Lead Belly

American folk and blues musician (1888–1949)

"Leadbelly" redirects here. For the biographical film on this person, see Leadbelly (film).

Lead Belly

Lead Belly with a melodeon c. 1942

Background information
Birth name| Huddie William Ledbetter
Also known as|

* Lead Belly
* Leadbelly

Born| (1888-01-23)January 23, 1888[1] (disputed)
Mooringsport, Louisiana, U.S.
Died| December 6, 1949(1949-12-06) (aged 61)
New York City, U.S.
Genres|

* Folk blues
* folk
* gospel
* songster

Occupation| Musician
Instruments|

* Guitar
* vocals
* accordion
* piano

Years active| 1903–1949
Labels| RCA Victor, Asch, Capitol

Musical artist

Huddie William Ledbetter (/ˈhjuːdi/ HYOO-dee; January 1888[1][2] or 1889[3] – December 6, 1949),[1] better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "In the Pines" (also known as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"), "Pick a Bale of Cotton", "Goodnight, Irene", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil".

Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer (accordion).[4] In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.

Lead Belly's songs covered a wide range of genres, including gospel music, blues, and folk music, as well as a number of topics, including women, liquor, prison life, racism, cowboys, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes. Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

Though many releases credit him as "Leadbelly", he wrote his name as "Lead Belly". This is the spelling on his tombstone[5][6] and is used by the Lead Belly Foundation.[7] He didn't care for the "Lead Belly" stage name and always introduced himself by his given name: Huddie Ledbetter.[8]

## Biography

[edit]

### Personal life

[edit]

Lead Belly's draft registration card in 1942 (SERIAL NUMBER U2214 and address listed as 604 E 9TH ST., N.Y. N. Y.)

The only son of Sallie Brown and Wesley Ledbetter (she had an older son, and the couple adopted a daughter when Huddie was a toddler), Huddie Ledbetter was born on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana.[9] On his World War II draft registration card in 1942, he gave his birthplace as "Freeport" (Shreveport), Louisiana. There is uncertainty over his precise date and year of birth. The Lead Belly Foundation gives his birth date as January 20, 1889,[3] his grave marker gives the year 1889, and his 1942 draft registration card states January 23, 1889.

The 1900 United States census lists "Hudy Ledbetter" as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the 1910 and 1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888. The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with information supplied by wife Martha. These records were made by census takers, and ages and dates were defined in terms of the census date. The books Blues: A Regional Experience by Eagle and LeBlanc and Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians by Tomko give January 23, 1888,[1][10] while the Encyclopedia of the Blues gives January 20, 1888.[2]

His parents had cohabited for several years. They married on February 26, 1888, perhaps after his birth that year. When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, Texas, where they eventually became landowners.

By the 1910 census of Harrison County, Texas, "Hudy Ledbetter" was living next door to his parents in a separate household with his first wife, Aletha "Lethe" Henderson. Aletha is recorded as age 19 and married one year. Others say she was 15 when they married in 1908. Ledbetter received his first instrument in Texas, an accordion, from his uncle Terrell. By his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter and his wife left for the Dallas/Fort Worth area, working as farm laborers while Ledbetter sought opportunities as a musician.

### Music career

[edit]

By 1903, Huddie was already a "musicianer",[11]: 28 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, Ledbetter briefly served on a Texas chain gang, from which he escaped. In 1918, under the name of Walter Boyd, he was convicted of murder in Texas and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After writing a song pleading for clemency, Ledbetter was pardoned by Governor Pat Morris Neff in 1925.[12] 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 Lomax.[13] They were recording varieties of local music in the South as a project to preserve traditional music for the Library of Congress. This was one of numerous cultural projects during the Great Depression.[14]

Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him in 1933 on portable aluminum disc recording equipment for the Library of Congress project. They returned with new and better equipment in July 1934, recording numerous songs. While in prison, Lead Belly may have first heard the traditional prison song "Midnight Special"; his versions became famous.[15] 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 idea that Ledbetter had yet again sung his way to freedom.

With the Great Depression ongoing and Alan Lomax ill[15] and unable to assist his father in song collecting, Ledbetter and Lomax teamed up in September, 1934.[8] For three months, Ledbetter, forty-six years old, assisted the 67-year-old Lomax in his folk song collecting around the South.

In December 1934, Lead Belly participated in a "smoker" (group sing-along) at a Modern Language Association meeting at a hotel in Philadelphia. He was written up in the press as a convict who had sung his way out of prison. On New Year's Day, 1935, the pair arrived in New York City, where Lomax was scheduled to meet with his publisher, Macmillan, about a new collection of folk songs. The newspapers were eager to write about the "singing convict". Time magazine made one of its first March of Time newsreels about him. Lead Belly attained fame—although not fortune.

On January 23–25, 1935, Lead Belly had the first of several recording sessions with American Record Corporation (ARC). These sessions, combined with two others on February 5 and March 25, yielded 53 takes. Of those recordings, only six were ever released during Lead Belly's lifetime. ARC decided to simultaneously release these songs on six different labels they owned: Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo, and Paramount.[11]: 159–60, 292–95 These recordings achieved little commercial success. Part of the reason for the poor sales may have been that ARC released only his blues songs rather than the folk songs for which he would later become better known. Lead Belly continued to struggle financially. Like many performers, what income he made during his career came from touring, not from record sales. In February 1935, he married his girlfriend, Martha Promise, who came north from Louisiana to join him.

During February Ledbetter recorded his repertoire with Alan Lomax, who also recorded other African Americans. Lomax interviewed Ledbetter about his life for their forthcoming book, Negro Folk Songs As Sung by Lead Belly (1936). The Lomax book contains numerous sensational accounts of uncertain authenticity.[8] According to the authors, the work was not an "accurate biography" but a "loosely woven texture of unreconstructed stories."[8]

In March 1935, Lead Belly accompanied John Lomax on a previously scheduled two-week lecture tour of colleges and universities in the Northeast, culminating at Harvard. At the end of the month, John Lomax decided he could no longer work with Lead Belly. He gave him and Martha enough money to return by bus to Louisiana. He also gave Martha the money her husband had earned during three months of performing, but in installments, on the pretext that Lead Belly would spend it all on drinking if he was given a lump sum. From Louisiana, Lead Belly successfully sued Lomax for both the full amount of his earnings and release from his management contract. The quarrel was bitter, with hard feelings on both sides. In the midst of the legal wrangling, Lead Belly wrote to Lomax proposing they team up again, but this did not happen. The book that the Lomaxes published about Lead Belly in the fall of 1936 proved a commercial failure.[16]

In January 1936, Lead Belly 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.

Lead Belly 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.[17] Also included was a striking photograph of his wife Martha Promise (identified in the article as his manager). Other photos showed Lead Belly'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."[17]

Lead Belly failed to stir the enthusiasm of Harlem audiences. Instead, he attained success playing at concerts and benefits for an audience of folk music aficionados. He developed his own style of singing and explaining his repertoire in the context of Southern black culture, having learned from his participation in Lomax's college lectures. He was especially successful with his repertoire of children's game songs (as a younger man in Louisiana he had sung regularly at children's birthday parties in the black community). Black novelist Richard Wright wrote about him as a heroic figure in the Daily Worker, of which Wright was the Harlem editor. The two men became personal friends. In contrast to Wright, who was then a communist, commentators described Lead Belly as apolitical. He was known to support Wendell Willkie, the centrist Republican candidate for president, for whom he wrote a campaign song. Lead Belly also wrote the song "The Bourgeois Blues", which has class-conscious and anti-racist lyrics.

In 1939, Lead Belly was involved in an altercation after a small gathering in New York City and accused of stabbing a man. Alan Lomax, then 24, took him under his wing and helped raise money for his legal expenses, dropping out of graduate school to do so. But, based in part on Ledbetter's apparent notoriety, the judge sentenced him to a year in Rikers. After gaining release, Lead Belly appeared as a regular on Lomax and Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking CBS radio show Back Where I Come From, broadcast nationwide.

