Leadbelly

1991 letter to Sean Killeen

2011-02-08T06:50:00.000-08:00

I wrote the following letter in (I think) 1990, when Sean started his newsletter, "The Lead Belly Letter." He tried 4 issues a year for a couple of years, but eventually went down to 3, 2 and finally zero, (by 1996), but the Letters were full of fascinating information for Leadbelly fans. People wrote about their personal experiences with Leadbelly; there were contemporary reports about concerts; I wrote a couple of things I found out and my wife Marsha wrote a piece about his horse. (These are republished here in this blog.) I would like to go ahead and put all his Letters on line, but I don't know who to call. Sean, who was a tremendous fan, has gone now, but his work remains and could be shared.

Sean Killeen, Editor
The Lead Belly Letter
P.O. Box 6679
Ithaca, New York 14851.

Dear Sean:

   Thanks for the first two issues of the Lead Belly Letter, and for the
clipping from the Ithaca Journal. I felt the same way as you when I started
writing my thesis on the life of Huddie Ledbetter — I was surprised by the
lack of written information about his life. I had been a fan since my
undergraduate days in college in the early '60's and I had always assumed
that his biography was under control. After studying what there was
available - particularly the Lomax book, "Negro Folk Songs as Sung By Lead
Belly," - my interim conclusion is that most of what has been written is
misleading. The Lead Belly Letter, then, is a wonderful opportunity for
people to share information and opinions.
   Since I wrote my thesis, which was based largely on newspaper and
magazine articles and the aforementioned Lomax book, I have taken to the
field in search of further information. Since I live in Shreveport, the field
is not so far off.
   I would like to throw out a couple of ideas for general consideration. The first has to do with the name "Lead Belly." I am uncomfortable with it, and would be interested in hearing Huddie's feelings about it. I think Lomax simply misunderstood the name Ledbetter and decided that the nickname suited his purposes. But, did Huddie ever happily refer to himself as Lead Belly? His cousin Blanche Love was quoted as saying, "The name is 'Ledbetter!'," and I get the impression that the family is quite rightly proud of the name Ledbetter.
   During his career as a singer in the Caddo Lake region, he was referred to, by his many fans, as Huddie, or Mister Huddie, and as far as I can tell, the name Lead Belly wasn't applied until after the meeting with Lomax. Does anybody have any different information to contribute? I don't think Huddie cared for the name Lead Belly.
   Idea number two: was Huddie really "a wandering balladeer who traveled extensively throughout the South and Southwest" as the writer of the Ithaca Journal states? I know he traveled extensively after he was released from Angola in 1934, but before that? He certainly came to Shreveport, but that's only about twenty miles from his home place. He also went to Dallas and Terrell, Texas, but he had family in Terrell and a girl friend in Dallas. And, unfortunately for him, he spent some time in New Boston, Texas, during cotton-picking season. These places are all within East Texas, and Shreveport is just over the Louisiana border.
   There is some evidence to show that he spent most of his life until 1917 working on his family farm; and that he returned to Caddo Lake for the 1925 to 1930 period, working a day job and performing at local house parties. It's possible that he was much less a rambler; much more a member of a community. Does anybody have any further thoughts on this idea?
   What about Huddie's relationship with Lemon Jefferson? I understand there has been a certain amount of research into Jefferson's life, but I haven't seen much published information. There was a totally misleading article by Paul Oliver about thirty* years ago, and the things Huddie said about his relationship with Lemon tend to confuse the issue. For instance: were they really running around together in 1904, when Lemon was 11, and Huddie 16? It would be wonderful to shed more light there. Is anybody out there working on Lemon Jefferson?
   There is certainly a great way to go in Ledbetter research and, at the moment, there is no more valuable tool than the Lead Belly Letter.
Thanks, Sean.
   All the best,
   Monty Brown
*the early 1960's

BBC Recordings

2011-01-22T11:40:00.000-08:00

Lead Belly

Bridging Lead Belly: this is a March 2000 article about Rounder CD 1151 by British music reviewer Frank Weston.

Boll Weevil, I'm Goin' Mother, Go Down, Ol' Hannah, Prison Holler, (Baby) Take a Whiff on Me, Irene, Jail-House Blues, Old Reilly, Ox Driver's Song (1), Ox Driver's Song (2), Julie Ann Johnson, Governor O.K. Allen, Frankie and Albert, St. Louis Blues, We're in the Same Boat Brother, Salt Lake City, Irene.

On receiving this disc for review my first thought was: What is there left to say about Leadbelly? Likewise, what is there left to hear by Leadbelly? Well, as has happened many times over my years of listening to various forms of folk, blues and jazz I have once again been surprised to come across recorded performances of which I and many others I might add were completely ignorant. I was aware for instance that Woody Guthrie had one day in 1945 shortly after having been torpedoed during one of his wartime stints with the U.S Merchant Marine wandered into Broadcasting House, London, and appeared on BBC Children's Hour. I may have even heard the programme as I was a regular listener at the time, 5.00 p.m. every schoolday afternoon. Several years ago I was amazed to find that the BBC had had the foresight to keep a recording of the programme and thanks to the efforts of DJ Andy Kershaw it was broadcast. Woody playing his Okie character to the hilt in conversation with the plumby voiced schoolmarm type presenter was a real treat to hear.

What has all this got to do with Leadbelly you are probably thinking? Well the connection between Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie on this occasion is not Folkways Records or Alan Lomax or even Skiffle. No, this time the connection is good old auntie BBC. On October 10th 1938 in New York City, Felix Greene of the BBC had the foresight to record Leadbelly and twelve tracks from that session which I can only assume was the total recorded, are here more than sixty years later available on a Rounder recording. Even the excellent biography on Leadbelly by Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell doesn't have this session listed and we do not know if they were ever broadcast at the time. These twelve tracks are well recorded and reproduced and make excellent listening, but if you already own a reasonable amount of Leadbelly's prodigious output then it is unlikely that you won't already have these titles from other sessions. However if you are like me then it is always interesting to hear a previously unheard recording by someone whose music you really enjoy.

Always interesting yes, but not always a comfortable or easy experience - as is the case with the remaining five tracks on this disc. As with the previous twelve tracks these have never been previously released and it is not difficult to understand why. This session took place in 1946 in Salt Lake City, Utah and the recording was made at a private party on a wire recorder. Wire recorders pre-dated tape and I believe were meant for use by the military and do not give brilliant results when recording music - especially when trying to capture such a dynamic performer as this under far from ideal conditions. Personally I don't feel that this session really merits issue on a commercial disc. However, I know that there are many completists who like to own everything or at least hear everything ever recorded by a particular artist and likewise try to find new meanings or interpretations not shown in previous performances. The compiler of this disc, (the late Sean Killeen of Ithaca, NY,) obviously is one of these, running the Lead Belly Society (they insist on two words for the name) and issuing a quarterly Lead Belly Letter for several years in the 1990’s.

Nothing wrong with that, but I do feel that some of his notes add up to not much more than padding and he sometimes contradicts himself. For example when writing about track two we are told that "This is a very basic blues song with standard guitar chords, but (Leadbelly) innovatively uses yodeling to set off each point he makes". We are also told that the yodeling is "evidence of Leadbelly's innovative skills of singing old songs in new forms" - but then following this we are told that, in doing so, "Leadbetter tried to emulate the style of yodeling stars like Jimmie Rodgers and Gene Autry". If Leadbelly was emulating Rodgers (which he most obviously was doing) and given that Rodgers died at the height of his enormous popularity five years earlier, I am tempted to ask; What is innovative? As far as I am concerned, Leadbelly was doing exactly what most other so called blues/folksingers do, performing songs from a large and varied repertoire. Anyone that attempted to earn a living from music on the streets or in saloons etc. would have to include at least a few popular songs of the day and by singing this Jimmie Rodgers type song that is exactly what our man was doing. Other such material that Leadbelly had in his huge arsenal included songs from Gene Autry's later screen career such as "Springtime in the Rockies" and "Silver Haired Daddy of Mine." The fact that commercial record companies only really were interested in recording so-called 'original' material has given us a rather slanted view on performers' repertoires - even the primitive sounding Charley Patton made an attempt at a pop song of the day, "Running Wild," and likewise Skip James with "So Tired." Although in both cases, I think that their interpretations were so wild that they slipped past the record companies without recognition.

There are a couple of other things in the notes that make me smile, but in spite of this and in spite of the poor quality of the Salt Lake City session, I still find this to be a very interesting and worthwhile issue.

Frank Weston (March 14, 2000)

Leadbelly Country

2010-08-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

Leadbelly came from the country. He was born on a Plantation outside of Mooringsport, which is not a very big town. Today it's probably smaller than it was in 1889. Leadbelly visited the city — Shreveport, about 20 miles away — two or three times. He spent most of his first forty years picking cotton and picking the guitar. Eventually he was discovered and realized as a national treasure: not a conventional pop star, but a person who contained the history of American folk music within him.

Leadbelly: Christmas & New Year

2010-06-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

Leadbelly: Christmas & New Year

Hello Louisiana: A Musical Travel Film

2010-06-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

Bossler couple's Louisiana film

It is sometimes said that your reflection is best seen though another pair of eyes. When it comes to Louisiana and all it has to offer, that adage proves especially true for Monty and Marsha Brown of Bossier City.

Monty. a native of Doncaster, England, and Marsha, from upstate New York, love Louisiana. They love it so much they've written and produced a film about their adopted state just so others can understand all they have come to appreciate.

"Hello Louisiana" is a travelugue written for the novice as well as perpetual learners, says Marsha Brown. "'It is informative and humorous and fun. You can't help but tap your toes and you can't help but learn about Louisiana."

For these two wandering minstrels. the idea for a film came about while teaching a school music program. "'We got a grant through the state arts program to teach kids about their own music ... and we kind of expanded on that," Marsha Brown says.

It also seems, she says, that many adults living here all their lives knew little about their own state. "The film shows so much more of our state than what everyone knows," she says.

Starting in the northwest parishes, you learn Natchitoches is the oldest European settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. You witness a baptism in the Cane River and discover how bousillage - a mixture of mud and moss - worked quite well as an early form of housing insulation.

In Bienville Parish you join in on an alligator hunt, see the roadway where Bonnie and Clyde met their end and retrace the steps of Louisiana Hayride legends.

Cajun Country introduces you to Floyd Soileau and his Flat Town (Ville Platte) record shop, Fred's in Mamou, where dancing starts early on Saturday mornings and the history of the forced exile of the Acadian people from Nova Scotia.

Industry row is seen as you cross the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge and into the world of Louisiana's famous — and infamous — politics. River Road plantations look out on tall rows of sugar cane and city-sized refineries.

New Orleans brings us back to the familiar pre-Katrina imagery of Mardi Gras. Jackson Square and the French Quarter as seen from a ferry boat while traveling across the river to Algiers Point.

"Within the film there is a lot of well researched information," Marsha Brown says. "Louisiana is a diverse and interesting place and this film serves to show others how special it is, while reminding us just how lucky we are to call Louisiana home. We are quite proud of it."

Christmas & New Year

2010-04-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

Interview conducted and recorded for the Library of Congress by Alan Lomax: Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter is asked about Christmas traditions down on Caddo Lake in the Texas-Louisiana border area. Many thanks to Claude LeMasson in Northern France for some of the details. It's not all easy to understand, even for a person whose first language is English.
(Q is Lomax, H is Huddie)

Q: Where did you learn to play, Huddie, by listening to other people?

H: By listening to other people, you know, the words, that’s the way you’ve got to learn, if you don’t know.

Q: Do you think, when the sisters get happy in church they’re pretending, or do they really mean it all the time?

H: Well, I’ll tell you, them old Baptist sisters just feel like moving at that time. They feel the spirit.

Q: They’re not just putting on?

H: They ain’t putting on, ‘cause you know, in church when a sister jumps up and shouts, she got to feel the move, ‘cause lots of them ashamed, you see, but them sisters what shouts, they ain’t ashamed ‘cause they figured you’ve got the state of God, you don’t be ashamed nowhere, so they just get up and go to shouting. And my mama, she used to be the shoutingest thing you ever see, and she fixing to feeling good, she shout all the time, that’s all. And I’ll tell you another thing about my mama, she was a real Baptist and I believe it ‘cause every Christmas, I don’t care when a Christmas come, she gonna shout, I don’t care whether she out on the street, I don’t care what she be in somebody’s house she ain’t never saw before, but when Christmas morning come she gonna get up and go around shaking the hands, and “Thank you, thank you, Good Lord and thank you,” and come right home in the bed , she gonna come in there and jump right on my neck and go to patting me, “My son, my son, thank God for to let you see another Christmas, thank God , you don’t know where you’d be the next Christmas, but I thank the Good Lord, for that you seen and smiled for so many Christmases. My son, my child, my son and only one, I thank the Good Lord for smiling. Get up, son, and give the Lord some thanks for letting you see some Christmas.” I say, “Yes, ma’m, mama, I will after a while.” Then I’d get up.

Q: What would you do on Christmas Day, Huddie — at your house?

H: Well, what we’d do at my house, and I’ll tell you about all the Baptist people, they may drink wine at (?) time, but at Christmas, they’re going to have a little jug behind the desk. They call that the “Jimmie John.” They keep it up there all year, but they ain’t gonna bring it until Christmas comes. And when Christmas comes, they’re gonna bring that out, and everybody gonna have a drink. A lot of the neighbors all come around, people living in the woods down there and they right close, and all of them meet at one another’s house and they have a drink, and they have some breakfast there, and eat, see, and when they get onto the table, they always gonna say a blessing, and this is the blessing that my father always say, and I say it at night in my home when I say the blessing:
“Thank us the Good Lord for what we are about to receive, for the mercies, for the body of Christ Our Redeemer’s sake, Amen.”
And then we eat.

Q: Well, after breakfast, what would you do? What would you have for breakfast, when you were a little boy?

H: When I was a little boy my mother had cakes, pies, chickens and turkeys. You see, we raised them there. Pork. And we had sausages, pork sausage, they had some — everything you had on that table, in them times when they’d fix the table, that table — as fast as it get empty, they’d get some more, they’d put on it, it never get empty and it never — clean up the table, they’d keep a white sheet over the table, and that you spread over the food, and when you go there, anybody, you, friends or anybody come there, they ain’t got a thing to do but just turn that curtain back and, that tablecloth back and go right in to eating, and fast as they eat up, my mother’d put some more bags there until Christmas time — it goes on for a week that way. Christmas time takes a whole week, not just a day, but they don’t get out until the week’s out. New Year come.

Q: Well, would you get presents on Christmas?

H: We had a Christmas feast at Elizabeth Church — that’s my mama’s and them’s church, and that’s a Baptist, and every Christmas you see they go — my father used to be one of the men go out and help cut down a cedar tree, that’s what we have, for a Christmas tree, cut down a big cedar tree and set it up in the church and everybody puts presents on there, and they got the names on it, and they have some certain girls, so many girls, so many boys, they call them presents up. And then, when they call, you go up and get your present. That’s the way they done.

Q: What else would you do beside go to church, and have breakfast? Were there any special parties?

H: Well, now, when . . . they always, Christmas Eve, they used to go to church on Christmas Eve night and wait and see Christmas Day come, and then, when the New Years coming, they alway go and sing all night, go to church and stay all night long.

Q: Are there any special songs that they sung while they were waiting for Christmas Eve?

H: They’d always word out a hymn and then when they’d word out a hymn, well then they used to sing the prayer “Being So Glad For What the Lord Had Done,” they’d sing that song about, “Ain’t You Glad the Blood Done Sign My Name?” and then, after they’d sing that, then they’d sing, er, “Give Me That Old Time Religion.” Well, after they sang that, they’d sing, “I’m So Glad I’m In the Army of the Lord.” That means they’re fighting soldiers, which is Baptists, and they’re gonna fight until they die.

Q: There weren’t any songs that mention Christmas? Particularly?

H: [Not understanding the question.] They wouldn’t mention those songs ‘cause they’d just go ahead and sing them when the time comes. They never — they didn’t never did mention just like a program you’re gonna have. They didn’t do that.

Q: No, but there weren’t any songs that they sung just at the time Christmas was coming in, were there?

H: That they sang right at the time Christmas was coming in?

Q: Right at the midnight hour.

H: Well, when Christmas coming in, they always sing — lemme see, I used to know the song that they sing, too, when Christmas was coming in — er, um, — Christ Our Redeemer — I forget it now, yeah, I forget it, but they did have a song they sung right at the hour when Christmas, New Years done coming, they singing, they had a song they sung right then.

Q: Did they have “Old” Christmas where you were growing up, too?

H: Old Christmas?

Q: Yes. The 12th of January.

H: I don’t know about that. They had New Years Day, but the only Christmas I ever know was on the 25th day of December.

Q: Well, did they believe stuff about what the cows did?

H: Believe something the cows did when?

Q: On Christmas. Facing to the East.

H: Well, I used to hear that, too. I used to hear that too.

Q: What did they say about it?

H: I forget what they said. I don’t remember now, I used to hear something they say about the cows, they turned their faces to the East. But I didn’t know nothing about it.

Q: Well, would they have Sukey Jumps at Christmas week?

H: Oh, man! they’d have, that’s what they’d do, they’d have a “tracted” (?) dance — that mean a dance every night until New Year come, from Christmas they’d come on up until New Year — ‘cause I used to go there and play for them. Yes sir, they had “tracted” dance and that’s out in Terrell, Texas, down there in Kaufman County.

Q: Dance all night and all day, too?

H: Well, they wouldn’t dance all day, they’d be round there, you know, everybody’d be drinking and having a big time, and so, but they’d be that night — all night, never stop, all night long.

Q: When to when?

H: From ken to ken (?) and that means from when the sun rises, I mean, from the sun go down ‘til the sun rise. And then they’d dance the whole week — and that’s called “tract” . . . .

Chapter 9: We're in the Same Boat, Brother 1944-1946

2009-01-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

Discussions between many of the leading folksingers resulted in the formation of People's Songs, Inc., a politically active group which not only put out a magazine but also organized "Hootenannies" and gave concerts in support of striking workers in Pittsburg, Schenectady, and New York City. ("Hootenanny" 72)
The hootenannies were mainly to support the publication which, by 1948, also included a booking agency known as "People's Artists," as well as chapters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston.

In the evenings, after a supper of chicken-fried steak or liver smothered in onions, my father would announce, "Let's drive around the Loop and cool off," meaning a spin around Pine Crest Drive, below Marshall to the south, touching the stately old southern houses with antebellum pines and wisteria and columned porches; and "Yankee Stadium," the cluster of two- and three-bedroom bungalows built to house the influx of workers, many of them nasal-twanged northerners, who had come for war jobs at the Longhorn Ordnance Works, fourteen miles northeast of town ("the only thing in East Texas the Germans would want to bomb," according to war strategists at Van Zandt Elementary School). (Goulden 88)
During the war Huddie was busy in New York, and involved with interesting people, but he wasn't making much money at music. He was often employed as a janitor, while Martha worked as a hotel maid. The Upper East Siders who appreciated his playing for their children didn't think to provide him a living. Moses Asch never did make much money on his record company; his mission was to keep his immense catalog of obscure recordings in print. Huddie's jam sessions with his friends were fun and fulfilling, but not financially rewarding. The municipal radio station WNYC (now the flagship National Public Radio affiliate in New York City) didn't pay performers anything, and the Village Vanguard was definitely a low-rent gig. It was no surprise that Huddie decided, in 1944, to try his luck in Hollywood.
Mary Elizabeth Barnicle hosted a farewell party for Huddie on May 5th; but during the month of June he recorded in New York with Josh White, and played at a high school prom at the fashionable Essex House on Central Park South. Eventually he boarded a train for the Coast, and in July he was reported to be in Los Angeles. According to the People's World, "he is in Hollywood, where, appropriately enough, he will spend the summer working in films and singing at People's World parties. . . ." (Lornell) On July 8th, Huddie appeared at a Peoples' World concert at Hollywood's Masonic Temple. He was to remain in California for a year and a half.
By October he was cutting songs for Capitol records, a small label at the time which since became an industry giant. Capitol grew by recording artists like Nat "King" Cole who had tremendous commercial success; Ledbetter was not one of those, but his Capitol recordings are still available. He did "Irene," "The Rock Island Line," and six other songs, accompanied by a zither player, Paul Howard (Leadbitter & Slavin 189). Oddly enough, Howard, a white, country-style player, came from Arkansas via Shreveport, but whether this had anything to do with his inclusion in the session is not known. In a separate session for Capitol, Huddie did a couple of piano tunes which reflected his early Fannin Street influences.
“When the legendary Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter arrived in Los Angeles under the auspices of a communist-front organization in 1944 — an arrangement about which I remained ignorant until the war's end — it was my pleasure to record a dozen Leadbelly sides. He sang and played his battered 12-string guitar, then demanded that Paul Mason Howard, who accompanied him to the studio, be allowed to accompany him on the zither. I didn't care to argue with Leadbelly. He had been pardoned from the Louisiana state prison after killing a man. Leadbelly also made a couple of rocky, ragtimey piano solos on the session. Capitol still sells his classic performances in the seventies, remastered and packaged for microgroove turntables.” (Dexter)
Record producer Dave Dexter, Jr. wrote that paragraph in his autobiography, “Playback,” which was published in 1976. Obviously he was seeking to distance himself from any possible political taint, but the fact is that the Capitol session was re-mastered again, for Compact Disc release in the 1990's, and is thus reaching a new generation.
While he was in Hollywood, Huddie was feted by the left-wing community of writers and directors; he was a star attraction amongst the stars at many parties, but he never managed to break into movies. By mid-February, 1945, Huddie had gone north to the Bay Area, and was to be found performing on a Standard School Broadcast for school children. A recording of part of this broadcast was later released on Folkways records as "Negro Folk Songs for Young People."
One of Huddie's "left-wing writer" associates was Jessica Mitford, of the famous Mitford sisters. This was not a glamorous Hollywood connection, however. Ms. Mitford lived in San Francisco, later Oakland, and was very much involved as a front line political and civil rights activist. She came from a strange family, given to extremism. Her father she described as "one of nature's fascists." Her sisters included Nancy Mitford, the novelist who was closest to the political center; another sister, Diana, married the leader of Britain's fascist movement, Sir Oswald Mosley; a third was actually associated with Hitler's inner circle, while another was confined to an institution. Jessica, however, became a communist during the Spanish Civil War. She migrated to the United States and married Harvard-educated Bob Truehaft, a lawyer who specialized in defending left-wing unions and cases of Civil Rights abuse.
In her autobiography, “A Fine Old Conflict”, Ms. Mitford writes of the amusing problems often related to the visits of her upwardly mobile mother-in-law Aranka, a milliner from New York:
“Somehow the timing of Aranka's visits seemed always to be unfortunate. Once she arrived when Leadbelly, the great blues singer, had come to stay for a fortnight. ‘But, Aranka, we've only got one spare bedroom. I do hope you won't mind sharing?’ Aranka, not amused, elected to sleep on the living room couch.
“Leadbelly was already a legend. He had sung his way out of a Louisiana prison, where he was serving a life sentence for murder, by addressing musical pleas for clemency to the governor, whom he charmed into granting a pardon. His real name was Huddie Ledbetter: he had adopted Leadbelly as his ‘nom de theatre’ in nostalgic recollection of the numerous gunfights of his youth.
“He was very large and very black. He would come down to breakfast wearing a long stark-white nightshirt, (was this the famous bath robe which Woody wrote about?) from which protruded his sable limbs and head; the visual effect was spectacular. Soon the house would ring with his wonderful music, daily concerts for the children, for whom he improvised special songs.
“He and Aranka were ill-assorted houseguests; they would circle one another warily, with little to say. "Oh, Decca" — Aranka sighed wistfully — "I wish I was black like Leadbelly. Then you would love me." (Mitford)
Back in Southern California, where he stayed at the home of his cousin George Pugh, he met a music shop owner named Ross Russell. The meeting took place at the home of a Hollywood writer and after that, Huddie took to dropping in at Russell's Tempo Music Shop. Russell entertained the idea of putting together a biography, but before he could get very far with the project, Huddie had returned to the East (Russell12).
One night, Russell accompanied Ledbetter and some others on a pub crawl in the black section of Los Angeles, and thus discovered how easy it was for the singer to get into trouble. After a few drinks, Ledbetter produced his guitar and virtually took over a tavern with his entertaining. Two young women "almost forty years his junior" took a shine to Huddie, much to the annoyance of their escorts, and it was only with some difficulty that the group managed to pry him loose from the place unscathed (Russell 14).
Paramount Pictures had optioned John Lomax's book, “Adventures of a Ballad Hunter,” and there was some talk of including Huddie in the film version. He did have some film footage taken, but it was not what he'd hoped for. He was filmed singing three songs without sound. Pete Seeger later dubbed in the sound of Huddie's voice, thus creating the only extant visual record of Huddie singing, now available on You Tube.
Huddie was rebuffed by some film studio executive, and later wrote
about it in a song, "4, 5, and 9." While he was at a party, Huddie met a movie producer and asked about getting a screen test. "Sure," laughed the exec, "call me up tomorrow at 45 to 9." This was apparently an inside joke which translated as a brush-off, and for Huddie, a humiliation:

What I'm gonna do for you now — I called my baby between 4, 5 and
9 and meet my baby on Hollywood and Vine. Ever been to California? In
Hollywood, you know, that's the way it is.

I called this morning between 4, 5 and 9
I want you to meet me on Hollywood and Vine.

If you get down there before I do
You can tell your friends that I'm coming, too.

I'm gonna sing this verse, ain't a-gonna sing no more
Next time I sing, I'm gonna be in Chicago.

Just after he was discharged from the army, Canadian folksinger Oscar Brand, weighing his career possibilities, decided that most of all he'd like to write for radio. He approached several New York radio stations about doing a program of Christmas music which would be unlike the standard popular fare. He received responses from WEAF, WNEW, and from Herman Neumann at WNYC. Neumann was responsible for programming music which was alternative to the vaudeville and big band sounds on the commercial stations; he also programmed folk music and jazz.

Oscar Brand: So he called on me, he said, "I'm very much interested, do you want to do a program?" December the 10th, just before Christmas. I said, "Sure." I came on and did the program and as I was finished doing a bunch of songs and talking about them and their meanings for a half an hour, he said, "What are you doing next week?" I said, "Well, what would you like?" He said, "Well, come back, try another one."
I came back next week which put me right in front of Christmas and did another Christmas program about the kind of songs we do and how they were made up songs for people who couldn't read, and what they got
out of the Bible. I did some gospel songs, old Appalachain songs, Canadian
songs, and when I finished I walked by the office and waved at Herman Neumann and waved expectantly and hopefully, and he said, "Listen, if you're not doing anything next week, come on back," and that's the way I've been working for WNYC now since 1945. [1992 Interview]
Brand was then asked to coordinate folk music programs for New York's WNYC radio. He found Huddie already broadcasting for the station and since he was an old friend, "coordinating" consisted mainly of walking down the hall on the twenty-fifth floor of the Municipal Building, which housed the WNYC studios, and waving to Huddie during his broadcasts on "Folk Song Festival." He also did a half-hour program called "The Brandwagon" for which he wrote scripts and got together actors. During the week he sometimes traveled to Johnson City, New York, or Detroit, Michigan, to sing for striking workers under the banner of Peoples Songs.
In [December] 1945, just when the WNYC show was inaugurated, Margot Mayo, whose American Square Dance Group was also promulgating the dance-song gospel, decided to have a "home-from-the-war" party. Leadbelly, Seeger, [Richard] Dyer-Bennett, [John-Jacob] Niles, Guthrie, and many others performed. After the program, Pete Seeger came over to see me and asked if I would help him start a folk song magazine. We made immediate plans for a mimeographed publication, using the paraphernalia I had bought in Army days when I was editing a newspaper for psychiatric patients. (Brand 83-4) Even when he was with the army in the Far East, [Stuff from Tillman Franks re Pete Seeger to go here,] Pete Seeger was dreaming of energizing the world with music. He and Lee Hays, the Alamanac's bass voice, stayed in touch with one another throughout Pete's army days, discussing their postwar plans for a nationwide organization for singers and songwriters. They wanted to use songs to change the world: songs about "truth, justice and freedom," to hammer out a better world. At the end of 1945 twenty-five singer-songwriters gathered at Toshi Seeger's parents' place on Macdougal Street in the Village. It was the 30th of December.
Went down to a meeting of a new union of progressive songwriters that call themselves "Peoples Songs," found Pete Seeger and his banjo, the president and Lee Hays (Arkansaw Hard Luck Lee), the vice president. I found Betty Sanders, Leadbelly, Bernie Asbel, Alan Lomax, Bess Lomax, Tom Glazer, Charlotte Anthony, Lou Kleinman, Mildred Linsley, and Shaemas O'Sheel, Bob Russell, there, almost every songwriter pitching in their efforts to make out of all of their little works one big union called "Peoples Songs."
The reason for Peoples Songs is to shoot your union the kind of a song or songs when you want it and fast. To help you make a songbook, a program,a throwaway songsheet, a whole evening. Or maybe your problem is just about how to make a song and get it copyrighted, printed, circulated around, how to set a fee, and what to do with your works after you create them. I am one of fifteen now on the Executive Committee of Peoples Songs, 130 West 42nd Street, New York City, New York. (Guthrie)
The first issue of the Peoples Songs “Bulletin” was printed on Oscar Brand's mimeograph machine. The call went out for people to submit songs about the working man, repressed minorities and about peace. The war against fascism was over; now was the time to build the brotherhood of man. Idealism was at an all-time high and the “Bulletin” was successful in rousing the interest of a nationwide community of songwriters committed to changing the world through song. The second issue was printed with an offset machine, Bernie Asbell was hired as editor, and Bernie's wife, Millie, became manager of the small, crowded offices on 42nd Street. The Peoples Songs offices became a hub of activity, sending out missionaries to sing for union meetings and picket lines.
Oscar brand recalls being an activist in the days when union people were being beaten over the head by the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus, the police, the National Guard, “and by anybody else who just wanted to beat somebody up, when unions were considered communist organizations, we were out on picket lines. I or Pete, or Cisco Houston, or Woody, or whoever was around, they'd get a phone call, I'd get a phone call, saying, ‘We're having a strike up here, this city or this town.’ And I would figure out, if I take the train it'll take me so long and coming back it'll take me so long, I can just about make it, and away we'd go and do a program. [The union]'d usually pay for the train and sometimes five or ten dollars besides.
I did programs for the Spanish Refugee Appeal, for Russian War Relief, for the American Labor Party; the left wing organizations were extremely eager to have folk music. I made up songs. I remember Elliott Roosevelt was going up to Johnson City, New York, which along with Endicott and Binghampton was owned by Johnson & Johnson at the time, and he said, ‘Would you come up with me. I can speak,’ and he was a lousy speaker but he was the former president's son. We got on the train and we got up there and I'd written a few songs. One of them was to an old tune called "The Johnson Boys:"

The Johnson Boys, they own Tri-City,
They bought it when it first began,
They're so rich it's sure a pity,
They still can't buy a union man.
They can't buy a union man,
They can't buy a union man.

Which made a tremendous hit. And that's the kind of thing we were doing.
Not only old songs: when the Farmers' Union was meeting in New York, I
remember I was working the farms then, I would go up there and sing,

When the banker hangs around
And the butcher cuts the pound,
The farmer is the man who feeds them all.
Oh, the farmer is the man,
The farmer is the man,
He lives on credit til the fall
And they take him by the hand
And they lead him by the hand,
And the mortgage man's the man who gets it all.

Those were good times, [1946] the busy days at People's Songs sometimes running into song-filled nights at the Lower East Side apartment of Martha and Huddie Ledbetter, the black ex-convict folksinger known as Leadbelly, a man all of them Pete, Lee, Woody, Cisco Houston, Alan Lomax, and every folk singer and folk song maven worshiped and learned from.
Lee wished Leadbelly could break the habit of calling them "Mr.Pete" and "Mr.Alan" and "Mr. Lee," but Leadbelly couldn't, or wouldn't. On the other hand, Lee chuckled over the irony (which he pointed out to Pete) that Leadbelly dressed in a dignified shirt-and-tie fashion while Pete, the New England aristocrat, turned up everywhere in farmer's overalls. Pete didn't see the humor at all.
Sometimes Leadbelly would stake Lee to a bottle of bourbon when Lee's always minimal money ran out. Lee swore he sang louder and better with booze lining his vocal chords. Woody and Cisco kept right up with Lee. The nights began to last until the mornings. Pete, never deflected from his work by old-boy carousing, cast a cold eye on theproceedings. Hadn't Lee learned that Pete's patience could give out?
But when Lee stood up and led a hootenanny, Pete had to love him. What could be more effective than this big southern preacher-type calling out, in his marvelous deep bass voice, stingingly funny lines about antediluvian southern congressmen? When you lived in New York City, you couldn't be sure how far protest went in the country. Lee and Woody most especially could make you believe that "the folk" could be pretty durned radical. (Willens 88)
On the liner notes for Cisco [Houston]'s first album, after Cisco's big breakthrough at Gerde's Folk City, Lee wrote, "Cisco fits the scholar's definition of the wandering folk singer as well as anyone except Woody Guthrie, who was a sidekick of Cisco's for a long time. They travelled and sang together, and they both had close personal ties with Martha and Huddie Ledbetter, whose home was, at time, the only one they had. . . ." (Willens 207)
According to banjo-guitarist and New Orleans jazz historian Danny Barker, on 6 January,1946, Huddie recorded an untitled blues with Bunk Johnson and several other players at the Stuyvesant Casino. The Bunk Johnson band recordings were for V-Disc, a U.S. Government-financed project whereby armed forces overseas were provided with free recordings of all types of music. There were several other musicians, including Danny Barker, who recorded that day with Bunk. Bunk's band finished its first gig at the Casino on 12 January.
Danny Barker, Oscar Brand and Woody Guthrie, it must be noted, all placed Huddie in New York around the Christmas holiday season, 1945-46: Barker at the Casino; Brand at WNYC and the "Home-from-the-War" party; and Guthrie at theformative meeting of People's Songs. Huddie was clearly photographed with Bunk Johnson at the Stuyvesant Casino, but that could have been in the Spring of 1946 when Bunk's band returned. It is possible that Barker, Brand and Guthrie were mistaken about the dates.
It is also possible that Huddie came home for Christmas and then returned to the West Coast for a few more weeks, because on 30 January, 1946, he gave an 8 p.m. concert at the YWCA Auditorium, 6th and Pacific in Los Angeles. On 8 February he cabled from the Coast that he was about to leave for home, and in March he appeared at People's Songs' first public concert at Elizabeth Irwin High School, New York City. Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Woody Guthrie were also in the program. From that time on, though he traveled out of town several times, and one time went to France, Huddie based himself in New York.

