"It was Lead Belly first." - Janis Joplin

(Woodie Guthrie, left, and Lead Belly, right, confusing wide-eyed white folks in 1939)

Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter is said to have gotten his nickname for the amount of homemade liquor he could drink. Others stories said he was shot in the stomach with a shotgun and survived. Nevertheless, Lead Belly was an early American blues singer who played the guitar, accordion, piano, and violin. His life, eventful as it was, has been mythologized, celebrated, and revered for almost a century. His writings had Guthrie-like political leanings, and his songs have been covered by Curt Cobain, Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, Brian Ferry, ABBA, and Tom Waits among many others. Bob Dylan and Pete Seager have cited him as an influence on their own music also. He’s an American original, heroic even, but is rarely acknowledged though his songs are easily recognizable.

(Lead Belly was stabbed in the neck while in prison, which is said to be the reason for the bandanna and other neck gear he always wore)

Born in Louisiana in 1888, he picked cotton as a child, lived poor, and endured the tenets of Jim Crow. In his twenties, he went to prison for killing a relative. He was pardoned and returned to prison for attempted homicide shortly after, this time, for knifing a man. Legend says that government officials regularly brought guests to watch Lead Belly perform during his four total incarcerations. At one of his performances in prison, he was discovered by John Lomax, a Harvard-trained musicologist. Lomax introduced Leadbelly to American audiences of the 1930s and 1940s through his contacts and writings. Lead Belly was able to tour the country and would later be known as “King Of The 12-String Guitar”. He achieved even greater acclaim when Life magazine ran a three-page article titled, "Lead Belly - Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel”.

("Lead Belly is probably the only ex-felon who successfully wrote a children's album" -Bob Dylan)

In 1949, days before he was to perform in France, Lead Belly fell ill, dying shortly after of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Like most early African American artists, Lead Belly never saw a dime from record sales and died without due spoils of his success. But his songbook survives and remains a resource of history, and music, that’ll be sifted through forever. Here are a couple of his well-known standards.

"Where Did You Sleep Last Night", made famous by Curt Cobain on Nirvana's Unplugged album.


"Goodnight Irene" or "Irene "is one of Lead Belly's most famous and widely covered songs. It was redone by Pete Seager's band, The Weavers, where it was a hit in the 1950s.


Below is Tom Waits' brilliant version of "Goodnight Irene", sung in typical drunken, defeated fashion. It's matches Lead Belly's sentiment perfectly.


**There's an abundance of Lead Belly info. Here are some resources if you're interested in knowing more about this American originator and his music.