He also performed in nightclubs with Josh White, becoming a fixture in New York City's surging folk music scene and befriending the likes of Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, all fellow performers on Back Where I Come From.[18]

In 1940, Lead Belly recorded for RCA Victor, one of the biggest record companies at the time. These sessions in California were held on June 15 and 17, with the Golden Gate Quartet accompanying some songs. The recordings resulted in the album, The Midnight Special and Other Southern Prison Songs, being issued by Victor Records. The album included sheets with extensive notes and song texts prepared by Alan Lomax. According to Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, "it was one of the finest public presentations of Leadbelly's music: well recorded, well advertised, well documented. And the album justified its reputation as a landmark in African American folk music."[11]: 220–22, 298–300 Several of the recordings from these sessions were also issued as singles by Bluebird Records.[19]

In 1941, Lead Belly 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.[20]: 22–23 Between 1941 and 1944, Lead Belly released three albums under the Asch Recordings label.[11]: 225–26, 304–07 During the first half of the 1940s, Lead Belly also recorded for the Library of Congress.

Lead Belly frequently performed Southern Blues at concerts by Si-lan Chen.[21]

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).[14] Lead Belly was the first American country blues musician to achieve success in Europe.[18] His final concert was at the University of Texas at Austin in a tribute to his former mentor, John Lomax, who had died the previous year. Martha also performed at that concert, singing spirituals with Lead Belly.

Ledbetter died later that year in New York City. He was buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church cemetery, in Mooringsport, Louisiana, 8 miles (13 km) west of Blanchard, in Caddo Parish.[5] He is honored with a statue across from the Caddo Parish Courthouse, in Shreveport. Ledbetter's niece, activist Greshun De Bouse, founded National Huddie Ledbetter Day (August 1 annually), and received proclamations from the mayors of Oil City, LA (where Lead Belly worked) and Shreveport, LA in 2023.[22]

### Legal issues

[edit]

Lead Belly inside the Angola Prison, July 1934

Lead Belly was imprisoned multiple times beginning in 1915, when he was convicted of carrying a pistol and sentenced to time on the Harrison County chain gang. He later escaped and found work in nearby Bowie County under the assumed name of Walter Boyd.

In January 1918, he was imprisoned at the Imperial Farm (Central Unit)[23] 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).[24] After meeting Lead Belly 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.[11]: 85

In 1930, Ledbetter was sentenced to Louisiana State Penitentiary (nicknamed "Angola") after a summary trial for attempted homicide for stabbing a man in a fight. In 1939, Lead Belly served his final jail term for assault after stabbing a man in a fight in Manhattan.

### Nickname "Lead Belly"

[edit]

Lead Belly and Martha Promise Ledbetter, Wilton, Connecticut, February 1935

There are several conflicting stories about how Ledbetter acquired the nickname "Lead Belly", it probably happened while he was in prison. Some claim his fellow inmates called him "Lead Belly" as a play on his family name and his physical toughness. Others say he earned the name after being wounded in the stomach with buckshot.[18] 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.[25]

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.[26]

## Technique

[edit]

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.[27] 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.[citation needed]

Lead Belly played with finger picks much of the time, using a thumb pick to provide walking bass lines described as "tricky" and "inventive",[28] and occasionally to strum.[29] 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.[30]

Lead Belly'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.

Lead Belly'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."[31]

In some of the recordings in which Lead Belly 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",[14] "Linin' Track", and "Julie Ann Johnson" feature this unusual vocalization. In "Take This Hammer", Lead Belly explained: "Every time the men say, 'Haah,' the hammer falls. The hammer rings, and we swing, and we sing."[32] 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

[edit]

Further information: List of cover versions of Lead Belly songs

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

In 2022, Richard Walters played Lead Belly in an episode of Murdoch Mysteries (S15 Ep21 - Devil Music).

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 #1 on the U.S. charts, selling some two million copies.[33]

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.[34] Cobain refers to his attempt to convince David Geffen to purchase Lead Belly's guitar for him in an interval before the song is played. In his notebooks, Cobain listed Lead Belly's Last Session Vol. 1 as one of the 50 albums most influential in the formation of Nirvana's sound.[35] It was included in NME's "The 100 Greatest Albums You've Never Heard list".[36]

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 Lead Belly 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."[37] 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."[38] In a BBC tribute in 1999, which marked the 50th anniversary of Lead Belly'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.[39]

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" [40] into the Assamese language as "Ami ekekhon nawore zatri" (আমি একেখন নাৱৰে যাত্ৰী).[41][42] Later, he also released a Bengali language version as "Mora jatri eki toronir" (মোরা যাত্রী একই তরণীর).[43]

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."[44]

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.[45] Also, in Washington, D.C., Bourgeois Town: Lead Belly in Washington DC by the Library of Congress was held where Todd Harvey interviewed Lead Belly 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.[46] 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.[47]

### The Titanic

[edit]

Influenced by the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912, Ledbetter wrote the song "The Titanic",[48] 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.[49] 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.[50]

### "Stay woke"

[edit]

In possibly the earliest audio recording of the phrase, Lead Belly 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. Lead Belly warns his listeners, "So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there—best stay woke, keep their eyes open."[51][52]

## Discography

[edit]

Further information: List of songs recorded by Lead Belly

### Singles

[edit]

Release Year  | Title

(A-side/B-side)

| Label  | Catalog Number  | Recording Date  | Matrix Number  | Notes

|
|
|
|
|
|

1935  | All Out and Down

Packin' Trunk

| Banner  | 33359  | January 23, 1935  | 16688-2

16685-1

| American Record Corporation simultaneously released these songs on six different labels they owned
Melotone  | M13326
Oriole  | 8438
Perfect  | 0314
Romeo  | 5438
Paramount  | 14006
1935  | Four Day Worry Blues

New Black Snake Moan

| Banner  | 33360  | January 23, 1935  | 16689-2

16691-2

| American Record Corporation simultaneously released these songs on six different labels they owned
Melotone  | M13327
Oriole  | 8439
Perfect  | 0315
Romeo  | 5439
Paramount  | 14017
1936  | Becky Deem, She Was a Gamblin' Girl

Pig Meat Papa

| Banner  | 6-04-55  | January 23, 1935,

March 25, 1935

| 16678-1

17181-1

| American Record Corporation simultaneously released these songs on six different labels they owned
Melotone  | 6-04-55
Oriole  | 6-04-55
Perfect  | 6-04-55
Romeo  | 6-04-55
Paramount  | 6-04-55
1940  | Sail On, Little Girl, Sail On

Don't You Love Your Daddy No More?

| Bluebird  | B-8550  | June 15, 1940,

June 17, 1940

| 051505

051325

1940  | Alberta

T.B. Blues

| Bluebird  | B-8559  | June 15, 1940  | 051507

051503

1940  | Easy Rider

Worried Blues

| Bluebird  | B-8570  | June 17, 1940  | 051322

051324

1941  | Roberta

The Red Cross Store Blues

| Bluebird  | B-8709  | June 15, 1940  | 051506

051504

1941  | New York City

You Can't Lose-a Me Cholly

| Bluebird  | B-8750  | June 17, 1940  | 051323-1

051326-1

1941  | Good Morning Blues

Leaving Blues

| Bluebird  | B-8791  | June 15, 1940  | 051501

051502

1942  | I'm on My Last Go-Round  | Bluebird  | B-8981  | June 15, 1940  | 051508-1  | This was the b-side to "Thirsty Mama Blues" by the Hot Lips Page Trio
1945[53] | Rock Island Line

Eagle Rock Rag

| Capitol  | 10021  | October 4, 1944,

October 27, 1944

| 398-3A1

457-2A

| Included in the five-disc Capitol Album CE-16, The History of Jazz Vol. 1: The 'Solid' South
1946[54] | Yellow Gal

When the Boys Were on the Western Plain

| Musicraft  | 310  | February 17, 1944  | 5129

5130-1

1946  | Roberta

John Hardy

| Musicraft  | 311  | February 17, 1944  | 5126-3

5133

1946  | Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

In New Orleans

| Musicraft  | 312  | February 17, 1944  | 5128

5132

1946  | Bill Brady

Pretty Flowers in Your Back Yard

| Musicraft  | 313  | February 17, 1944  | 5127

5131

1946[55] | Easy Rider

Pigmeat

| Disc  | 5501  | June 1946  |  |
1947[56] | Sweet Mary Blues

Grasshopers in My Pillow

| Capitol  | A40038  | October 27, 1944  | 459-2A

460-3A

1948  | Irene

Backwater Blues

| Capitol  | 40130  | October 11, 1944  | 413-3A

416-3A

1948[57] | Digging My Potatoes

Defense Blues

| Disc  | 5085  | June 1946  | D-385

D-386

### Albums

[edit]

