Lead Belly:  1889 - 1949

The diverse legacy of Lead Belly reads like a fabled outlaw rap sheet - songster, fighter, murderer, convict, twelve-string guitar slinger, left-wing activist. All of these and the “father of folk music” too. With a massive arsenal of over 500 songs he either wrote or adapted from earlier, passed-on traditions, Lead Belly’s stature in popular music is huge. Songs like “Midnight Special,” “Rock Island Line,” “Goodnight Irene,” “Cotton Fields,” “The Grey Goose,” and “The Bourgeois Blues” have all become standards in the folk-blues catalog.

Lead Belly’s rich trove of musical styles ran the gamut from blues to children’s rhymes. He played a Stella twelve-string, tuned low, in an aggressive style reminiscent of the barrelhouses and honky tonks of Shreveport, Louisiana’s Fannin Street where he hung out as a young man. His guitar sound was voluminous, containing rhythmic chordal tones and walking bass lines. Command of the instrument was such that he was branded “King of the Twelve-String Guitar”. It perfectly complimented his clear, penetrating vocals, sometimes sung, sometimes spoken in narrative form.

The only child of sharecropping parents, Huddie William Ledbetter was born on January 20, 1889 on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana. As a child he was naturally gifted at music, beginning with the accordian and eventually tackling piano, harmonica, mandolin, and guitar. Aside from soaking up local musical influences, the story goes that young Lead Belly once witnessed a Mexican playing a twelve-string guitar and was entranced by its rich tones. In his early teens he was already sought after to play local dances, breakdowns and “sukey” jumps. He quit school at fourteen to work on his father’s farm, but rambling and playing music were a stronger calling.

Drawn to the freedom of the road and pursuing his musical muse, Lead Belly wandered the back roads of Louisiana and East Texas, performing and working on cotton farms when necessary. In 1910 he married and settled in Dallas, Texas. While living in Dallas he met Blind Lemon Jefferson and the two men spent several years performing together in the area. It was during this period that Lead Belly made the twelve-string his premier instrument. Jefferson influenced his playing abilities, yet the region’s proximity to Mexico, where the muscular instrument was most popular, definitely seduced him.

Lead Belly’s size and strength (tales proclaim he could pick 1,000 pounds of cotton per day) and violent temper would repeatedly get him into scrapes with the law. First, in 1915, he was charged with assault and sentenced to thirty days on a chain gang. From there he escaped and began using an alias. Then, in 1917, in a fight over a woman, he killed a man and was sentenced to thirty years in a state prison. Here he earned his nickname for his “lead” stamina laboring in the fields. Music lived on in the spirituals and work songs fellow inmates sang to assuage their toil. Lead Belly‘s musical talents not only made prison life tolerable, but provided him with a ticket out. When Texas governor, Pat Neff, made a visit to the Huntsville Prison Farm in 1924 he was impressed by a song Lead Belly had composed as an appeal for freedom. Neff must have been a genuine music lover because he pardoned Lead Belly upon completing his political term a year later.

If this wasn’t enough, Lead Belly was again convicted of assault with intent to murder in 1930 and sentenced  six to ten years at Louisiana’s Angola Prison Farm. At about this time, John and Alan Lomax were scouring the deep south in a quest to document indigenous African-American musical forms. Their search brought them to Angola in 1933, where they recorded Lead Belly for their Library of Congress collection. The Lomaxes realized they’d stumbled on a true musical giant and an abundant source of folk songs as well. They assisted Lead Belly in a second song of appeal and pardon was again granted by governor O.K. Allen in 1934. The legend was already percolating that Lead Belly could sing his way out of prison.

His relationship with John Lomax prospered for the next several years, as a chauffeur and personal assistant while collecting additional prison recordings. Thanks to Lomax he was brought to New York and experienced folk music celebrity, playing to college campuses and political rallies, and appearing on radio and in night clubs. With Lomax acting as de facto manager he embarked on a myriad of recordings for various labels. The burgeoning folk-blues scene put him in cahoots with musicians like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Josh White. Such left-wing associations probably didn’t sell him many records, but Lead Belly was already beyond reproach. He remained in New York as his reputation spread amongst mainly white listeners. For Lomax and his northern folk audiences Lead Belly was from another world; a living messenger of folk’s deep, enigmatic past. His storehouse of song styles ranged wide, from traditional folk, spirituals, and blues to prison songs, field hollers, dance tunes, and children’s songs.

Lead Belly recorded relentlessly between 1935 and 1948, mainly for the ARC and Columbia labels, but his expansive repertoire proved difficult to market. Most of his recordings were issued long after his death. In 1939 he was arrested once again for stabbing a man in New York and received an eight month prison sentence. The latest crime only furnished his image with more melodrama. He returned to a busy recording schedule as well as weekly radio spots, his final sessions being for Moses Asch’s Folkways label in 1948.

In an attempt to expand his audience abroad he traveled to France in May of 1949. At sixty years old he was already experiencing unusual physical disabilities and while on tour a doctor diagnosed him with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The neuromuscular disease took his life prematurely in December that same year.

As if the world was still catching up to Lead Belly’s art, influence and fame continued to build after his death. The Weavers scored a number one hit in 1950 with his song “Good Night Irene.” British Skiffle music was kick-started with Lonnie Donegan’s rendition of “Rock Island Line.” Artists like Frank Sinatra, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash, Johnny Rivers, and Creedence Clearwater Revival all had hits with various Lead Belly songs. Even Nirvana covered a song called “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.”  By Tim Kirker

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