Info from around the Internet :: Leadbelly

 

Part of the reason my first purchase of a guitar was a 12 string was this man who affected this precocious little English boy so much he ended up on reaching teenagehood wandering the village where he grew up singing When I was a Cowboy and Goodnight Irene at the top of his lungs which must have caused amusement or bemusement from my neighbours and certainly my early first girlfriends! Strange child!

Although the eclectic North Louisiana musician known as Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter, 1888–1949) is long gone, he still casts a long shadow of influence on popular music. Renditions of songs that he wrote and/or popularised—including “Cottonfields,” “The Midnight Special,” “Goodnight, Irene,” “In The Pines,” and “Boll Weevil”—have scored hits for a variety of artists during the past 65 years, and are still recorded anew today. The stylistic breadth of these songs underscores the fact that while Lead Belly is often designated as a blues musician—implying a limited musical range—he actually personified the far broader “songster” tradition.

A newly released 5-CD/108 song compilation offers an in-depth exploration of his remarkably diverse work, including previously unreleased material. Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (Smithsonian Folkways) does not present his entire recorded oeuvre, but it does illustrate the entire breadth of his life’s work. It also includes some revealing spoken introductions that illuminate Lead Belly’s personality and explain some of the traditions he represented. One example is “Good Morning, Blues”:

“… And now everybody have the blues. Sometimes, they don’t know what it is. But when you lay down at night, turn from one side of the bed all night to the other and you can’t sleep, what’s the matter? Blues has got you. Or when you get up in the mornin’, sit on the side of the bed, may have a mother or father, sister or brother, boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife around. You don’t want no talk out of ’em. They ain’t done you nothin’, you ain’t done them nothin’. What’s the matter, blues got you. Well, you get up and shove your feet down under the table and look down in your place, may have chicken and rice, take my advice, you walk away and shake your head, you say, ‘Lord have mercy. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep.’ What’s the matter? Why, the blues got you. They want to talk to you. You got to tell ’em something.”

Ben Sandmel

(author of the marvellous biography Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans )