Leadbelly

Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, rose from penitentiary prisoner to beloved folk troubadour in the '30s, when his influence spread far and wide, most notably to Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, and Cisco Houston. It was remarkable enough that a black man achieved such widespread popular acclaim at a time when crossover was a near-nonexistent phenomenon. His songs are even more remarkable and enduring. Americans who would otherwise draw a blank at the mention of Lead Belly's name will recognize "Goodnight Irene" and "Rock Island Line," to name but two of his best-known songs.

Lead Belly was discovered in 1933 by folklorist John Lomax and his son Alan, who were touring the South, recording blues, work and folk songs for the Library of Congress. In the course of their travels the Lomaxes often set up their recording gear in prisons, which were a limitless source of the music they were seeking. In 1933, at Louisiana State Penitentiary, they found Lead Belly, who had been convicted of attempted homicide. The Lomaxes recorded him, then brought him to New York in 1935 after his release from prison (he was pardoned after writing a song for the governor of Louisiana). Lead Belly was an instant hit playing in New York clubs and throughout the Northeast, but by the decade's end he was back in prison on an assault charge.

Upon his release in the spring of 1940 he took an apartment in lower Manhattan and soon joined the Headline singers, whose members included Guthrie, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee. At that time he began to record his songs for various labels and in 1945 even made one short film, Three Songs by Leadbelly. His touring intensified after World War II, but he fell ill in 1949, was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, and died late in the year.

The wealth of recordings Lead Belly left behind offer abundant opportunities to examine the full breadth and depth of the man's music. At the top of the list are the 1994 four-CD set Lead Belly's Last Sessions and Rounder's six-volume collection of Lomax-recorded work. Recorded over the course of three nights in 1949 in the apartment of a noted folk music enthusiast-scholar, Last Sessions is presented with virtually no editing and all the songs sequenced on disc in the order of their performance, with between-songs patter included as well. This is Lead Belly at work, to be sure, but also relaxed and voluble -- the man was a born storyteller, and he relates the folklore behind nearly every one of the 100 songs and offers some telling anecdotes from his own life. At times he is accompanied by his wife, but the largest part of this set is the pure, unadulterated, solo folk artist in full flower. Encouraged to go where the muse took him, Lead Belly essays everything from work songs to folk songs to sacred songs to bawdy songs to topical material with sociological bite to the baldly commercial fare that is equal parts folk- and pop-influenced.

Midnight Special documents Lead Belly's earliest Library of Congress sessions, including those recorded while he was still in prison. Like Last Sessions, the entire scope of Lead Belly's repertoire is represented on these Rhino collections: Volume 1's and Volume 2's (Gwine Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In) blues and work ballads lead to Vol. 3's (Let It Shine on Me) focus on sacred songs and spiritually oriented material. The Titanic centers largely on topical songs, such as the title number, and musings about specific people and places ("Blind Lemon Blues," "Mr. Tom Hughes," "Henry Ford Blues"), as does Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, which includes "Rock Island Line" and the two-part chronicle of a headline-making event, "The Hindenburg Disaster." The set closes on an introspective note with Go Down Old Hannah, a collection of spiritual songs ("Amazing Grace," "Old Time Religion") and folk monuments such as "John Henry."

Recorded between 1941 and 1948, the selections on Where Did You Sleep Last Night . . . , Bourgeois Blues, and Shout On range from a 1943 recording of "Irene" with Sonny Terry sitting in on harmonica; autobiographical songs such as "Cotton Fields," "Bring a Little Water Sylvie," and "4, 5 and 9"; sukey-jump tunes; children's play songs; spirituals (a powerful "Let It Shine on Me," "Meeting at the Building"); and blues. One of the most powerful recordings in the entire Lead Belly legacy is on Shout On. It's a version of "John Henry" with Lead Belly on vocals and guitar, Brownie McGhee on guitar, and Sonny Terry wailing away on harmonica in a spitfire musical dialogue that moves at a furious, breathtaking pace.

The Memorial albums feature the artist's bold voice and 12-string guitar in a variety of contexts encompassing virtually every type of song Lead Belly played. Vol. 1 is a program of work songs, blues, and spirituals; Vol. 2, more of the same, with Lead Belly playing piano-concertina as well as 12-string; Vol. 3 is a collection of previously unreleased masters and once-rare tracks; Vol. 4 finds Lead Belly telling his life story in song, traveling from the cotton fields to prison to the urban jungle (some of this material is duplicated on Collectables' Bourgeois Blues).

Bridging Lead Belly consists of a dozen tracks recorded in 1938 for the BBC but never released in the States, and five others recorded before a live audience in 1946. The idea is to show the artist at two distinctive stages of his career: the first showcases him performing songs almost exclusively related to his experiences in the South, good and bad, including "Governor O.K. Allen," one of the two "pardon" songs he composed in what proved to be a successful effort to win a pardon from prison; the second shows a more mature Lead Belly, more assured on his 12-string guitar and more thoughtful in his singing style. Sings for Children includes some fanciful numbers that would captivate a young audience (the "Pig Latin Song," for instance, and "Skip to My Lou"), but the albums is also rich in blues, story-songs, work songs, and spirituals, 28 tracks in all of Lead Belly vocalizing at peak form and bringing his winning personality to bear on his spoken introductions. Lead Belly Party Songs & Sings and Plays and Leadbelly Sings Folk Songs both find the artist whooping it up with other artists, including Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and, on Sings and Plays, Josh White. The 16-track Storyteller Blues and Defense Blues both include material available on better-annotated sets, but are solid if perfunctory overviews of specific aspects of the artist's sensibility, particularly with regard to highly personal songs and other, more socially conscious fare such as that found on Defense Blues. (DAVID MCGEE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide