Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection (2015)

[sam_webmaster]

Lead Belly, 'I'm So Glad, I Done Got Over'

In the new, comprehensive boxed set Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, to be released in Feb. 24, 2015, the Smithsonian archivist Jeff Place reminds readers of the huge historical chunk of American music that the legendary singer and songwriter carried forward via his 12-string Stella guitar. "Lead Belly is often spoken of as the 'discovery' of folklorists, but in many ways he was a walking and singing collector of American folk songs in his own right," Place writes.

The treasure Lead Belly transported came from all over the African-American landscape: prison chants, field hollers, murder ballads, sentimental parlor songs, broadside ballads, telling the stories of the day. Sacred music was a major aspect of Lead Belly's repertoire, too, and to hear these spirituals and hymns rendered in his clear, muscular voice is to remember how central faith has been in people's day-to-day survival, beyond the walls of any church.

This recording of the gospel music staple "I'm So Glad, I Done Got Over" comes from the sessions Lead Belly recorded with Folkways founder Moses Asch in the early 1940s. The song itself probably originated among Southern slaves; versions are mentioned in mid-19^th century accounts of plantation life. By the time of Lead Belly's version, the song had become an open text: Gospel singers were transforming it into versions like "How I Got Over," which would become one of Aretha Franklin's signatures, and in the new worlds of blues and R&B, artists were applying its message of survival through grace to secular matters. You can hear the phrase in later hits by Guitar Slim and Irma Thomas. "I'm So Glad, I Done Got Over" is that kind of American classic, flexible enough to accommodate messages suiting both heaven and earth.

Lead Belly's version, which has been available in the Smithsonian archives but was unreleased until now, hits the perfect middle between the sacred and the profoundly danceable. He picks out a syncopated rhythm on his guitar and offers his testimony in a jaunty tone. The souls in his story belong to regular people, changed by the power of belief. "I'm so glad," he utters at one point, sounding preternaturally pleased. The glee in his voice isn't different than what he feels toward the women he admires in his love songs, or the children he delights in when singing old nursery rhymes. All love is good love.

This is a powerful time to hear Lead Belly's voice again. His story is one of the most complex in popular music, and his influence is often obscured by his legend. This boxed set promises to open up his legacy again by foregrounding the clarity and richness of his own performances. His was the art of keeping stories alive. We need those stories now.

www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2014/11/26/366616404/lead-belly-im-so-glad-i-done-got-over

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Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection Lead Belly SFW40201

Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, the first career-spanning box set dedicated to the American music icon, will be released on February 24, 2015.

Preorder the 5 CD, 140-page, large-format book at a special price and receive an instant digital album download. An exclusive poster and t-shirt package is also available.

Lead Belly is “the hard name of a harder man,” said Woody Guthrie of his friend and fellow American music icon who was born Huddie Ledbetter (c. 1888–1949). From the swamplands of Louisiana, the prisons of Texas, and the streets of New York City, Lead Belly and his music became cornerstones of American folk music and touchstones of African American cultural legacy.

With his 12-string Stella guitar, he sang out a cornucopia of songs that included his classics “The Midnight Special,” “Irene,” “The Bourgeois Blues,” and many more, which in turn have been covered by musical notables such as the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Van Morrison, Nirvana, Odetta, Little Richard, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and Tom Waits. Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection brings us the story of the man as well as the musician. 5 Discs, 108 tracks (16 unreleased), 5 hours of music, historic photos, extensive notes, and 140-page book.

Pre-Order Details

Pre-orders will ship in February, 2015 to the shipping address provided (no P.O. Boxes, street addresses only). Your credit card will be charged when you place your order. Box set pre-orders include a digital album download, available immediately, at no additional charge and will include a .PDF of liner notes. Digital album and track downloads will be available for separate purchase on the release date (February 24, 2015). If you have any questions, please contact smithsonianfolkways@si.edu.

Limited-Edition Poster and T-Shirt

Designed by Fritz Klaetke (Visual Dialogue), GRAMMY-winning art director for Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, this unframed, 16” x 20” poster is individually numbered out of 300 and printed on high-quality paper with matte finish. The unisex t-shirt is printed on 100% cotton. Click here for a size chart.

This project was produced in coordination with the Lead Belly Foundation, The John Reynolds Collection/Lead Belly Society, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Year Released 2015

Record Label Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Source Archive Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

Copyright 2015 Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

Genre(s) African American Music; American Folk; Blues

Credits

• Jeff Place - Producer; Liner Notes
• Robert Santelli - Producer; Liner Notes
• Pete Reiniger - Audio Restoration; Mastering Engineer
• Visual Dialogue - Designer

[Strider]

I have 5 Lead Belly collections already, so I am going to have to go over this thoroughly to see if I really need another one or if it just duplicates what I already have. Maybe the sound is better...maybe it won't be.

[sam_webmaster]

I have 5 Lead Belly collections already, so I am going to have to go over this thoroughly to see if I really need another one or if it just duplicates what I already have. Maybe the sound is better...maybe it won't be.

This new one includes 16 unreleased tracks.

[Strider]

This new one includes 16 unreleased tracks.

Yep...that clinches the deal. Best part is I can trade in my other collections for trade credit and pretty much get this new one for nothing.

[sam_webmaster]

Huddie Ledbetter, known to the world as Lead Belly, died in 1949, but his influence lives on. His songs have been covered by everyone from the Weavers (Goodnight Irene, 1950) to Led Zeppelin (Gallows Pole, 1970), Mark Lanegan with Kurt Cobain (Where Did You Sleep Last Night, 1990) and Nirvana (Where Did You Sleep Last Night, 1994), and most recently musicians such as Jack White (Goodnight Irene, 2014), Valerie June (Goodnight Irene, 2014), and Smog (In the Pines, 2005).

Smithsonian Folkways producer and archivist Jeff Place takes us through a history of the singer's biggest hits as he discusses the importance of modern incarnations in keeping the Lead Belly legacy alive.

[Sathington Willoughby]

http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/legend-of-lead-belly/0/3416955

[Sathington Willoughby]

Smithsonian TV documentary, box set celebrate Lead Belly

https://www.yahoo.com/music/s/smithsonian-tv-documentary-box-set-120915183.html

[Deborah J]

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss to headline ‘Lead Belly at 125′ tribute at Kennedy Center

By Peggy McGlone March 4 at 11:22 AM

Robert Plant, lead singer for the legendary band Led Zeppelin, and Alison Krauss will headline a star-studded roster of musicians celebrating Lead Belly. (Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will top a star-studded lineup for “Lead Belly at 125: A Tribute to an American Songster” on April 25 at the Kennedy Center.

On Wednesday, the Kennedy Center and the Grammy Museum announced the performers who will celebrate the music and legacy of Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly. Tickets are $20 to $89 and are on sale through the arts center’s box office.

The tribute also will feature headliners Buddy Miller with Viktor Krauss, as well as Lucinda Williams, Dan Zanes, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Billy Hector, Valerie June, Shannon McNally and Josh White Jr.

A force behind the American folk songbook, Lead Belly was praised as both a master storyteller and powerful musician who blended various genres, from gospel to blues, to create his own sound.

“We proudly join the Museum, the guest artists, and Lead Belly fans in recognizing and celebrating his lifelong legacy,” Garth Ross, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for community engagement, said in a statement.

The Smithsonian Folkways Collection just released a documentary and box set celebrating the musician’s life and influence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/03/04/robert-plant-and-alison-krauss-to-headline-lead-belly-at-125-tribute-at-kennedy-center/

[ebk]

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss to headline ‘Lead Belly at 125′ tribute at Kennedy Center

By Peggy McGlone March 4 at 11:22 AM

Robert Plant, lead singer for the legendary band Led Zeppelin, and Alison Krauss will headline a star-studded roster of musicians celebrating Lead Belly. (Joel Ryan/Invision/AP)

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss will top a star-studded lineup for “Lead Belly at 125: A Tribute to an American Songster” on April 25 at the Kennedy Center.

On Wednesday, the Kennedy Center and the Grammy Museum announced the performers who will celebrate the music and legacy of Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly. Tickets are $20 to $89 and are on sale through the arts center’s box office.

