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Leadbelly (1888-1949) - born Huddie Ledbetter; alias Walter Boyd |
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American blues singer, "King of The Twelve-String Guitar," who twice sang himself out of jails. Ledbetter helped to inspire the folk and blues revivals of the Fifties and Sixties and he was one of the first traditional folk musicians to perform for a city audience. Ledbetter's perseverance and power earned him the nickname "Lead Belly" – he could pick in the cotton fields 1,000 pounds a day. According to some critics, Ledbetter's rendition of Blind Lemon's 'Matchbox Blues,' using a knife-slide guitar technique, was probably the finest blues he ever recorded. "Friend, did you bring me the silver, Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) was born on 15 January (in some sources on Jan. 21), 1888, by Caddo Lake near Shreveport, Louisiana. The region was rural and densely populated; "there were no white people for twenty miles around," Ledbetter later said. (Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism by Paige A. McGinley, 2014) Both of his parents were middle-aged when he was born; Huddie was their only living son. John Wesley Ledbetter, his father, worked at that time on a farm known as the Jeter Plantation, a few miles from the Shiloh Baptist Church. It was said that Sallie Pugh, Ledbetter's mother, had Cherokee blood in her. In 1982 they adopted a girl, Australia Carr Ledbetter. Ledbetter grew up in Louisiana and Texas, where his family moved when he was five. By the early 1900's, John Wesley had enough money to buy some land for a farm in Harrison County, Texas. At home Ledbelly's uncle Bob taught him to play the guitar, and his father taught him accordion. By the time he was fourteen, he had made his name locally for his guitar playing and singing. Travelling around in his early teens, Ledbelly picked up music that dated back to slave days. He absorbed all kinds of music he heard and made it his own. His mother sang spirituals and children's play songs, from wandering piano players he adopted the bass figurations of boogie woogie, and in prison he heard old folk ballads and prayers that came straight from the heart. First Ledbetter had an eight-string and later 12-string guitar, which was to become his trademark instrument. Also many other blues singers, notably Blind Willie McTell and Lonnie Johnson on some of his earliest records, used the 12-string Stella. At the age of sixteen Ledbetter was married, but instead of settling down with his wife Aletha, or simply Lethe, he played and drank all night. "He didn't take anything off of black or white. If you put your hand on his shoulder, he'd just as soon, you know, knock it off or cut you," his granddaughter recalled. (The Life And Legend Of Leadbelly by Charles K. Wolfe and Kip Lornell, 1999) At eighteen he went to Texas where he picked cotton, and had many other jobs, too. In Dallas in 1910 he heard a jazz band playing for the first time. There he also met Blind Lemon Jefferson, who taught him many songs. With his quick temper Ledbetter lived violently and he had trouble with "the truculent Dallas prostitutes." Ledbetter was only about five-foot-eight, but he had a muscular, athletic figure. Ledbetter's promising musical career was interrupted in 1916, when he was jailed for assaulting a woman. To pay for the lawyer, his parents mortgaged their farm. Eventually he escaped from the chain gang – across a fresh-ploughed field – and spent a couple of years hiding under the alias of "Walter Boyd." His freedom outside society ended when he shot and killed a man in an argument over a woman, and received a 30-year sentence in Harrison County Prison in Texas. The evidence was circumstancial. During this period he learned 'Take This Hammer,' in which the song is punctuated by the hammer stroke of the chain gang. In one of his pieces, Ledbetter recalls a working day under the hot summer sun. To communicate with each other, the men shouted back and forth, trading lines of a song, or casually improvising new words to a familiar tune. Ledbelly sang this shout to attract the attention of the water boy, who would ease the thirst of the workers: "Bring me little water, Silvie, Seven years later, in 1925, a song begging Texas governor Pat Neff
for a pardon released Ledbetter from prison. Neff had sworn never to
pardon anybody as long as he was governor. However, Ledbetter was soon
back behind bars at Louisiana's State Penitentiary (better known as
Angola) by 1930, this time for "assault with intent to murder." The
Shreveport Times wrote that "Dick Elliott, 36 years old, is
in the Highland sanitarium suffering from severe cuts inflicted by a
drunk-crazed negro who attacked him late Wednesday afternoon at his
home near Mooringsport where the negro was butchering a hog. The negro,
Huddie Ledbetter, 43 years old, is in the Parish jail charged with
attempt to murder. . . ." It is possible that Ledbetter had acted in
self-defence. His
nickname "Lead Belly," he probably acquired at Sugarland Penitentiary.
In his offstage life Ledbetter preferred to be addressed by his given
name. "Mother, did you bring me silver? In 1933 folklorists John A. and Alan Lomax found Ledbetter, and recorded his songs for the Library of Congress in Angola Prison. He appeared to remember every song that he had ever heard. In that time he had been moved out of the sugarcane fields. He served as a laundryman and entertained occasionally his inmates. With his powerful, rough voice which carried easily for considerable distance, Ledbetter was recognized by prisoners and jailers alike as one of the greatest performers. He was not a master of technicalities – his tempo varied according to his feelings and he didn't try difficult chords. His playing was straight and honest, he tapped his left foor in a steady beat, while his right foot played a complex, lively rhythm in syncopation. Although his Louisiana accent was sometimes impossible to understand, his performances won the audience with their emotional impact. Ledbetter's lyrics went to the point; they were simple
but the listener could give them his or her own meaning. Washington
D.C. in 'Bourgeois Blues' became an allegory of all cold big cities:
"Look a here people, Listen to me / Don't try to find no home down / in
Washington D.C. / Lord it's a bourgeois town, ooh, its a bourgeois
town. / I got the Bourgeois Blues / I'm gonna spread the news all
around." When Leadbelly tried to give a clear statement about politics,
his words became somewhat strained: "Hitler started out in nine-teen
hundred and thirty two. / Hitler started out in nineteen hundred and
thirty two. / When he started out / he took the home from the Jew." (from 'Hitler Song')
From the plantation workers Ledbetter adopted hollers, which can be
heard in several records. He started to develop a free-wheeling
recitative technique when he performed at universities and introduced
students to what blues was about. Between verses he occasionally broke into dance. Ledbetter updated the song that had softened Pat Neff, and in 1934 Governor O.K. Allen let him out of prison. Leadbelly worked for Lomax as a chauffeur, assistant and guide. They toured a circuit of college towns and Leadbelly started to become noticed by students. Through Lomax he soon befriended a young banjo player, Peter Seeger, the son of a famous musicologist, who had just begun performing for small audiences. Seeger tried to hide his Harvard upbringing, dressed in jeans, but noted that Ledbetter, who had an ugly scar on his neck, had always a clean white shirt, starched collar, well-pressed suit, and shined shoes. "Perhaps this modern age is not liable to produce such a combination of genuine folk artist and virtuoso. Because nowadays when the artist becomes a virtuoso, there is normally a much greater tendency to cease being folk. But when Ledbelly rearranged a folk melody he had come across – he often did, for he had a wonderful ear for melody and rhythm – he did it in line with his own great folk traditions." (Peter Seeger in The Leadbelly Songbook, 1962) Lomax brought Ledbetter to New York, where he recorded his
best-known songs, 'The Rock Island Line,' 'The Midnight Special,' and
'Goodnight Irene,' which according to a family tale he had rewritten in
1908 or 1909 while singing lullabies to his niece Irene Campbell.
Ledbetter once said that he had originally learned it from an uncle,
who most likely learned it from Haverly's American-European Mastodon
Minstrels.
This folk standard is, along with the 1895 Australian classic,
'Waltzing Matilda' ("he up and jumped in the water hole / Drowning
himself"), one of the most popular suicide-themed songs ("Sometimes I
take a great notion / to jump in the river and drown / Irene goodnight,
Irene goodnight"). Living in freedom, Ledbetter did not try to change his habits, and he spent his earnings in partying and on booze. In 1939 he landed again in jail, and served two years for assault in New York's Riker's Island. A balancing power in life was Martha Promise, whom he had married in 1935. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax published a book about Ledbetter in 1936. "Stop rambling and stop gambling, In the 1940s Ledbetter's home in New York was a centre for folk and blues activity. Among his friends were Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Woody Guthrie. His new songs included 'Bourgeois Blues,' which described the racial prejudices he encountered in Washington, DC. However, the audience was more interested in his older songs, 'Gallis Pole,' 'Sukey Jump,' 'John Hard,' 'Mary Don't You Weep,' 'Pick a Bale of Cotton' and others. In 1949 Ledbetter travelled to Europe, appearing in jazz events in Paris. On the tour he felt his right hand becoming paralyzed and spent six weeks in Bellevue on his return. Ledbetter died on December 6, 1949, of amyathopic lateral sclerosis. He was buried in Shreveport, La., not far from the farm where he was born. If Ledbetter's career had lasted longer, he would have made the hit record he sought. Six months later Peter Seeger and other members of the folk group The Weavers took his 'Goodnight Irene' to the top of the pop charts. 'Rock Island Line' was a hit for Lonnie Donegan and Ledbetter's classic 'Cottonfields' became a major success for the Beach Boys. His 'Hawaiian Song' was made famous as 'Hula Hula Love' by Buddy Knox in the 1950s. Kurt Cobain recorded 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night." Leadbelly's complete Library of Congress recordings were issued in 1990 on 12 albums.
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