Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

Huddie Ledbetter — known as Lead Belly — was born on January 20, 1888, in Louisiana, and went on to become a highly influential folk and blues singer and instrumentalist. Stories abound about how Huddie Ledbetter got his nickname — some say it was his physical toughness; others suggest it was his ability to drink moonshine liquor — but the most likely explanation is that Lead Belly is simply a play on his surname, Ledbetter.

By any name, Lead Belly was a powerful vocalist and a skilled multi-instrumentalist who could play piano, violin, accordion, mandolin — but he is best known for his talent that earned him the nickname “King of the Twelve-String Guitar.” When playing guitar, Lead Belly would use his thumb to maintain a walking bass line while laying down melodic lines and ornamentation with fingerpicks; it’s possible to say that Lead Belly was playing Travis-style guitar before the style was attributed to Merle Travis.

Lead Belly helped introduce a number of songs into the canon of beloved folk music, including “Goodnight Irene” and “Midnight Special.” He also wrote songs about events and people in the news, including a song about the Titanic. Notably, in Lead Belly’s 1938 song, “Scottsboro Boys,” a story about nine Black men falsely accused of a crime in Alabama, Lead Belly encourages listeners to “stay woke,” that is, to remain alert and aware of racism. It is likely the first recording of the phrase.

Lead Belly died in 1949 at the age of 61, but he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

This week, we’ll listen to Lead Belly’s 1946 recording of “Black Girl (Where Did You Sleep Last Night)”, alternately called “In The Pines.” In 1993, Nirvana covered the song for their MTV Unplugged appearance; Kurt Cobain based his rendition of the song on Lead Belly’s recording.

External Link

Lead Belly – Smithsonian Folkways website