomax from 1934 to 1943, were released in a six-volume series by Rounder Records:

Midnight Special (1991) Gwine Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In (1991) Let It Shine on Me (1991) The Titanic (1994) Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen (1994) Go Down Old Hannah (1995)

Folkways recordings The Folkways recordings, done for Moses Asch from 1941 to 1947, were released in a three-volume series by Smithsonian Folkways:

Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Lead Belly Legacy, Vol. 1 (1996) Bourgeois Blues, Lead Belly Legacy, Vol. 2 (1997) Shout On, Lead Belly Legacy, Vol. 3 (1998)

Smithsonian Folkways has released several other collections of his recordings:

Leadbelly Sings Folk Songs (1989) Lead Belly's Last Sessions (4-CD box set, 1994), recorded late 1948 in New York City; his only commercial recordings on magnetic tape Lead Belly Sings for Children (1999) Folkways: The Original Vision, Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly (2004), expanded version of the 1989 compilation Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (2015)

Live recordings Leadbelly Recorded in Concert, University of Texas, Austin, June 15, 1949 (1973, Playboy Records PB 119) "The King of the Twelve-String Guitar is a Regular on WNYC Through the 1940s" Extant Lead Belly WNYC broadcasts 1940–1949.

Other compilations A Leadbelly Memorial, Vol II (1963, Stinson Records, SLP 19), red vinyl pressing Alabama Bound (1989, RCA Heritage Series), a 16 track CD manufactured for BMG Direct Marketing Huddie Ledbetter's Best (1989, BGO Records), containing recordings made for Capitol Records in 1944 in California King of the 12-String Guitar (1991, Sony/Legacy Records), a collection of blues songs and prison ballads recorded in 1935 in New York City for the American Record Corporation, including previously unreleased alternate takes Lead Belly Sings and Plays (1962, Stinson Records, SLPS 91), red vinyl pressing Private Party November 21, 1948 (2000, Document Records), containing Lead Belly's intimate performance at a private party in late 1948 in Minneapolis Take This Hammer, When the Sun Goes Down series, vol. 5 (2003, RCA Victor/Bluebird Jazz), CD collection of all 26 songs Lead Belly recorded for Victor Records in 1940, half of which feature the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet (a 1968 LP released by RCA Victor included about half of these recordings) The Definitive Lead Belly (2008, Not Now Music), a 50-song retrospective on two CDs Leadbelly – American Folk & Blues Anthology (2013, Not Now Music), 75 songs on three CDs American Epic: The Best of Lead Belly (2017, Lo-Max, Sony Legacy, Third Man)