Late in the afternoon of 27 April, 1946, a Saturday, Huddie gave a recital at Town Hall in New York City. He was accompanied by Sonny Terry, the harmonica player, and the event was written up in the New York Times. The closing number was an audience singalong, "We're in the Same Boat, Brother."
“The songs were heard without sophistication, with no other art than that with which the singer was born and without the benefit of a beautiful voice like Paul Robeson's or Marian Anderson's. The listener heard, instead, precisely what is to be heard today in the hills of the Carolinas, the swamp lands of Mississippi and Louisiana, the small-town theatres and "hot spots" throughout the South. This is the music of the soil, direct from its source, and as Leadbelly sings it, it is filled with an emotion all its own, and is the outpouring of an art that is the simple and genuine expression of that emotion.” ("Huddie Leadbetter Heard")

On Thursday, May 9th, People's Songs, Inc. put on a "Union Hootenanny" at Town Hall. The show featured Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Huddie missed this hoot, but he performed at the Strathmore Folk Festival the following day. At the second seasonal Hoot, the following Thursday, the 16th, Huddie was also absent. [Was he out of town?]

The previous September (1945), a month after the end of the war with Japan, when Huddie was on the West Coast, an extraordinary old time jazz revival had begun to take place in New York City. William Russell was a jazz historian who loved the original New Orleans sound; he had been to the Crescent City during the war years, and there discovered that trumpeter Bunk Johnson, a kind of missing link between the unrecorded Buddy Bolden, and the meteoric Louis Armstrong, was still alive. Bunk played in the sporting houses on Basin Street, in the saloons above Canal Street, and in the bandwagons that rode around town with the slidehorns hanging out over the tailgate. He went barnstorming for as little as $5 a week and tips. Twelve years ago Bunk lost his teeth and gave up playing. A Pittsburgh jazz fan [Russell] found him, a toothless stooped laborer in the rice fields of New Iberia, La., got him some false teeth and raised money for a horn.
Said the New York Herald Tribune highbrow critic Virgil Thomson: "[Bunk] is the greatest master of blues or
off-pitch notes. . . an artist of delicate imagination." ("Jazz?")
Russell got Bunk together with a group of traditional jazzmen, most of whom were holding down day jobs of one sort or another, and painstakingly recorded several tunes. The recordings turned out well, and back in New York, Russell was able to pass on his enthusiasm to a circle of friends. They decided to bring the Bunk Johnson band to New York, to show off real New Orleans jazz. The other members of the band were George Lewis, clarinet; Jim Robinson, trombone; Slow Drag Pavageau, bass; Lawrence Marrero, banjo; Alton Purnell, piano; and Baby Dodds on the drums.
Dodds, who was the brother of famed clarinetist Johnny Dodds, had the most impressive credits up to that time. He had gone to Chicago in the 1920's and played with King Oliver and Louis Armstrong; later he backed up Jelly Roll Morton, and made records with most of the famous New Orleans musicians during the Jazz Age. Though they were relatively unknown at the time, the rest of the band members were some of New Orleans finest who went on to establish fine reputations during the traditional jazz revival which started on that autumn evening — in New York — and continued well into the 1950's.
Four hundred people turned out for the opening night at the Stuyvesant Casino, a large ballroom on Second Avenue near East 9th Street, which had mostly been used for ethnic wedding receptions until that night. The Casino was close to where Huddie lived on East 10th Street, an easy walk, and he hung out at the Casino a lot during the band's second booking between April and May. He sat in with the band on several occasions. Included in the crowd on opening night, and probably on many subsequent nights as well, were names connected to Huddie Ledbetter — Fred Ramsey, Charles Edward Smith, Moses Asch. The night was, by all reports, a great success.

The Casino is decorous - the audience is mostly well-behaved youngsters - and simple, in ornamentation as well as in operation. You pay a dollar at the door, go upstairs, sit at whatever table or bench is vacant, and listen. If music is not sufficient food, there are beer and sandwiches, which you fetch yourself from the bar or buy from the Casino's only waiter, the politest and most thoughtful man of his breed I have encountered in some time.
There are, in fact, only two real drawbacks to the whole thing. The piano on the stand is in such a state of decay that Carmen Cavellero shouldn't even have to play "Til the End of Time" on it, and on some nights there is a gathering of intelligentsia that is so intense and audible about this careful reconstruction of another way of life that it is a considerable handicap to those who would rather just sit and listen to the music. (The New Yorker, 20 Oct 45)
Ralph J. Gleason was a writer on the New York scene in the 1940's. A couple of decades later he established a reputation with the national magazine, Rolling Stone, and various other prestigious musical journals. He was introduced to Ledbetter one night at the Stuyvesant Casino, and had this to say of the meeting:
Bunk and New Orleans jazz were intellectually chic that winter and their nightly sessions at the ancient East Side Hall, once the scene of a famous gangland shooting in the early days of New York Mafia wars, were an essential part of everyone's tour of New York. All the musicians and artists and writers from James Jones to Leadbelly stopped there.
Leadbelly sang a couple of numbers with the band (Art Hodes was on the piano that night and it was impossible
for a piano to accompany Leadbelly because he didn't sing standard 12-bar blues, in fact, his blues varied from night to night in bar structure as his whim dictated). But most of the time he stayed at the bar.
The Stuyvesant Casino at that time was an incredible place. Admission was low and it was packed with Greenwich
Village types, the kind that were then called Bohemians and later evolved into the Beatniks and, still later, their descendents became hippies. Beer was cheap; there was only one waiter and you could stall there all night without spending any money past the admission charge.
The bar was always packed and Leadbelly was pressed up against it, surrounded by a coterie of fans. He was not
a tall man at all, but he was broad and chunky and gave the impression of terrific strength. He didn't smile much
and implicit in standing next to him was the fact that you were standing next to a convicted murderer. It gave the
crowd an added edge of excitement, like standing next to Little Augie Pisano or Tony Bender.
I was introduced to him by a friend from the Coast, and then he went on with his conversation. Suddenly, Leadbelly said, very loud and clear, "Don't fool with me, boy; I don't play." Everybody stopped talking. The silence
was achingly oppressive. People slowly began backing away. Suddenly he was no longer that fascinating blues and folk singer with a prison record, but a murderer. He'd killed and he might kill again. And when he said "I don't play," you believed him. Somebody stuttered an apology and everything quieted down. But they all — myself included — looked at him differently from then on. (Gleason)

On Wednesday, September 4th, 1946, Huddie attended a benefit for the National Negro Congress in New York City. He is pictured in a Daily World photo with his guitar strapped on, posing with Sonny Terry, Cisco Houston, and the activist-singer-actor, Paul Robeson. Robeson has been described by his grand-daughter as a renaissance
man. He is the only black face in his graduating class from Harvard Law School in 1923; he was an outstanding athlete in high school and college — he played football at Princeton and was good enough to play professionally when he needed the money; without any particular training, he became a concert artist and a stage and screen actor. His most outstanding roles were in Eugene O'Neill's "Emperor Jones" and "All God's Chillun Got Wings," as well as a Broadway "Othello" with Uta Hagen and Jose Ferrer during the war. He was a linguist, an historian, and an outspoken champion of the rights of African Americans. For this he was labelled a communist; Ledbetter, had he lived a little longer, may have had his moment in front of an Un-American Activities Committee, too, but he was nothing like as outstanding a target as Robeson.

Thursdays that September, at 6 p.m., Huddie was once more singing his songs during a fifteen-minute program on WNYC. On September 29th, a Saturday night, he was concertizing at New York's Town Hall, playing 12-string guitar, accordion, and piano on a variety of folksongs, blues, spirituals and work-songs. He was also aided in the concert by Edith Allaire, "American ballad singer"; Sonny Terry; Cisco Houston, who sang some cowboy songs; guitarist Brownie McGhee who played along on "Irene, Goodnight;" Sue Remos, a dancer from the West Coast; and jazz bassman "Pops" Foster.

LEAD BELLY OFFERSâ FOLK-MUSIC OF THE SOUTH
Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), old-time American
folk-singer from the deep South appearing with six guest
artists, gave a concert of folk music last night at Town
Hall. To use Lead Belly's own phrase — he talks only in
verse — it was "fine as wine" throughout and gave a fairly
comprehensive picture of the genre.
Playing his own accompaniments on various
instruments, including the twelve-string guitar, the
accordion and the piano, Lead Belly sang spirituals,
reels, blues and work-songs from the levees, the railroads
and the fields.
The authenticity of his renderings gives the songs he
sings their interest, both historical and musical. (Lead Belly Offers)

In his 1971 autobiography, "Pops" Foster was clear about his dislike for Huddie, even if he got some of the facts wrong. Foster was a bassist from New Orleans who played at the Town Hall concert and with many of the early stars of jazz.
"Leadbelly's wife's name was Irene (sic) and the tune of his 'Irene' got to be a big hit. As soon as it did he died. Leadbelly was a mean and evil guy. He was in the penitentiary three times for killing guys and every time he played his way out." (Foster 153)
"Pops" found Huddie difficult, but not impossible, to accompany. He said that he and pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith were the only two people who could play with him. According to Foster, Ledbetter, and other blues singers like Josh White, had no musical training and therefore had no idea which key they were playing in. And, because they generally played solo, they were incapable of keeping time.
"When Willie and I would play with them kinda guys, he'd come around to say, 'We got a hard date today, Pops. A lot of those guys can't even tune their instruments.' "
He was talking about a different musical genre, of course. Clearly Ledbetter was capable of playing with other musicians; he did it regularly at hoots and get-togethers with the folk song crowd. But jazz was a different thing. Many of the jazz players came out of a brass band tradition in which an ability to read music was taken for granted. Many of the jazz groups depended on strict arrangements where the musicians were taken on as "sidemen" to play a particular part, whereas the folk musicians were, to varying degrees, anarchic. Ledbetter had been brought up playing for dances, but he hadn't done that much since he left his audience in Louiosiana and Texas, so his rhythms may have become variable. In fact, playing for dances as a single, his rhythms were probably always variable. Like many successful dance bands — Bob Wills' Texas Playboys for instance — he had a tendency to speed up his tempos for the sake of exciting the dancers.
In his critique of Ledbetter's music, Pops Foster didn't take all that into account. Somehow, his dislike for the music was mixed up with his dislike for the man. He was at Ledbetter's apartment one day, talking to one of Moses Asch's partners about making some records, when there was a scuffle between two men outside on the landing. One man, whom Foster identified as "Leadbelly's son-in-law," had insulted the other's wife and sought refuge at Ledbetter's door.
At any rate, Huddie commenced beating the man over the head with a poker, while Foster and the man from Asch made their getaway. When Huddie went to court for assaulting the man, Foster had to go and testify. The judge fined the other man and told him he had no business being in Ledbetter's house.
Pops Foster: “When Leadbelly would get mad he'd just sit and grit his teeth. One time I told him he'd have to play a chord on his guitar or we couldn't make no record. He just sat and started gritting his teeth. I told him he could grit his teeth all day, but if he didn't play the chord we couldn't play with him. He finally played it. Leadbelly was just and evil man. I just made records with him and never hung around with him at all.” (Foster 154)
"Pops" Foster, incidentally, also intensely disliked legendary clarinettist Sidney Bechet.

Chapter 8: Bourgeois Blues (1935-44)

2009-01-06T13:02:00.000-08:00

Some people wished they had seen the last of Huddie and Martha Ledbetter. As John Lomax said at the end of the biographical section of his book, "What the future holds for these two Negroes, only time will tell" (Negro 64). Huddie wrote to Lomax using an Excelsior Laundry address, in Shreveport, indicating that Martha may have got her old job back. Blues Who's Who refers to this period of Huddie's life, 1935 to 1937, as "working in Shreveport out of the music business" (317). This may well be true.

1935 stands out as one of the most eventful years in Louisiana history, but this had nothing to do with music: Senator Huey P. Long, Louisiana’s all-time favorite politician, was shot down on September 8th in a corridor of the Capitol he was responsible for building. He died in hospital in the early morning of the 10th, ten days after his 42nd birthday. A few months earlier Long had revealed the existence of a plot to kill him, but this would not have surprised anyone. Huey’s popularity came at a cost; he had many wealthy and influential enemies who resented his “Share the Wealth” ideology which advocated a cap on the amount of money a person could accumulate.

To Ross Russell, a jazz writer who owned a record store in Hollywood in the 1940's, Huddie Ledbetter "dropped out of sight" for ten years after leaving John Lomax (Russell 12). Then he turned up in Hollywood. This was very much a West Coast perspective, however. In fact, during those ten years Huddie did a tremendous amount of recording, appeared on many radio programs, and worked clubs and concerts, primarily in the New York area.
According to the Lead Belly Letter, Martha and Huddie returned to New York City at the beginning of 1937. They were with a new agent/manager named John W. Townsend, and were staying with Townsend and his mother at an address in the Bronx. Townsend is referred to as a gas station operator from Dallas.

During the winter of 1936-37, Alan Lomax expanded his folk song collecting to Haiti; he would eventually collect folksongs around the world. From 1936 to 1942 Lomax was "Assistant in Charge" of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings. During his lifetime, he collected folk music from the United States, Haiti, the Caribbean, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, assembling treasure trove of American and international culture.
The elder Lomax (as we have seen) had had enough of his protege, but on 12 June 1937, Alan brought Huddie to Washington where he supervised some recordings at the Library of Congress. During their visit to the capital, Martha and Huddie encountered an instance of racial discrimination similar to that they had experienced in New York two years earlier, and Huddie wrote about it in one of his most enduring songs, "The Bourgeois Blues." Credit for co-authoring this song is unstintingly given to Alan Lomax.

Me and Martha was standing upstairs,
I heard a white man say, "Don't want no colored up there,
Lord, it's a bourgeois town
Ooh, it's a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues,
I'm gonna spread the news all around.

Home of the brave, land of the free,
I don't want to be mistreated by no bourgeoisie,
Lord, it's a bourgeois town. . .

The tune for "Bourgeois Blues" is similar to Memphis Minnie's "Dirty Mother For You" of January 1935. It's not difficult to figure out what Minnie means when she sings “He's a dirty mother for you, he don't mean me no good.” Huddie was probably delighted with the unstated reference to Minnie's song himself, but he tended not to be openly raunchy or offensive in his lyrics. About this same time, he was explaining to Alan that "tight like that" was a description of the way people held each other when they danced, while Alan was pretty sure it had something to do with the female anatomy.
There are fourteen titles in these Washington sessions; these include the blues standard "Hello, Central" and two takes of a topical song, "The Hindenburg Disaster." The explosion of the zeppelin Hindenburg at its mooring, which caused the deaths of thirty-six people, took place on 6th May, 1937, at Lakehurst, New Jersey. "New York City" was also recorded. It's a re-working of a song Huddie had recorded for the American Recording Company two years earlier, a song which was never released during the his lifetime. "Kansas City Papa" is the original, and the refrain,
Kansas City - ain't it a pity?
is changed to
New York City - ain't that a city?

The Kansas City song takes a completely different attitude to the New York song. Kansas City is viewed from the perspective of a country bumpkin who comes away shaking his head at the strange goings on in the big city. It's an archetypal song; it could've been about Dallas or Shreveport, but it happened to be about Kansas City, which was a mecca for Negro jazz and blues players in the 1920's and 30's. Huddie may never have visited Kansas City at the time he sang the song, though there is hearsay that he visited his ex-wife Elethe there at some point. The verses are folk couplets which may have been used in any number of similar dance tunes. It has all the earmarks of a number played at a country supper.

Funniest thing that I ever did see
Polecat climbing up a 'simmon tree
In Kansas City. . .

The New York song, on the other hand, is specific to that city and
bespeaks a real attraction to the place.

It's one thing folks I ask you to do
Catch a bus and ride up Fifth Avenue
In New York City. . .

Although the melody and rhythm has not changed, it has become a song for a New York audience.

Pineville, in the coal-veined hills of Kentucky, 1938, is the setting for the recording of three religious songs ("Old Time Religion," "Get on Board," and "Rock of Ages"), which were deposited in the Library of Congress. Huddie is accompanied by his own guitar, by the singing of Martha, and by Jim and Sarah Garland (Dixon & Godrich 384). Pineville is in the Appalachian Mountains near the point where Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky meet. The Garlands sang songs and took activist stands on behalf of the coal miners who were attempting to get a better deal from the mine owners at the time. The local law enforcement officers were in the employ of the mine owners, (a common theme in alternative American history), and there were violent clashes between the sides. Jim Garland's mother was Aunt Molly Jackson, also a folksinger and union activist.

On October 10th 1938, in New York City, Felix Greene of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had the foresight to record twelve tracks of Leadbelly: Boll Weevil, I'm Goin' Mother, Go Down Ol' Hannah, Prison Holler, (Baby) Take a Whiff on Me, Irene, Jail-House Blues, Old Reilly, Ox Driver's Song (1), Ox Driver's Song (2), Julie Ann Johnson, Governor O.K. Allen. Because of the alternate take of the Ox Driver's Song, we can assume these were the total recorded. Even the excellent biography on Leadbelly by Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell doesn't have this session listed and we do not know if they were ever broadcast at the time. It would have counted as Leadbelly's first radio broadcast, if it had taken place. And on the BBC at that!

The idea of documentary recordings was just getting underway — some of the late-1938 Library of Congress recordings begin with a dialogue between the "informant" (sounds a bit like a law enforcement term) and the "collector" and end with a song; others continued the informal dialogue throughout the record. As many as seventy-five recordings were made of Aunt Molly Jackson, for instance, and funds for making some of these records available at cost to musicologists and others interested in grassroots music were supplied by the Carnegie Corporation. Leadbelly recorded about 200 sides for the Lomax's Library of Congress collection.
The folk music also reached some 15,000,000 young listeners via [Alan] Lomax's "Well-Springs of America" Series broadcast on Columbia's School of the Air. Begun in 1939, as the series continued it became more and more a survey of a state or an area, and radio listeners began paying tribute to this documentary approach by writing: "I like to listen to the songs about the unknown heroes of labor and the farms," or, regarding programs of Negro songs: "In them one sees courage and a rhythmic dignity." Folk singers are guests and contribute to material used in the script, but Lomax frequently sings too. Though he's mostly known as a collector, he felt he was accomplished enough a performer to entertain the King and Queen of England at the White House in 1939.

A potential Last Straw to the Leadbetter story was added in the late spring of 1939, and a lesser man may have bowed under the burden. On March 5, during a party at a West 52nd Street address, he was arrested, accused by one Henry Burgess of stabbing and slashing him a dozen times. Huddie countered that he did indeed stab Burgess, but only in self-defense, and pled Not Guilty in magistrate's Court. He was freed on bail of $1000 which was posted by Alan Lomax through the National Surety Corporation. On March 13th, the New York City court cabled the Caddo courthouse in Shreveport for Leadbelly's criminal record.
A week later Huddie appeared before a Grand Jury, describing himself as a "musician, song composer, and dancer." The deputy District Attorney, now familiar with the accused's past, asks that he "not be allowed to sing his way out of this one."
That same evening, March 20th, 1939, he played at the Savoy Club on Lenox Avenue in Harlem.
Three days later the Grand Jury indicted him for "assault, second degree, carrying a dangerous weapon after prior conviction." Again, he pled Not Guilty and remained free on bail, pending trial.
On March 26th he performed at the Labor Stage of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Theater on West 39th Street.

Then, on 1 April, 1939, Alan Lomax supervised an important recording session for Musicraft in New York, (Russell 14). Important to Huddie, certainly, because it resulted in the commercial release of a now rare 78 r.p.m. album which included "Frankie and Albert," called by John Lomax, Lead Belly's "Ninth Symphony, [his] small opera with stage directions" (Negro 192). "Fannin Street" and "Bourgeois Blues" were also recorded and released; the public at last had an opportunity to listen to Leadbelly on home phonographs. Important, also, because it took place in the midst of his legal troubles and resulted in what many believe to be the best recordings of his career. He recorded fifteen sides for Musicraft, accompanying himself on guitar and tap dancing. Oh for a filmed version!

The trial took place at the beginning of May, and though the big news in New York concerned the opening of the World's Fair, the Herald Tribune found space for an article on the entertainment page. It included a capsule biography which was the usual mixture of fact and fiction:
In 1930 Lead Belly “stabbed six Negroes in a fight over a can of whiskey” and was sentenced to a ten-year term at Angola . . . . It was there that Dr. John A. Lomax, curator of folk songs for the Library of Congress, "discovered" him. . . .“Once again a song addressed to the state Executive Mansion won a pardon for Lead Belly”. . . . Dr. Lomax arranged a singing tour which lined Leadbelly's pockets and enabled the Negro to marry his lady-love, Martha Promise. ("Lead Belly Adds")
Britain's King George VI graced the cover of Time Magazine for 15 May, 1939, an issue which reported the cementing of the Rome-Berlin Axis (21). The King and Queen of England were embarking on a visit to America which included hearing Alan Lomax sing Leadbelly songs to them at the White House. Ledbetter would have sent his regrets that he could not be there himself because of his legal problems, and there was also a story in that same issue (76) sketching his progress from the Texas penitentiary, through his incarceration in Angola for "stabbing six negroes in a fight over a can of whiskey," to being pardoned by the State of Louisiana "at Lomax's suggestion."
“But last week it was the same old story. Standing in Manhattan General Sessions, greying, 54-year-old Lead Belly once again heard a jury pronounce him guilty. Offense: stabbing and slashing Henry Burgess, another Negro, at a party in a Westside rooming house. ("Lead Belly" 77)

On May 4th he was convicted of assault, third degree; the jury recommended clemency. On May 15th, Judge George L. Donnellan sentenced him to one year, with a recommendation of mercy. His prison sentence began on May 20th and ended after six months on November 20th. Huddie had been on his best behavior at the prison on Riker's Island in New York's East River, and for the last ten years of his life, he never again went to prison.
During the hot European summer that year, Hitler's Germany unleashed its military might on Poland to set off the Second World War, though America was not to become a combatant until the end of 1941, two years and three months later.

