This new 5-disc, 108-track, set, Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, is due out TODAY (February 24). Over the past few decades, there’s has been plenty of LPs, EPs, CDs, and a few box sets, too, of Lead Belly’s recordings, but this is looking like a good, updated, and mostly definitive set. It also includes a 140-page book and SIXTEEN unreleased tracks! HUBBA BUBBA!
It’s safe to say that Lead Belly IS one of the “gate keys” of contemporary pop music. His reach was long and wide, as he didn’t just play the blues; he played the other types of music—pop, Hawaiian, spirituals, AND any kinda folk song—and, damn, he sure could make his Stella 12-string holler. His catalog was MASSIVE. He sang traditional reels/work songs, like “Black Betty,” he wrote the well-worn classic folk song, “Goodnight Irene,” y’all heads will know “Gallis Pole,” the garage kids might recognize “House of the Rising Sun,” grungin’ mallterna-kids will recognize “<a href=”http://youtu.be/PsfcUZBMSSg
“>Black Girl” aka “In the Pines/Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” and boomers the classic “Midnight Special.” Seriously, any song which could be arranged on the guitar, he played it.
Oh, if anyone needs MORE info the the compiling of this set, read this interview with the box set’s producer Jeff Pace (via No Depression); it’s awesome.
For those of y’all who aren’t familiar with Lead Belly, his life was as big as his music. He was born Huddie Ledbetter some time in the late 1880s in Louisiana, but grew up in Texas. After honing his skills in Shreveport, Louisiana, he eventually split for Dallas, where, during the early nine-teens, he met and became bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “lead boy” and music partner. And it was in Dallas where he had his first of many infamous run-ins with the law; he spent a good bit of time in prison for one murder and one attempted-murder conviction. After his release from prison in 1934, he moved to New York and worked with, and for, folk music collector/archivist John Lomax; Lomax had “discovered” him the year prior. Not long after, the two had a falling out and Lead Belly returned to Louisiana. Then, in 1936 he returned to New York, hopeful, but was shunned by the urban black audiences, so he spent the next decade, less another year in prison, with Alan Lomax, John Lomax’s son, playing clubs for folk-music fans, performing on Alan Lomax’s national radio show, Back Where I Come From, and tirelessly recording. Lead Belly died in 1949 from Lou Gehrig’s disease.