Lead Belly

Lead Belly: The Twelve-String King Who Sang Through Two Prisons

A large share of the American folk songbook passed through one man's hands, and he carried much of it out of prison. Huddie Ledbetter, known to the world as Lead Belly, played a twelve-string guitar hard enough to sound like a band. "Goodnight, Irene," "Midnight Special," "Rock Island Line" and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" reached later generations through him. He also killed a man in Texas and knifed another in Louisiana, and he paid for both on prison farms. The legend says he sang his way to freedom twice. The record says once.

A Fannin Street Education

No document settles when he was born. Sources give 1885, 1888 and 1889, and several different days in January. The place is firmer: a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana, in the Caddo Lake country beside the Texas line. His parents were Wes and Sallie Ledbetter.

By about 14 he was in demand at country dances and house parties, and played Saturday nights in a saloon across the border in Texas. Then came Fannin Street, the red-light district of Shreveport, where he spent almost two years and learned blues and barrelhouse piano, including the rolling style known as walking the bass. Trouble came early, too. His father gave him a pistol, and after a shooting incident at a dance the sheriff fined him $25 for carrying a concealed weapon and let him go with a warning.

The Killing in Texas

For a time he played as a duo with the blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson. In December 1917 he was arrested for murder. A Texas court convicted him in 1918 of killing William Stafford, shot in a fight over a woman. Accounts of the sentence range from 20 to 35 years.

He served it on the Texas prison farms, including the Imperial Farm at Sugar Land. There he took up "Midnight Special," a prisoners' song built on a belief: if the headlight of the passing night train shone on you, you would soon be free, by pardon or by death. He reworked the words into a warning about Sugar Land itself.

The Pardon That Happened

Pat Neff became governor of Texas in 1921 and was a regular visitor at the warden's house, where the prisoner Ledbetter was called in to play. Neff heard him more than once and later recalled the songs in his autobiography. In 1924 Lead Belly sang him a song asking for a pardon. As one of his last official acts in office, in 1925, Neff granted it. Ledbetter had served about seven years.

This half of the legend holds up. A Texas governor who had heard him sing did set him free.

Angola

Freedom did not last. In 1930, after a knife fight in Louisiana, he was convicted of assault with intent to murder and sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on a sentence of six to ten years.

In July 1933 the folklorist John Lomax and his son Alan arrived at Angola collecting prison songs for the Library of Congress. Ledbetter sang seven songs for them on that first visit, and the Lomaxes knew they had found something rare.

The Pardon That Was Not

The Lomaxes came back in July 1934 with better equipment. Ledbetter recorded a new song, a plea for a pardon addressed to Louisiana Governor O. K. Allen, and John Lomax delivered the recording to the governor's office. About a month later, in August 1934, Ledbetter walked out of Angola.

The story that the song opened the gate became part of his publicity. It was not true. He was never pardoned in Louisiana. He had simply earned enough good-time credit under state law to qualify for early release.

A Convict Sold to New York

He went to work for John Lomax as driver and assistant, and early in 1935 the pair reached New York. The press sold him as a killer who sang. The *New York Herald Tribune* ran the headline: "Sweet Singer of the Swamplands Here to Do a Few Tunes Between Homicides." They toured colleges, including Harvard, where about 600 people came to listen.

In January 1935 Ledbetter signed a management contract with Lomax covering fees, royalties and copyrights. Within months the partnership soured. After long negotiation it ended in a lump-sum settlement and a split of royalties from Lomax's book *Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly*.

Violence followed him north. In March 1939 he was arrested for stabbing a man in Manhattan and served about eight months. Alan Lomax helped with bail, legal fees and support for his family.

The Folkways Years

From 1941 to 1947 he recorded for Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records. He had his own program on New York's WNYC radio and sang with Woody Guthrie, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry as the Headline Singers. Guthrie called the nickname "the hard name of a harder man." Billed as the King of the 12-String Guitar, he played a Stella twelve-string, and he never had a hit record in his lifetime.

Irene, After He Was Gone

In 1949 he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He died in New York City on 6 December 1949 and was buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church graveyard near his birthplace.

Six months later the Weavers' version of "Goodnight, Irene" became a worldwide hit. The songs kept travelling: "Midnight Special" through Creedence Clearwater Revival and Van Morrison, "Gallows Pole" through Led Zeppelin, "Cotton Fields" through the Beach Boys, "Rock Island Line" through Little Richard, "Irene" through Frank Sinatra and Tom Waits, and "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" through Nirvana. His recordings helped ignite Britain's skiffle craze. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1988.

On Screen and in Print

• Leadbelly (1976), feature film directed by Gordon Parks from a screenplay by Ernest Kinoy; Roger E. Mosley plays Lead Belly.
• The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (1992), biography by Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell.
• Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (2015), Smithsonian Folkways five-disc, 108-track set with a 140-page book, produced by Jeff Place and Robert Santelli.

Why Lead Belly Is Called a Genius

Because the songs outlived everything else. Lead Belly absorbed the work songs, prison songs, blues and ballads of the Louisiana-Texas borderland, rebuilt them on a twelve-string guitar, and handed them to a country that had barely heard them. Folk, skiffle, rock and grunge all drew from that well. That is why he appears on Geniuses.club. It does not soften the record. William Stafford died at his hands in Texas. A man in Louisiana and another in New York were stabbed. Promoters turned prison into a costume for his music; for the men he hurt, it was not a story. Talent explains the songs. It excuses none of the violence.

Achievements

• Won a full pardon in 1925 from Texas Governor Pat Neff after singing for him: the one prison-release legend about him that the record supports.
• His 1934 pardon song to Louisiana's governor did not free him; he was released on good-time credits, and publicity turned it into legend.
• Recorded for the Library of Congress by John and Alan Lomax at Angola prison in 1933 and 1934.
• Billed as the King of the 12-String Guitar; he played a Stella twelve-string.
• Recorded for Moses Asch's Folkways Records from 1941 to 1947 and hosted his own program on New York's WNYC radio.
• "Goodnight, Irene" became a worldwide hit for the Weavers six months after his death.
• His songs were later recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra and Nirvana.
• Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
• Convicted of murder in Texas in 1918 and of assault with intent to murder in Louisiana in 1930.