Lead Belly is a Folk Blues legend that came to prominence with the release from Time Magazine called the March of Time newsreels in 1935. While he lived not too far away from the Mississippi Delta there was a different ‘Blues’ sound, and Lead Belly would lean much more toward Folk music. Is it Lead Belly or Leadbelly? I see a lot of both spellings. A bit of a mini-bio on an artist I haven’t talked much about.

Huddie William Ledbetter was born January 20, 1888 in Louisiana and died December 6, 1949 in New York. His family moved to Texas when he was five, it is believed he did not take up an instrument until his early twenties. Still living in Texas, as a father of two he left home in search of making a better living. He spent time as an itinerant musician, playing the accordion and later learning guitar. Much of his time was spent just across the Texas border in Shreveport, Louisiana. He struggled to get by and found himself at odds with the law several times and was in and out of prison from 1915 to 1939.

While at the Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana he was introduced to Musicologist and Folklorist, John Lomax and his son Alan who were conducting a recording project for the Library of Congress. It was here he recorded his version of “Midnight Special” in 1934 but it was not released. The song had actually been recorded in 1926 by Pistol Pete as more of a “Country” song and at least three more times before the Lomax’s mistakenly credited the song to Lead Belly. While he did add some new lines to the song, we don’t know who wrote it originally and there are several versions with different verses and in fact other songs that were quite similar. His fist release was a recording by Lead Belly and The Golden Gate Quartet

“Irene” was first recorded in 1933 when Lead Belly was in prison. Written with some assistance from John Lomax. The first release was a 1943 recording.

The song is covered most often with the title “Goodnight Irene”

Another very famous original composition was titled “Cotton Song” which is better known as “Cotton Fields”.

While his version of the song “Rock Island Line’ is seen as the definitive recording and the covers are based on this recording, I have run across references that say his was the first and that he wrote the song. Both are incorrect, the song was written by an actual Rock Island Line employee named Clarence Wilson as a promotional jingle. It was first performed by the Rock Island Colored Booster Quartet in 1934. It was first recorded by Kelly Pace and Group in 1934 but it was not released until 1943. The Lead Belly version had his own take on the song and was indeed the first release in 1942. Here is the Pace version followed by Lead Belly.

Lead Belly was a true American storytelling legend that contributed many other great songs that in total have been re-recorded well over 1,000 times.