The tribute also will feature headliners Buddy Miller with Viktor Krauss, as well as Lucinda Williams, Dan Zanes, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Billy Hector, Valerie June, Shannon McNally and Josh White Jr.

A force behind the American folk songbook, Lead Belly was praised as both a master storyteller and powerful musician who blended various genres, from gospel to blues, to create his own sound.

“We proudly join the Museum, the guest artists, and Lead Belly fans in recognizing and celebrating his lifelong legacy,” Garth Ross, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for community engagement, said in a statement.

The Smithsonian Folkways Collection just released a documentary and box set celebrating the musician’s life and influence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/03/04/robert-plant-and-alison-krauss-to-headline-lead-belly-at-125-tribute-at-kennedy-center/

Thank you Deborah! I just got 2 tickets and can't wait for the show!!

[sam_webmaster]

Lead Belly’s music defied racial categorization

March 12 2015, 6.06am EDT

Last month, Smithsonian Folkways released Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, a carefully curated collection of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter’s recordings that is – like the singer himself – breathtaking in its muscular artistry.

Marketed by the Smithsonian Channel as “one of the most influential musicians you’ve never known,” Lead Belly’s legacy can be heard in the grooves of Led Zeppelin III, seen in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance, or echoed in cavernous ballparks, where Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” plays as a relief pitcher warms up.

But beyond his influence on (mainly white) musical artists, the collection is significant because it shows how Lead Belly defied the racial categories of blues and country (as black music and white music, respectively) – stereotypes established by the burgeoning record industry of the Jim Crow era that persist today.

A black singer’s cowboy past

Born in 1888, Huddie Ledbetter was the son of landowning African Americans in western Louisiana. He was considered a bright, if undisciplined, student, and an expert horseman.

Lead Belly was drawn to many kinds of music, and he loved riding and breaking horses (later in life, he would even travel to Hollywood to try to make it as a Roy Rogers-style singing movie cowboy). He gained notoriety performing at local square dances and for church services in rural Louisiana before his explosive temper brought an end to a tough but nurturing home life. Lead Belly was arrested on charges of assault, and escaped from a chain-gang to live in Texas under the alias “Walter Boyd.” During these years, he performed extensively around Dallas with legendary bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson before being arrested in 1917 on a homicide charge that landed him in the legendary Sugarland prison. Released nearly seven years later, he was arrested again in 1930 – this time on charges of assault with intent to kill – and was sentenced to five to ten years in prison.

As Lead Belly lingered in prison during the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s, the nation was experiencing sweeping cultural and economic change. Everyday life was transformed – through technology, through the arrival and growing influence of immigrant Americans and through musical recordings that surmounted the racial barriers of Jim Crow. Meanwhile, a bifurcated view of American culture began to emerge. Many pined for the older, “authentic” America – as opposed to what they characterized as a culturally corrupt present.

It’s a (misconceived) narrative that has played out perpetually in American history, as one generation passes the torch to the next.

Jailed – and therefore “genuine”

Perhaps due to these perceived cultural changes, in the early 1930s the Library of Congress tasked folklorists John and Alan Lomax with finding and recording older, “authentic” forms of African-American music as an act of preservation, celebration and scholarly inquiry. In 1933, the father-son duo discovered Lead Belly in Angola, a maximum security prison in Louisiana nicknamed “The Alcatraz of the South.” At Angola, convicts sang as they picked cotton, chopped wood and crushed rocks under the blazing Mississippi Delta sun. It was, to borrow a phrase from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Blackmon, “Slavery By Another Name.”

Slavery by another name: forced labor was commonplace at southern prisons like Angola. Wikimedia Commons

John and Alan Lomax viewed these southern prisons as cultural time capsules, places where, due to the inmates' isolation, older musical styles endured untarnished. The Lomaxes recorded many talented singers, but Lead Belly stood out for his skill, his memory (his mind seemingly worked like a tape recorder) and his gift as a “songster” whose repertoire encompassed the pre-and-post blues world of the Gulf Coast.

After Lead Belly’s final stint in prison, he went on to gain moderate commercial success – but only as a singer of “authentic” African-American music. Promoted as a “pure” relic of a fading past, he toured the northeast performing before mainly white audiences. Though he had an immense repertoire, he was urged to record and perform only songs like “Pick A Bail of Cotton,” while songs considered “white,” like “Silver Haired Daddy of Mine,” were either downplayed or cast aside.

Here, we see how a singer like Lead Belly was constrained by a commercial and cultural industry that wanted to present a certain archetype of African-American music. Meanwhile, Lead Belly biographers speculate that the artist failed to gain a following among northern African Americans because they were largely disinterested in the older styles of music that Lead Belly was encouraged to record and perform, preferring instead the sounds of Cab Calloway or Count Basie.

For this reason, Lead Belly – the supposed exemplar of African-American musical authenticity – came to be a source musician for a number of white musicians. Songs closely associated with Lead Belly like “Goodnight Irene,” “Midnight Special,” “Cotton Fields,” “Rock Island Line,” “Gallows Pole” and “Black Girl (Where Did You Sleep Last Night)” gained widespread popularity in the hands of many white singers – Pete Seeger, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, Lonnie Donegan, Van Morrison and Nirvana, to name a few.

We were left with an historical record that was misleading at best, inaccurate at worst. Lead Belly’s ‘Gallows Pole’ would be covered by Led Zeppelin.

Folkways sets the record straight

Thankfully, Lead Belly’s Smithsonian Folkways Collection defies those cultural reductionists who would suggest that firm racial categories of blues and country ever truly existed, and that “traditional” singers were uninterested in – or, worse, corrupted by – popular music. The set’s 108 tracks may be a small sampling (Lead Belly claimed to be able to sing 500 songs without repeating one – and he likely knew far more). But a bi-cultural reality glimmers within the set’s five CDs.

Though folklorists of the 1930s wanted to present “pure” culture (as though such a thing existed), Lead Belly actually loved Gene Autry, and the Folkways Collection includes the Autry cover “Springtime in the Rockies.” Yes, Lead Belly sang blues, field hollers and spirituals. But he also recorded songs more closely associated with “white” string band traditions of old-time music (“Rattler,” “Julie Ann Johnson”) and country music (“How Come You Do Me Like You Do?”).

The set also addresses the tendency of early folklorists to omit contemporary popular songs from their field recordings and – to paraphrase historian Benjamin Filene – “romance the folk.” Instead, the set includes covers of popular blues, gospel, and R&B songs from the 1930s and 1940s (“Outskirts of Town,” “How Long, How Long,” “Rock Me (Hide Me In Thy Bosom)”) alongside folk material (“John Hardy,” “Pick a Bale of Cotton”).

The myth of authenticity

Nonetheless, we remain a nation of worriers, debating the merits of what can and can’t be called “real.” In politics, President Obama gets it from all sides –- not American, not black, not Christian. And whether we realize it or not, we spend an awful lot of time arguing about authenticity and music. What is “real” country, jazz or hip-hop? Who owns a genre’s culture, and who has the right to sing certain styles?

Ultimately, a century of race-based marketing practices of record companies influences our answers, which often fall along racial, class and generational lines. Cultural historian Karl Hagstrom Miller has argued that our tendency to “segregate sound” is baggage from blackface minstrelsy and the racist policies of the Jim Crow era.

Embedded in this debate is the problematic idea that white recording artists may borrow freely, while African-Americans must stick to “their own” styles. The music industry built this quandry. In the pre-World War II era, white musicians were allowed to move freely across musical genres, while African-American musicians – Lead Belly, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters (who had all performed country music, alongside blues, before African-American audiences) –- were actively denied the option of making commercial recordings of country music.

Perhaps Lead Belly can remind us – 125 years after his birth – that neither music, nor people, should be racially segregated. After all, as his voice tells us from these archival recordings, “We’re all in the same boat.”

http://theconversation.com/lead-bellys-music-defied-racial-categorization-38462

[Patrycja]

^ A good summary of a complex issue in the 'myth of authenticity' section. Interesting site...

Here is another review of the Lead Belly Collection from The Telegraph:

Lead Belly: the musician who influenced a generation

Lead Belly is one of great musical influences of the 20th century and his work is celebrated in a brilliant new box set Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection

Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) Photo: Michael Ochs Archive

By Martin Chilton, Culture Editor online

7:00AM GMT 11 Mar 2015

"No Lead Belly, no Beatles," George Harrison once said.

More than six decades after his death from Lou Gehrig's disease in 1949, the influence of the great blues and folk singer Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) continues to reverberate through time. Tom Waits, Creedance Clearwater Revival, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan and Jack White are just a few of the musicians who have been deeply influenced by Lead Belly. Kurt Cobain said that he was his favourite performer, adding "Isn't he all of ours?"

As a listener, what strikes you most about Ledbetter is his unique singing. He had a deep, beautiful and resonating voice, one he honed from competing with the noise of the honky tonks where he often played. He also had a deceptively simple way of playing his powerful twelve-string guitar, an instrument Cobain once tried to buy from Lead Belly's cousin.

Some of Lead Belly's songs – such as Goodnight Irene, The Rock Island Line, The Midnight Special and Pick a Bale of Cotton – have become classics but he left behind a treasure trove of different recordings. The richness of his legacy is shown to its full impressive extent in a superb new box set called Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection. The set includes five CDs, covering five hours of music over 108 tracks. Sixteen of these songs are previously unreleased, and they include some wonderful rarities.

Lead Belly in 1935. Many albums list him as "Leadbelly", he wrote it as Lead Belly, which is the spelling on his

tombstone PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES

Perhaps the most surprising inclusion is a British-inspired song. Lead Belly, who was born on a Louisiana plantation on January 15, 1888, penned a song to our now dear old Queen, who was then a 21-year-old princess, in tribute to her wedding to Philip Mountbatten in June 1947. Lead Belly says he took the melody of Bessie Smith's famous blues song Aggravatin' Papa "and put new words to it". In the song, called Princess Elizabeth, he describes a scene where "people was a-gathered round from all over town" and "on the night, she was looking bright". Quite what Her Majesty would make of the tribute is unclear, although Lead Belly, a convicted murderer who spent nearly 20 years working on prison chain gangs, would hardly have been on the Westminster Abbey guest list for her nuptials. It was in prison, incidentally, that Ledbetter picked up the nickname Lead Belly, and his family prefer it to be spelled as two words.

Princess Elizabeth is simply a quaint rarity but what Lead Belly brought to all his songs was raw emotion. That's clear even in the shortest songs. In one 60-second track – marked "acetate 270" and called Moanin' – Lead Belly's almost Biblical voice swoops and moans wordless laments. It's remarkably compelling.

His life was violent and troubled and perhaps it's best to believe that Lead Belly turned his life around after he was discovered as an inmate at Louisiana's notorious Angola State Prison by musicologists John and Alan Lomax in 1933. The father and son were devoted musicologists but they also did well out of Lead Belly, taking two-thirds of his record payments – and even two-thirds of the money he made passing the hat round at shows.

Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection contains song sheets, original lyrics and some startling historical photographs, including one of the steel-eyed singer at 19, when he looks mean enough to have scared even a character like Omar in The Wire. Woody Guthrie, who co-sings some songs in the collection,said that Lead Belly was "the hard name of a harder man".

Lead Belly shared a love of music with Guthrie. The blues man knew about 500 songs and the Smithsonian Folkways archivist Jeff Place calls Lead Belly "a human jukebox" in his essay for the album. His piece, and one written by Grammy Museum director Robert Santelli, are fascinating, as are the song notes.

Lead Belly plays to a small crowd in New York in 1940 GETTY IMAGES

The range of the songs on this, the first career-spanning box set dedicated to the American music icon, is incredible. There are classic blues songs, such as John Henry, folk songs such as Green Corn and even children's songs such as Ha-Ha This a Way, a song he learned as a boy in Louisiana, and Grey Goose. There are also spirituals – including a creepy song about death called There's a Man Going Around Taking Names and the scary Ain't You Glad (The Blood Done Signed My Name) – as well as cowboy songs such as Out on the Western Plain. Fans of the Seventies rock hit Black Betty by Ram Jam may be surprised to hear it in its original acoustic blues form.

