The King of the Twelve-String Guitar
Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter was a force of nature. A master of the twelve-string guitar, with a voice that could command any room and a repertoire of songs that seemed to contain the whole of American music, he was a living archive. His music spanned
blues, gospel, work songs, and folk ballads. Discovered in a Louisiana prison by folklorists John and Alan Lomax, his story was immediately sensational. Here was a convicted murderer, a man of immense physical strength and talent, who seemed to be the pure, unvarnished embodiment of the Southern Black experience the Lomaxes were seeking to document for the Library of Congress. This dramatic origin story, however, became both his ticket out of prison and a cage of its own.
The 'Authentic' Product
The commercial music world of the 1930s and 40s wasn't sure what to do with an artist like Lead Belly. John Lomax, who became his manager after his release, marketed him with a lurid, racist flair, sometimes insisting he perform in prison stripes to emphasize his past. Record labels followed suit, attempting to pigeonhole him. His initial sessions for the American Record Company in 1935 focused almost exclusively on blues, ignoring the vast breadth of his songbook. The industry, and to a large extent the white folk-revival audience he played for, wanted the “authentic” Lead Belly. They wanted the primitive, the ex-convict singing somber prison songs and old-time hollers. They wanted a historical artifact, not a contemporary artist with his own creative vision.
The Song He Wanted to Sing
The problem was that Huddie Ledbetter refused to be a museum piece. He was a professional musician with eclectic tastes. While the folklorists and record executives wanted another rendition of a prison work song, Lead Belly was just as likely to want to play a contemporary pop hit by Gene Autry or a Tin Pan Alley tune. His repertoire included hundreds of songs, from children's play-party tunes to topical songs about the news of the day, like the Scottsboro Boys or Adolf Hitler. This created immense friction. He failed to win over the savvy African-American audience at the Apollo Theater, who found his sound too rustic compared to urbane acts like Cab Calloway. Meanwhile, his white managers and audiences were often confused by his desire to play what they considered commercial fluff instead of the “important” folk songs they craved.
A Legacy of Vindicated Instincts
Lead Belly’s relationship with John Lomax soured quickly over financial and creative control, ending in a lawsuit. Throughout his life, Lead Belly struggled financially, never achieving the mainstream stardom his talent warranted while he was alive. The ultimate, tragic irony came just after his death from ALS in 1949. The Weavers, a folk group featuring his friend Pete Seeger, recorded a version of his waltz, “Goodnight, Irene.” It was a song Lead Belly had learned from his uncle and performed for years, a personal favorite. In 1950, The Weavers' version became a massive number one hit, selling millions of copies and being covered by stars like Frank Sinatra. The song that the industry had largely ignored, a sweet and sentimental tune far from the gritty prison blues they demanded, was the very one that proved his commercial instincts right all along. It became his most enduring legacy, a final, posthumous statement from an artist who always knew which song to sing, even when no one else wanted to listen.