Eyewitness: One night there was a concert in a grade school auditorium on the West Side [of Manhattan], downtown on Hudson Street, in the area now known as TriBeCa, the Triangle Below Canal Street. It was one of those cramped, high-ceilinged halls common to the old schools built before World War I. The event was a fund-raising event of some kind, I can't remember now just what, but probably a strike. The Almanac Singers were on the stage singing a song about Harlan County in the Virginias, where so much blood was shed. "Blood on the Ground" was the refrain. Lee Hays led them. Later, Alan Lomax sang some of the songs he learned from Leadbelly and others, and an Irish poet was on the program, too; I'm ashamed to have forgotten his name as well.
Then Leadbelly came on. It was the difference between day and night. He had it. He was billed as the King of the 12 String Guitar and the minute he hit (not stroked) those strings, you knew it was the truth. And when he opened his mouth and hollered, the sound of his voice seemed to acquire your ears, and the rest of you — with force. He made sound assume a weight I have never heard another voice approach. It was staggering. And even though I recall a microphone, it was really long before the era of sound enhancement, it was more like a little electric juice added to make the sound carry further, not really sound louder.

After the woes of 1939, 1940 turned out to be one of Leadbelly's best career years, and during the next few years, he was associated with a number of folk singers who based themselves in New York City. These included Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, who were part of the Almanac Singers and who eventually formed the popular 1950's group The Weavers; Woody Guthrie, who also sang with the Almanacs; Cisco Houston, Oscar Brand, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGee and Josh White.
1935 publicity photo courtesy of the Estate of Josh White and the Josh White Archives.
Josh — or Joshua — White was born in South Carolina in 1915, the son of a preacher. In the early 1920's he started leading around blind street singers, including, so he claimed, Blind Lemon Jefferson. White was apparently much more of a rambler than Huddie Ledbetter ever was. He went to Chicago in the early 1930's and did some recordings as the "Singing Christian." He moved to New York, did some odd jobs, and in 1940 landed a bit part in the Broadway production of “John Henry,” which starred Paul Robeson. White played the part of "Blind Lemon." “John Henry” closed after only seven performances, but Josh White's career was underway. He did the same kind of things as Ledbetter during the war years — he had a fifteen minute weekly radio program, recorded for Columbia, and worked regularly at the Cafe Society Downtown; for a time he shared the Village Vanguard gig with Huddie — but he was a smoother, more sophisticated entertainer and thus more acceptable in the New York night club scene. He sang at President Roosevelt's inaugural in 1940, and twice more at the White House during the war. Huddie's itinerary in Washington never included the White House.
Woody Guthrie came from Okemah, Oklahoma, and during the Great Depression he witnessed first hand the plight of the dust bowl farmers and the massive migration of "Okies" to California, where the streets were supposedly paved with gold. Guthrie went to California, too, and got on radio station KFVD in Los Angeles singing hillbilly music. There he met Ed Robbin who was a news commentator working for the left wing newspaper, The People's World. Guthrie started writing a daily column in the paper, "Woody Sez."
I always read the radical papers over my program and took sides with the workers all I knew how. I drew pen sketches for the Peoples World and learned all I could from the speeches and debates, forums, picnics, where famous labor leaders spoke. I heard William Z.Foster, Mother Bloor, Gurley Flynn, Blackie Myers, I heard most all of them and played my songs on their platforms. (Guthrie 4) Woody was introduced to Will Geer, the actor, who was doing benefits to raise money for the migratory labor camps. Woody came along and dived into the struggle. He became a close friend of Will Geer and his family. Through Will, Woody started to make a living singing at fund-raising parties around Los Angeles.

Pete Seeger: Will sent me a copy of Woody's mimeographed songbook, “A Slow Train Through California,” and told me I sure ought to meet Woody when he came to New York. I did meet him in March of 1940 at a midnight folk song session held on the stage of a Broadway theater. It was again a benefit for the California migratory workers. “The Grapes of Wrath,” [by John Steinbeck,] had been published a year before, and in New York many of us felt that we wanted to learn more. Will Geer was MC of the show. Burl Ives was on it, also Leadbelly, Josh White and there was Woody. A little short fellow with a western hat and boots, in blue jeans and needing a shave, spinning out stories and singing songs that he had made up himself. (Seeger 42)

On March 3, Will Geer organized a "Grapes of Wrath Evening" to benefit the "John Steinbeck Committee for Agricultural Workers," a show that changed the course of Woody's career and, perhaps, of American music as well. It was held at the Forrest Theater, home of "Tobacco Road" and featured "American Ballad Singers and Folk Dancers:˘ Will Geer, Alan and Bess Lomax, Aunt Molly Jackson, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, the Pennsylvania Miners and the Golden Gate Quartet." Most of the performers — notably Leadbelly and Aunt Molly Jackson — had appeared in New York before, but usually for small, often academic gatherings. There had been other "folk" music recitals, but this would be remembered as the first really important one, the first before a large, mainstream audience. [Alan Lomax noticed Woody for the first time, here.] (Klein 142))
A week later Woody was down in Washington, D.C., recording with Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, and staying in the Arlington, Virginia, home that Lomax and his wife shared with radio (later, film) director Nicholas Ray. The Library of Congress recording sessions took place on 21, 22, and 27 March, 1940, with Lomax playing the part of a radio interviewer. He then worked up an abbreviated version of the script he'd used in Washington, and put together a program on Woody forhis "Columbia School of the Air" program for 2 April.
But at the rehearsal on the day before — April Fool's Day — Guthrie got into an ornery mood and refused to comply with the simplest direction from CBS's George Zachary. Finally, Zachary exploded and Guthrie walked out with Lomax hot on his heels. Lomax didn't quite know how to handle his feisty protégé, so he avoided the subject as the two walked downtown to Huddie and Martha's place in the East Village. There, they spent a racous evening singing and drinking, tumbling into bed quite late and quite loaded. It was a double bed, and Alan made sure that Woody was securely sandwiched between himself and the wall, and couldn't get out. Next morning they rose early, breakfasted, and went up to the CBS studios where the program was broadcast without a hitch. Woody was a natural on the radio, and he had had a great deal of experience in Los Angeles, too.
About this time, [end March, 1940] Woody started his "Woody Sez" column in the Daily Worker. It appeared in a small box on the Entertainment page.
[Woody spent] a good many nights on the Murphy bed at Huddie and Martha Ledbetter's apartment, awed by the older man's ability and in love with his language. "I heard Leadbelly say the other day, 'I woke up this morning and the blues was falling down like midnight rain,'" he wrote in his column. It was difficult to tell what Leadbelly thought of Woody, although he appeared to enjoy his company. But then, it was difficult to tell what Leadbelly thought of any white man; he was unalterably servile in their presence, and addressed them formally as "Mr. Alan", and even "Mr. Woody." (Klein158)
3 May, 1940, Woody recorded his "Dust Bowl Ballads" at RCA Victor Camden, New Jersey studios.
Between the 15th and the 17th of June, Huddie was in the recording studio for RCA Victor in New York. "Midnight Special," "Pick a Bale of Cotton," and "Rock Island Line" were recorded, with vocal backing by the very smooth sounds of the Golden Gate Quartet. It was an interesting counterpart to Leadbelly's rougher style. There were also several solo sides released on Victor's Bluebird label. These included "Roberta," which he had cut for A.R.C. in 1935, but which was yet to be released; "You Can't Lose Me, Cholly," a two-step which dated back to his sukey jump days; and "Good Morning Blues," possibly his best-known blues (Dixon & Godrich 385).

All Negroes like blues. Why? Because they was born with the blues.
When you lay down at night, turn from one side of the bed all night to the
other and you can't sleep, what's the matter? The blues got you. They
want to talk to you. You got to tell 'em something, and here's what you
got to tell them:
Good morning blues, blues how do you do?
Good maaaaw-ning blues, blues how do you do?
I'm doing alright, good morning, how are you? (Early Leadbelly)

The fourth and final session for Victor took place on Monday, June 17, 1940. That Wednesday, June 19, Huddie made a recording with Woody Guthrie which Guthrie’s widow, Marjorie, says was possibly an audition for a radio show (Caplan, liner notes). It sounds as if the two are sitting around the house with a home recorder, but there was no tape in those days, so it must have been recorded direct to disc. Guthrie is heard throughout as the narrator as Huddie sings a bunch of songs from Louisiana, including a field "holler" and "Whoa, Back, Buck!" (Early Leadbelly). In the latter song, he sings "whoa, Cunningham" instead of "whoa, God-DAMN," which he had sung to the intellectual black-tie gathering in Philadelphia five years earlier. The saltier lyrics wouldn't play for a radio audition.
Around this same time, Guthrie actually had a job singing a couple of songs a week for the Model Tobacco network radio program. He was paid $200 per week, which was quite a lot of money in those days, especially
for Woody Guthrie. According to Pete Seeger, he could have kept the job and had a successful commercial career if he had sung the songs he was asked to sing. But that was not in Guthrie's nature and he quit after about a month.
In the meantime, Pete Seeger went down to Washington, D.C., and worked for Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress. Woody Guthrie came to the capital several times, either to record songs or to sing at a club or a meeting, and he and Seeger became fast friends. Early in the summer of 1940, Woody arrived in a newly acquired Plymouth ("It really splits the breeze," he said), Pete quit his job — "such as it was" — and the two of them set out for parts unknown, singing whenever they could in support of striking workers. In Oklahoma City they contacted the local Communist Party organizers, Bob and Ina Wood, who got them to perform for Hooverville poor and for striking oil workers and the unemployed Workers' Alliance. Woody wrote the "Union Maid" in Oklahoma, and they dropped in on Woody's wife and kids, who lived in a shack in Pampa, in the Texas Panhandle. Here they parted company, Pete heading west, and Woody going back to Oklahoma City after about a week at "home." He picked up Bob Wood and some of his political associates and drove them to New York for the big Communist Party convention in Madison Square Garden. In his "Woody Sez" column, he wrote,
“After we got out of the Holler Tunnel, I says, Well, Boys, what do you think of her? One old boy in the back said, I bet I sunburn the roof of my mouth — but it'll be worth it — he looked out the window as we drove down the street and he said, God amighty, dadburn my hide, is ALL of them people here for the convention? — Another ol boy said, Well, yeah, but they just don't KNOW IT yet."
Woody was so filled with the Party spirit that he gave Bob Wood the Plymouth, so he'd have something to get back home with. It was the official car of the Oklahoma Communist Party for several years after that. (Klein 163)

When Earl Robinson (whose "Ballad for Americans" had been performed by Paul Robeson in 1939) brought [Huddie] to Camp Unity, the Communist Party's summer retreat, [he] shocked and disheartened the audience with his songs about knife fights and "high yaller" women — those weren't the kinds of things they wanted to hear from a progressive Negro. After Robinson explained the problem, Leadbelly returned to win over the crowd with "Bourgeois Blues" and several of his other political songs. [Klein 148]
Woody Guthrie
So Woody was back in New York in good time for the release of his "Dust Bowl Ballads" on Victor in July, 1940. Howard Taubman, writing in the New York Times, grasped hold of some part of the significance of the songs:
“These albums are not a summer sedative. They make you think; they may even make you uncomfortable. . . . The albums show that the phonograph is broadening its perspective, and that life as some of our unfortunates know it can be mirrored on the glistening disks. [NY Times: July 40]
[Woody] spent a good deal of time with Leadbelly that summer, and also with Aunt Molly Jackson and her clan, all of whom lived on the Lower East Side. He took great pleasure in their gruff integrity and wrote in his column: "[They] all come to Leadbelly's house almost every day. . . . Molly is the woman Leadbelly. She is in her cotton apron what Leadbelly is in his bathrobe. She talks to him exactly as to her reflection in the mirror. He speaks back to her like the swamplands to the uplands, the same as his river would talk to her highest cliffrim. She loves him in the same half-jealous way that he loves her, because he sees and feels in Aunt Molly the woman who has found in her own voice the same power on earth that he has found. [Woody Sez: Summer 40]
From time to time, they would all sing on WNYC New York's [municipal] radio station and one of the few places around where pure, undiluted folk music could be heard. Woody did a series of programs that summer with Sarah Ogan and Jim Garland, and mounted a successful campaign to get Leadbelly a weekly show of his own. [Klein 165]

In August, Huddie was down in Washington, D.C., making glistening disks for Alan Lomax and the Library of Congress. Lomax had recently had a great success with several hours of music and interviews with Woody Guthrie and with Jelly Roll Morton, the New Orleans-born pianist who claimed to have invented jazz. The Morton recordings resulted in a book, “Mr. Jelly Roll,” which was published several years later; but more immediately, the recordings led to a resurgence of interest in Morton shortly before his death. Morton was renowned as a great talker.
Huddie was obviously a much more difficult interview for Lomax. He was inclined to answer with stories and rhymes, many of which he had probably told repeatedly until they had become little performances. Lomax's reaction tended to be much like that of his father, John: he easily lost patience and constantly interrupted the interviewee. While the result was dramatic, it emphasized the same glibness that Lomax exhibited on the Guthrie recordings, and was short on the social history he was presumably aiming for.

Lomax: These records are being made by Huddie Ledbetter from Shreveport, Louisiana, in the Coolidge Auditorium in Washington, D.C., on August 23rd, 1940. Lead Belly's about . . . how old are you, Huddie?
Ledbetter: Fifty-one.
Lomax: [repeating this information] Lead Belly's fifty-one years old; he's been playing guitar all his life, pretty much; has wandered all over Texas and Louisiana; now is living in New York down on the East Side, and making some kind of a living with records and playing at parties, and demonstrating for peace whenever he gets a chance to. [The war in Europe was now about a year old, and France had fallen to Hitler’s Germany about ten weeks previous.]

Woody Guthrie, meantime, was moving towards a paying gig with CBS. Alan Lomax was scripting, and Nicholas Ray preparing to direct, a network folk music series called "Back Where I Come From." The scripts, according to Canadian expatriate folksinger Oscar Brand, "demonstrated the power of contemporary comment in song." (68) A half-hour pilot featuring Woody, Burl Ives, the Golden Gate Quartet, and emcee Clifton Fadiman, was aired on 19 August.
CBS couldn't find a sponsor for the show, but the higher-ups at the network seemed to like the idea and were ready to go ahead with it regardless. Potential sponsors may have been frightened off by the unfamiliar music, the radical politics of some of the participants, the integration of blacks and whites, or the combination of all three ingredients. The show began running regularly in late September for fifteen minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. After a few weeks, Woody started challenging Nicholas Ray on various artistic decisions. He was especially vehement on the subject of Leadbelly, who was given only an occasional, subservient role on the program and, worse, often had to hear a smoother, more accessible black singer, Josh White, perform his songs so that white America could understand the words. [Klein169]
On New Years' Eve, some of the cast from "Back Where I Come From" piled into Woody's Pontiac and went up to Nyack, NY, to play a fund-raiser at Will Geer's new house (only Will Geer would have a fund-raiser on New Years' Eve). A good slice of Broadway was there that night, dressed to the nines in gowns and tuxedos, and Woody got ornery drunk. He sang three or four songs rather poorly, his eyes closed throughout.
"Why do you have your eyes closed?" Geer asked.
"All them white shirts and diamonds are blinding me," sez Woody.
The ride back to the city was accomplished at speeds ranging from 20 to 80 miles per hour, although the speed at any given moment had little to do with the difficulty of the road. When they reached Harlem, Woody insisted on screeching to a stop at each corner and asking pedestrians, "How do we get from here to the United States?" Leadbelly, in the back seat, scrunched down and mumbled, "Please, Mr. Woody, please . . ." [Klein172]

The Almanac Singers in 1941 were Pete Seeger, who initially called himself Pete Bowers "to protect" his father, Charles, who worked for the Roosevelt administration; Lee Hays, and Millard Lampell. They rented a loft on Fourth Avenue near Union Square, just a block from Communist Party HQ. Earl Robinson, the folk-oriented composer was a member of the party's Cultural Section and was a great supporter, but the Almanacs were a little too free-wheeling for the diciplined party core. On 24 March, the Daily Worker ran its first big article about them, an account of "Bowers" and Hays appearance at the League of American Writers conference.
Below: Pete Seeger singing for the opening of the Washington, DC, Labor Canteen in 1944: sponsored by the Federal Workers of America. Note the presence of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in the center of the picture.

In April, the Almanacs started having Sunday afternoon rent parties, a long tradition in the black community, but rather revolutionary among New York's white Bohemian set.
They were joyous, free-form affairs, attended by most of the folk musicians in the area: Leadbelly, always immaculate in his suit and tie; Aunt Molly Jackson and her clan; Burl Ives; Blind Sonny Terry, the harmonica player; Richard Dyer-Bennett, who sang the classic ballads in artsy, academic fashion; Josh White. Non-musicians were charged thirty-five cents admission, beer was sold for ten cents a cup, and sometimes as many as a hundred people crowded into the loft — which provided more than enough money to keep the Almanacs afloat. [Klein 190] By the summer of 1941, Guthrie joined the Almanac Singers, and the group went on a American tour which took them all the way to the West Coast. Pete and Woody were the only remaining Alamanacs who made it to Seattle, Washington, by September. A New Deal political club known as the Washington Commonwealth Federation arranged for them to sing for trade unions in the Puget Sound region, and then invited them to their next "hootenanny."
"This was mortally a blowout and one of their most successful hoots. Pete and me aim to put the word Hootenanny on the market." [Klein 205]
It was the first time we had heard the term. It seems they had a vote to decide what they would call their monthly fund raising parties. "Hootenanny" won out by a nose over "wingding." The Seattle hootenannies were real community affairs. One family would bring a huge pot of some dish like crab gumbo. Others would bring cakes, salads. A drama group performed topical skits, a good 16-mm film might be shown, and there would be dancing, swing and folk, for those of sound limb. And, of course, there would be singing.
Pete: "Woody and I returned to New York, where we rejoined the other Almanac Singers, and lived in a big house, pooling all our income. We ran Sunday-afternoon rent parties, and without a second's thought, started calling them hootenannies, after the example of our west-coast friends. Seventy-five to one hundred Gothamites would pay 35 cents each to listen to an afternoon of varied folk songs, topical songs, and union songs, not only from the Almanacs but from Huddie Ledbetter, Josh White, the Mechau family, and many many others — including members of the audience." (Seeger 327)
The Almanacs opened their fall campaign in new quarters: a classic New York town house, selected by Pete Hawes, near the corner of Tenth Street and Greenwich Avenue, in the heart of Greenwich Village. Almanac House, as it came to be known, offered more privacy than the old loft — the top two floors were bedrooms — but less space. The Sunday afternoon concerts, now called hootenannies, were squeezed uncomfortably into the basement.

December 7th, 1941: the Japanese attack Peal Harbor resulting in America’s entry into World War II.

Woody Guthrie wrote that he'd lived with Huddie and Martha for several months back in 1942 at their place on the Lower East Side in New York. "I still sleep a night once in a while at Lead's when I get lost, stranded, strayed and left out in the weather." (Asch & Lomax 16)

LEADBELLY is a hard name (by Woody Guthrie)

And the hard name of a harder man
The name that his mama spoke over him down in the swamps
of Louisiana when he was born was Huddie Ledbetter,
for her husband, Ledbetter, and because she liked the
sound and the roll of Huddie.
I guess that they called him Huddie while he was growing
up from dirty overhalls to knee pants, longer pants,
and I've heard him sing a song about what happened to
him when he did change his knee pants for his long ones
I came to his and Martha's apartment over on East Tenth
Street and I carried my own guitar, and they begged me
to stay, to eat, sleep, sing and dance there in their
apartment of Three little rooms painted a sooty sky
blue and then smoked over with the stains from
cigarets, cigars, of the rich and of the poor
I saw Leadbelly get up in his morning, wash, shave, put on
his bath robe, and Martha would stand up in her tall
way and make me get shaved, bathed, washed, dressed,
while she cooked Leadbelly his breakfast on her
charcoal flat top stove. The stove was older than me,
older than Martha, but not any older than Leadbelly.
I watched him set after breakfast, look down eastwards out
from his window, read the Daily News and the Daily
Mirror, and the Daily Worker
I listened as he tuned up his Twelve String Stella and
eased his fingers up and down and along the neck in
the same way that the library and museum clerk touched
the frame of the best painting in their gallery. It
was not possible for me to count the numbers of folks
that came in through Leadbelly's door there
He never did bother to count you, and Martha tried several
times, but always got lost early in the morning. The
people waking up in the building dropped around the earliest.
Leadbelly picked along on his guitar, just something that
took him back where he come from, and he played at
about half of his power in order to warm up easy and
to get ready for anybody that asked him for a little
number on their way to hunt for coal, or for a job or
work, or to a job of some kind.
I liked Leadbelly's guitar and singing this early morning
speed as well, better in some ways, than the faster
and stronger ones that you have seen him play on your
stages and in your studios.
He had a slow running, easy, deep quiet way about him,
that made me see that his strength was like a little
ball in his hands, and that his thoughts ran as deep
in color as the lights that played down from the sky
and onto his face. (Guthrie)

Pete Seeger wrote that he had been tremendously influenced byHuddie's music and by his unaffectedness. At the time of their meeting, Pete had dropped out of Harvard and was wearing "work" clothes to identify himself with the proletariat. Huddie, he noted, did not need to affect the dress of a man of the people; he was the real thing. Huddie, when he was not at home in his bathrobe, always dressed neatly in a suit and tie, with shined shoes and a fancy walking stick. Seeger recalled,
“he and his wife Martha had a little flat on the Lower East Side [of Manhattan]. Woody Guthrie and I visited him often there, and made music together with him, till the neighbors complained of the noise (Asch & Lomax 7).