Lead Belly also liked to write about world events and in the box set there are songs about the sinking of the Titanic, The Hindenburg Disaster and even a war song called Hitler Song (Mr Hitler). It's interesting, given it was written in 1942 when some people were still claiming not to fully know what was going on with the Nazis, that Lead Belly sings a line saying that "Hitler takes the Jews out of their homes". The tub-thumping lyrics include the lines:

"Hitler says if God rule Heaven,
He gonna rule the world.
But we American people say,
He will be shot down,
Just like a squirrel."

Another of his topical songs is one of his greatest pieces of music: a tribute to the actress Jean Harlow, who died of kidney failure, aged only 26, in June 1937. Lead Belly wrote Jean Harlow while he was in prison as his lament for the death of one of Hollywood's great pre-war stars:

"Doctor left, he was looking mighty sad,
Said: 'This is the hardest case I ever had'.
Jean Harlow said just before she died:
Two more moving pictures I would like to write."

Jean Harlow was a film actress and sex symbol of the Thirties. Her death at 26 was turned into a song by Lead Belly

PHOTO:REX FEATURES

A key to understanding Lead Belly is to remember that his music was a ticket out of the oppressive racism of the Jim Crow South. That's what makes his song The Bourgeois Blues, about a humiliating time he was refused accommodation in Washington for being black, such a powerful composition. Although Lead Belly was taken up by some white liberals in New York, he was still denigrated as a "Negro Minstrel" in popular newspapers. The New York Herald Tribune even described him as "a sweet singer of the Swamplands, here to do a few tunes between homicides".

Lead Belly never forgot how tough life was in the pre-war era for black people, whether they were a Louisiana sharecropper or an inner-city worker. Listen to the singing at the start of T.B. Blues, when Lead Belly sings with aching power the lines "It's too late, too late, too late, too late, too late. It's too late, too late, too late, too late, too late . . ." about the misery of life for someone who was ill and poor.

Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) and wife Martha Promise Ledbetter in February 1935 PHOTO: REX FEATURES

Among the recordings in the collection are Lead Belly playing the windjammer accordion. Another treat is the songs from his finals session (in 1948) recorded in the apartment of jazz scholar Fred Ramsey Jr. Jazz is a theme of the record, too, because there is a previously unreleased track of Lead Belly singing the show tune How Come You Do Me Like You Do?, a song recorded by Louis Armstrong. We can be grateful to Ramsey for leaving on his recording equipment while Lead Belly was listening to a 78 record of Bessie Smith singing Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out. Lead Belly sings along like an accompanist, making for an amazing duet.

https://youtu.be/xn50JSI0W-E

As well as raw power, Lead Belly could sing with grace and feeling, and never more so than on the sweet ballad Bring Me a Little Water, Silvy, a phrase Lead Belly's Uncle Bob would call to his wife Silvy when he was sweating away in the fields.

All this makes for a brilliant tribute album, showcasing properly Lead Belly's cultural legacy. Further tributes will be paid in Washington in April (in a concert featuring Alison Krauss and Robert Plant) and at the Lead Belly Fest, at London's Royal Albert Hall, this June. Van Morrison (along with Eric Burden, Jolls Holland, Eric Bibb and Paul Jones) will be among the musicians performing. Morrison said: "Lead Belly was not an influence, he was the influence. If it wasn’t for him, I may never have been here. I don’t think he’s really dead. A lot of people’s bodies die but I don’t think their spirits die with them.”

Listening to Lead Belly sing along to Bessie Smith, it's easy to agree with Morrison.

LEADBELLY: THE SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS COLLECTION IS OUT ON

SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS RECORDINGS

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/11458930/Lead-Belly-the-musician-who-influenced-a-generation.html

[Kiwi_Zep_Fan87]

For all those new to Lead Belly's music, just watch this wonderful documentary called the Legend of Lead Belly, courtesy of the Smithsonian Channel and you will fall in love with his music, instantly! What a legend!