Release Year  | Title  | Label  | Catalog Number  | Notes

|
|
|
|

1939  | Negro Sinful Songs | Musicraft  | Album 31  |
1940  | The Midnight Special and Other Southern Prison Songs | Victor  | P-50  |
1941  | Play Parties in Song and Dance | Asch  |  |
1942  | Work Songs of the U.S.A. | Asch  |  |
1944  | Songs by Lead Belly | Asch  | A-343  |
1946  | Negro Folk Songs | Disc  | 660  |
1947  | Midnight Special | Disc  | 726  | Featuring Woody Guthrie and Cisco Huston

## Posthumous discography

[edit]

### The Library of Congress recordings

[edit]

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

[edit]

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;[58] 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)[59][60]

### Live recordings

[edit]

* 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

[edit]

* 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)

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d Eagle, Bob; LeBlanc, Eric S. (2013). Blues – A Regional Experience. Santa Barbara: Praeger Publishers. p. 301\. ISBN 978-0-313-34423-7.
2. ^ a b Komara, Edward M. (March 8, 2006). Encyclopedia of the Blues. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-92699-7. Retrieved March 8, 2021 - via Google Books.
3. ^ a b "About Lead Belly", The Lead Belly Foundation[usurped]. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
4. ^ Snyder, Jared (Summer 1994). "Leadbelly and His Windjammer: Examining the African American Button Accordion Tradition". American Music. 12 (2): 148–166\. doi:10.2307/3052520. JSTOR 3052520.
5. ^ a b Huddie William "Lead Belly" Ledbetter at Find a Grave
6. ^ "Delta Blues.net". Archived from the original on September 19, 2010. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
7. ^ "Lead Belly Foundation". LeadBelly.org. Archived from the original on January 23, 2010. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
8. ^ a b c d "MSN". www.msn.com. Retrieved April 24, 2025.
9. ^ Laberge, Yves (2006). Komara, Edward (ed.). The Blues Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 586–587\. ISBN 0-415-92699-8.
10. ^ Tomko, Gene (2020). Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians: Jazz, Blues, Cajun, Creole, Zydeco, Swamp Pop, and Gospel. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. p. 155\. ISBN 978-0-8071-6932-2.
11. ^ a b c d e Wolfe, Charles; Lornell, Kip (1992). The Life and Legend of Leadbelly. New York City: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-016862-5.
12. ^ "Ledbetter, Huddie [Lead Belly] (1888–1949)". Retrieved December 5, 2023.
13. ^ Santelli, Robert, 2015, Lead Belly: A Man of Contradiction and Complexity, p. 17. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
14. ^ a b c Gilliland, John (May 18, 1969). "Show 18 – Blowin' in the Wind: Pop Discovers Folk Music. Part 1". Pop Chronicles. UNT Digital Library, University of North Texas, Digital.library.unt.edu. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
15. ^ a b Lomax, Alan, ed. Folk Song USA. New American Library.
16. ^ Porterfield, Nolan (1996). Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax, 1867-1948. University of Illinois Press. p. 398\. ISBN 9780252069710.
17. ^ a b LIFE Magazine – Google Books. April 19, 1937. pp. 38–40. Retrieved December 30, 2011.
18. ^ a b c The Mudcat Cafe. Leadbelly – King of the 12 String Guitar Archived January 2, 2016, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved on January 30, 209
19. ^ UC Santa Barbara Library. "Leadbelly". Discography of American Historical Recordings. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
20. ^ Place, Jeff (2015). "The Life and Legacy of Lead Belly". Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (PDF). Washington: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. ISBN 978-0-9704942-5-2. UPC 093074020128. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 13, 2022. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
21. ^ Gao, Yunxiang (2021). Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. p. 211\. ISBN 9781469664606.
22. ^ "National Huddie Ledbetter Day". Eventguide.com.
23. ^ Perkinson, Robert (2010). Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire. Metropolitan Books. 184. ISBN 978-0-8050-8069-8.
