1888 Birth of Lead Belly
Huddie William Ledbetter was born to a poor African American family in Louisiana but moved at an early age with his parents to Texas. There he learned to play a number of musical instruments and by his teenage years was making money singing and playing playing his 12-string guitar “Stella”. Working in clubs, saloons, and brothels, he adopted the nickname Lead Belly.
Ledbetter was of a violent disposition and served time in prison for murder, attempted murder, and assault. It was in jail where he met the folklorists John and Alan Lomax who were touring the South making field recordings of prison musicians for the Library of Congress. The Lomaxes employed him and introduced him to audiences in New York. There, in the 1930s his reputation as a singer of folk songs grew. His renditions of “Midnight Special”, “Goodnight Irene” and “TB Blues” won him a recording contract and a tidy living playing on the radio, university campuses and touring. He died in 1949 of Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Lead Belly’s influence on the folk music scene was immense. Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, and the Beatles all cited him as an inspiration. In my teenage years a Smithsonian LP of his greatest hits had my young toes tapping. Here he is: