The legacy of Huddie William Ledbetter looms large in the course of American folk music, thanks to the unparalleled repository of songs he was able to record and to several classics he contributed to the genre. Ledbetter’s records appeared under his nickname, Leadbelly, the spelling of which has been noted as Lead Belly by the Lead Belly Society in accordance with the way Ledbetter himself signed his name. Born in Mooringsport, Lousiana, on Jan. 20, 1888, Ledbetter learned a number of instruments but specialized in the 12-string guitar. He spent time with Blind Lemon Jefferson as a youngster and might have had a more blues-focused career had he been able to continue to play the streets, dances, and red light districts of Shreveport and Dallas, but a violent lifestyle landed him in prison on more than one occasion, and while he serving time for murder in the Angola, Louisiana, prison, folklorist John Lomax showed up in search of songs for the Library of Congress. In 1933 Lead Belly, who had absorbed a huge repertoire of songs in his travels and in prison, recorded the first of hundreds that John and his son Alan Lomax would collect from him over the years – work songs, childrens’ music, spirituals, folk ballads, pop, cajun, and cowboy songs, as well as the blues that often captured his deepest emotions. After his release from prison Lead Belly went to work for John Lomax in Texas and later moved to New York, where he became a celebrity on the emerging folk music scene. His versions of “Midnight Special,” “Cottonfields,” “Rock Island Line,” and “Irene Goodnight” inspired folk, pop, and rock performers for generations to come, while his life experiences provided plenty of material for such blues gems as “Fannin Street” and the scathing indictment “The Bourgeois Blues.” Ledbetter died in New York in Dec. 6, 1949.
— Jim O’Neal
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