24. ^ "Today in Masonic History". MASONRYTODAY.com. November 26, 2017. Retrieved October 31, 2019.
25. ^ Neff, Kyle. "Research Guides: Louisiana Music History: Materials in Special Collections: Huddie William "Lead Belly" Ledbetter". guides.lib.lsu.edu. Retrieved August 29, 2022.
26. ^ Terkel, Studs (2009). And They All Sang. New Press.
27. ^ Ohara, Marcus (November 22, 2009). "The Unique Guitar Blog: The Stella 12 String Guitar". Uniqueguitar.blogspot.com.
28. ^ Turner, Dale (February 23, 2017). "12-String King:Lead Belly's Big-Bottom Blues". Guitarworld.com. Retrieved January 6, 2020.
29. ^ Copon, Miguel (March 24, 2014). "PREPARED GUITAR: Lead Belly". PREPARED GUITAR. Retrieved July 31, 2025.
30. ^ Komara, Edward M. Encyclopedia of the Blues. 2006, Psychology Press, p. 434.
31. ^ "PETE SEEGER - Folk Music Worldwide, 1963 Interview". www.folkmusicworldwide.com. Retrieved January 19, 2025.
32. ^ Lead Belly singing "Take This Hammer" on YouTube. Retrieved January 30, 2008.
33. ^ Seeger, Pete (1972). Schwartz, Jo Metcalf (ed.). The Incompleat Folksinger. New York: Fireside Books, Simon and Schuster. p. 461\. ISBN 0-671-22304-6.
34. ^ "Where Did You Sleep Last Night". YouTube. January 10, 2011. Archived from the original on November 7, 2021.
35. ^ "Top 50 by Nirvana". Archived from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
36. ^ "The 100 Greatest Albums You've Never Heard". NME. August 30, 2018. Retrieved October 11, 2018.
37. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2016". NobelPrize.org.
38. ^ Catlin, Roger. "The Incomparable Legacy of Lead Belly". Smithsonian.
39. ^ Fitzpatrick, Richard (June 10, 2015). "Lead Belly has inspired a music generation". Irishexaminer.com.
40. ^ "Earl Robinson Sings: Folkways Records FG3545" (PDF). media.smithsonianfolkways.org. 1963. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 4, 2022. Retrieved February 8, 2022.
41. ^ Majaw, Lou; Lyngdoh, Andrew. "We are in the same boat brother..." The Telegraph.
42. ^ Dutta, Pranjal (November 5, 2020). "The African American Bhupen Hazarika". The Sentinel.
43. ^ "More jatri eki toronir testo". MTV Testi Canzoni.
44. ^ "On the Verge: George Ezra arrives by way of 'Budapest'". Usatoday.com.
45. ^ "Lead Belly at 125: A Tribute to an American Songster | GRAMMY Museum". Grammymuseum.org.
46. ^ "Bourgeois Town: Lead Belly in Washington DC". Library of Congress.
47. ^ "Lead Belly Fest | Royal Albert Hall". Royal Albert Hall.
48. ^ "The Titanic" by Leadbelly on YouTube
49. ^ Dinerstein, Joel (April 1, 2003). Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African American Culture. Univ of Massachusetts Press. p. 124. Retrieved November 18, 2011. "Jack Johnson denied access on Titanic."
50. ^ Lead Belly's Last Sessions, disc 2, track 15, "The Titanic". Smithsonian Folkways.
51. ^ Romano, Aja (October 9, 2020). "A history of 'wokeness'". Vox. Retrieved June 28, 2023.
52. ^ Quarshie, Mabinty (March 9, 2023). "What is the meaning of 'woke'? Once a term used by Black Americans, it's now a rallying cry for GOP". USA Today. Retrieved June 28, 2023.
53. ^ "Advance Record Releases". Billboard. Vol. 57, no. 39\. October 6, 1945. p. 85\. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
54. ^ "Advance Record Releases". Billboard. Vol. 58, no. 15\. April 13, 1946. p. 124\. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved July 7, 2021.
55. ^ "Advance Record Releases". Billboard. Vol. 58, no. 26\. June 29, 1946. p. 30\. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
56. ^ "Advance Record Releases". Billboard. Vol. 59, no. 35\. September 6, 1947. p. 31\. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved May 30, 2021.
57. ^ "Advance Record Releases". Billboard. Vol. 60, no. 7\. February 14, 1948. p. 123\. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
58. ^ Leadbelly's Last Sessions, vol. 1. Folkways Records (FP 241) U.S.
59. ^ Mazor, Barry (February 25, 2015). "Going From Prison Zero to Folk Hero". The Wall Street Journal. p. D5.
60. ^ The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, 2015 remastered compilation. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (SFW 40201) U.S.

## Sources

[edit]

* White, Gary; Stuart, David; Aviva, Elyn (2001). Music in Our World. p. 196\. ISBN 0-07-027212-3.
* Wolfe, Charles; Lornell, Kip (1992). The Life and Legend of Leadbelly . New York City: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0060168625

## External links

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lead Belly.

* The Official Lead Belly Website
* "Ledbetter, Huddie (Leadbelly)" in the Handbook of Texas Online
* AllMusic
* Lead Belly discography at Discogs
* Discography for Lead Belly on Folkways
* Leadbelly and Lomax Together at the American Music Festival on WNYC
* The 'King of the Twelve-String Guitar' is a WNYC Regular Through the 1940s
* Lead Belly And The Lomaxes: Myths and Realities A FAQ and Timeline Lead Belly's relationship with John and Alan Lomax
* Louisiana Music Hall of Fame Induction Page Archived June 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
* Lead Belly: Entries|KnowLA, Encyclopedia of Louisiana Archived February 22, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
* Huddie William "Lead Belly" Ledbetter at Find a Grave

* v
* t
* e

Lead Belly

* List of recorded songs

Studio albums|

* Negro Sinful Songs
* The Midnight Special and Other Southern Prison Songs
* Play Parties in Song and Dance
* Work Songs of the U.S.A.
* Songs by Lead Belly
* Negro Folk Songs
* Midnight Special

Compilation albums|

* Leadbelly Sings Folk Songs
* Lead Belly Sings for Children
* Folkways: The Original Vision (Woody and LeadBelly)
* The Smithsonian Folkways Collection

Singles|

* "John Hardy"
* "Midnight Special"
* "Goodnight, Irene"
* "Take This Hammer"
* "Rock Island Line"
* "The Bourgeois Blues"

Songs|

* "Black Betty"
* "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"
* "Pick a Bale of Cotton"
* "Cotton Fields"
* "Boll Weevil"
* "Alabama Bound"
* "Duncan and Brady"
* "How Long, How Long"
* "Alberta"
* "Mr. Hitler"
* "How Come You Do Me Like You Do?"
* "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"
* "House of the Rising Sun"
* "Backwater Blues"
* "Vigilante Man"
* "Skip to My Lou"
* "The Blue Tailed Fly (Jimmie Crack Corn)"

Related|

* Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet
* Blind Lemon Jefferson
* Pat Morris Neff
* Leadbelly (1976 film)
* MTV Unplugged in New York

* v
* t
* e

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – Class of 1988

Performers|

* The Beach Boys
* Al Jardine, Mike Love, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson
* The Beatles
* George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr
* The Drifters
* Ben E. King, Rudy Lewis, Clyde McPhatter, Johnny Moore, Bill Pinkney, Charlie Thomas, Gerhart Thrasher
* Bob Dylan
* The Supremes
* Florence Ballard, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson

Early influences|

* Woody Guthrie
* Lead Belly
* Les Paul

Non-performers
(Ahmet Ertegun Award)|

* Berry Gordy

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* FAST
* WorldCat
* 2

National|

* Germany
* United States
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* 2
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* 2
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* 2
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* Finland

Artists|

* MusicBrainz
* 2
* Discography of American Historical Recordings

People|

* Trove
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Other|

* IdRef
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