After the commercial recordings of 1940, none of which proved financially successful, Huddie was taken up by Moses Asch, the founder of America's most extraordinary record company, Folkways. Asch was just as much a character as the many colorful musicians he recorded. These included all of the folk singers mentioned above as well as hundreds of ethnic performers from around the world, country bluesmen, old time jazzmen, poets reading their poetry, politicians delivering speeches, "frogs croaking, a science series and almost two hundred children's records" (Scherman 111).
Leadbelly's first recordings for Asch were work songs, but it was soon suggested that Asch continue his successful children's series with an album of Huddie's children's songs (Asch & Lomax 5). Many of these were simply the sukey jump, play party songs of his youth in the backwoods of Caddo Parish and Harrison County: "Skip to My Lou," "You Can't Lose Me, Cholly," and the "Cotton Picking Song." (Dixon & Godrich 385). Moses Asch has since written of Leadbelly's way with children. He saw him playing for kids in the playgrounds of Greenwich Village and in a Christmas concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the posh Upper East Side:
“It was jam-packed, children all over the place, frantic parents. But the moment Leadbelly started to play and sing, the audience hushed, the children grouped around him as though it was grandfather singing for them, some sang with him, others danced, parents were bewitched. (Asch & Lomax 5)
Both Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger have testified to Leadbelly's wonderful way with children. "Kids adored him," says Seeger. "Here this man who'd been in jail much of his life was just great singing for children" (Scherman 117). Woody, ever the wordsmith, put it this way,
"I've seen him laugh and joke with schoolkids, nursery kids, little toddlers climbing all over his guitar and up and down his arms and legs, and tell them, 'You make me feel new, I'll sing best for you'" (Asch & Lomax 17). Popular singer Maria Muldaur (b. Sept, 1943) remembers, as a child growing up in New York's Greenwich Village, listening to Huddie sing to her and others from his front steps (Prime 12). Much of the recording for Asch, which later showed up on both the Folkways and Stinson labels, seems to have taken place between 1941 and 1943 (Dixon & Godrich 385; Leadbitter & Slavin 189), and there were several sessions that combined the talents of Leadbelly with Woody and Pete, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry and his long-time partner, guitarist Brownie McGee. During America's war years, 1942 to 1945, Huddie also broadcast on Armed Forces Radio and thus created a small following in Europe, especially in England and France. CBS radio director Norman Corwin believed that folk songs had a much stronger emotional appeal than pop ditties, so he used the likes of Seeger and Leadbelly, Josh White and Burl Ives, as part of the war effort (Brand 81). Huddie, naturally, made up a "Hitler Song," which included the refrain,

We're gonna tear Hitler down
We're gonna bring him to the ground.

Charles Edward Smith wrote an article entitled "King of the 12 String Guitar," which was published in the fall, 1942, issue of “Jazz” magazine. In the interview for the article, Huddie basically reiterated what he had told Lomax; he stuck to the legend that had been created, even though he had claimed Lomax misrepresented him. Smith was a much more sympathetic ear, however, and he painted Huddie as more of a victim of circumstance than a perpetrator of violence. For the next two years, until the summer of 1944 when Huddie left New York for the West Coast, Frederic Ramsey, Jr., kept tabs on the singer's activities:
"They stretch on and on. He has appeared on major network programs devoted to folk music. With artists like members of the Golden Gate [gospel] Quartet, Sidney Bechet (the Louisiana clarinettist) and Josh White, he appeared in the CBS "Back Where I Come From" series. For several weeks in the 1943-44 winter season, he had a series of his own programmes over WNYC, New York City's broadcast station.
He has appeared at innumerable jam sessions. I remember, particularly, one very fine session at Labour Stage run by [jazz pianist] Art Hodes, when Sidney Bechet turned up on a surprise trip East. Huddie has played on a commercial series with Josh White for NBC, and anytime there is a folk music festival anywhere, Huddie has to be there. Included, among others, was an ambitious one at Town Hall, which was recorded and sent overseas. In Washington also, Huddie appeared at the annual Folk Festivals and at jam sessions sponsored by Nesuhi Ertegun, noted jazz collector, and his brother Ahmed. [Ahmed Ertegun went on to found Atlantic Records] All these were squeezed in between night club engagements and heavy recording schedules! (Ramsey, Vanguard 7)
Put like that, it seems like a busy, successful career; but in fact, Huddie was underemployed in the music business and always had to struggle for the next buck. Martha continued to work in menial jobs just to keep the rent paid and food on the table.
From 25 November, 1941, until the spring of 1944, Huddie performed a great deal at the Village Vanguard, which is located in Greenwich Village on Seventh Avenue at 11th Street. In it's Night Life listings, the New Yorker magazine described the Vanguard as "a low-ceilinged cellar spot, specializing in folk singers." After the war began, the place was often referred to as being "something like an air-raid shelter, except for Huddie Ledbetter singing folk songs." At the beginning, Huddie shared the billing with "Joshua White and other folk singers." At times, he was replaced by Burl Ives or the calypso singer, Belle Rosette, and at other times, Huddie had the place to himself. During his last few months, the listing ran, "a cellar with murals as well as Huddie Ledbetter and the Clarence Profit Trio," a jazz group.
Clarence Profit started a seven year Greenwich Village career at George's Tavern on Grove Street in 1937. He recorded for Decca, Brunswick, and Columbia and also did some performing on 52nd Street. Pianist Teddy Wilson called Profit a true original who was so wrapped up in his music that he neglected his health. Profit died in 1944, cutting short a promising career as well as his regular gig at the Village Vanguard (Driggs & Lewine).
To judge by the entertainment listings for the war years, it was a lively time for jazz lovers in New York. Pete Ammons and James P. Johnson played stride, boogie woogie, and ragtime, and Billie Holiday often sang, at the Cafe Society Downtown; the Cafe Society Uptown featured "Negro entertainment" by Hazel Scott, the Golden Gate Quartet, and pianist Teddy Wilson's Orchestra. Sidney Bechet played Nick's on 7th Avenue at 10th Street (a block from the Vanguard), and the King Cole Trio was on 52nd Street, never far from Count Basie, Duke Ellington and other legendary jazz royalty.
By 1944, Josh White was listing his business address as the Cafe Society Downtown in Sheridan Square, and Burl Ives [pictured in a 1955 photo by Carl Van Vechten]
could be found at the Cafe Society Uptown. Billie Holliday was joined by Coleman Hawkins at the Downbeat on 52nd Street, and the jazz pianists included Art Tatum, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Art Hodes, and Mary Lou Williams, as well as Ammons and Johnson. After Huddie played his last gig at the Village Vanguard, on 2nd April, 1944, he dropped out of the New York club scene. Pete Seeger thinks he was just too "country" for New York audiences. [Photo of Billie Holliday, 1949, by Carl Van Vechten]
On the16th of April, Paul Robeson celebrated his 46th birthday with a monster party at the National Guard Armory, 34th Street and Park Avenue. Among the thousands who turned up for the event were performers Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Zero Mostel, Mildred Bailey, and Jimmy Durante. Army Intelligence agents were also there to provide information to the F.B.I. The Bureau, looking ahead to the postwar era, was gathering information on possible subversives, and Robeson was a number one suspect. He was a fearless fighter for the civil rights of his fellow African-Americans. On the 23rd of April, Huddie recorded several songs for Moses Asch's "New Play Party Songs" album, and in June he recorded two songs with Josh White, also for Asch. The titles in the latter session were "Pretty Flower" and "Don't Lie, Buddy."

On May 5th, M.E. Barnicle hosted a send off party for Huddie. During the Summer of 1944, while Allied troops were fighting their way from the Normandy beaches to Paris and points east, Huddie departed from New York and headed for California. He felt there might be a better future for him in the Golden State.

Leadbelly's Nieces: an Interview

2008-02-27T14:28:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I went to visit Irene Campbell in Marshall, Texas. She was a retired schoolteacher well into her 80's; she'd attended Bishop College in Marshall and taught at the local schools, starting in the 1930's, before integration, and retiring in the 1970's; which would have been about the time that segregation was ending in Texas.
Irene had caused a bit of a storm with the Louisiana relatives of Leadbelly when she'd requested that his grave site be moved over the line to Texas, because she felt that was really his home. So I went to talk to her about her Uncle Huddie. She was related through Huddie's half-brother Alonzo Batts, Irene's father. She surprised me at the interview by introducing me to her elder sister, Viola. So this is a segment of an interview with the Batts sisters, Irene Campbell and Viola Daniels circa 1990.

Me: Do you remember the songs that Huddie sang?
Irene: Some of them.
Me: When you were kids.
Irene: "Goodnight Irene," I know that.
Me: (With a laugh) Sounds like he wrote that for you.
Irene: Yes he did, he did. Really, this Mr. Myers, we called him Miles — Sterling Miles, but later I found out his name was Myers, — said he was there when Uncle Huddie wrote the song. They came through, they'd been out, and passed by my mother — he [Huddie] called her "Big Sister". "Big Sister, I'm drunk, and I'm hungry, fix me something to eat." She told him, "Well, you keep the baby while I fix something to eat." He was keeping the baby and wrote this song. "Goodnight Irene." Now that's what Mr. Myers said.
Me: Who's Mr. Myers?
Irene: He was his friend. Sterling Mi - well, we said Miles, but his name was Myers. He hasn't been dead so long either.
Me: Is there anybody else who's still living who was there?
Irene: There's a man, I think his name is Russell, but I don't know him. He says he knows Uncle Huddie. And he can play something, but he doesn't play it with the same tune that Uncle Huddie had. He can't even play "Goodnight Irene" with the same tune. (Irene turns to her sister, Viola.) Do you know anybody living now that knew Uncle Huddie?
Viola: The one I know would be already dead I guess - Roscoe Jamieson ?
Irene: He's dead.
Viola: He would be the one that would come into the house, regularly. See, all these people would meet him 'down yonder' didn't come to the house, you know. Cause what they had going down there, those songs, he didn't play at the house. So we had a wonderful time with our hymns and songs that we sang. . .
Irene: Games - what you call (sings)

I measure my love to show you
I measure my love to show you
We have a game to do. . .

Songs that you can act out. What is this you go in and out the window?

In and out the window, for we have a game today.

Viola: I forgot that one.
Irene: And what were some other play songs that we used to have?
Viola: "Little Sally Walker, sitting in a saucer" - that sort of thing. "Skip to My Lou, my darling." We'd do the skipping.
Irene: "I measure my love to show you" you know, those were the sort of things he would play for us and we would do them out on the lawn, out in the yard. And we'd have, uh, "Goodbye Mary, I hate to leave you,"
Viola: And then I notice in this children's book they've started this "Wild Goose." . . .

Irene: (takes up the recollection) . . . the bird would come from heaven a certain time of the year. He was so large that his wings would cover the sky. It would get dark. And he would say "QUA, QUA" (laughter) and when you see this bird coming over, you tell him what you want him to tell your loved ones in heaven when he gets back, and you give him what you want him to tell, and he'd say "QUA-K-QUA" and he just pass on over and then it get light again. Cause it was black as night while he was passing over. And I can't sing - can you remember some more songs we would sing when this bird was coming over? But the tale is that the group of them went hunting and the big eagle - big bird - came over and they shot him and it took - how long did it take him to fall? -
Viola: I don't remember that.
Irene: So many years, I think it was eight years to fall, and then he fell, and then - eight hours! it took him a long time to fall. And then they decided they would cook him and they put him on to cook and it took that same length of time for him to cook, and they cooked him and they got him boiled, done, and then when they got him ready to eat, he flew away (laughter). That was a tall tale!
Viola: That's what the children -
Irene: That's what Huddie would tell us and we were there spellbound, listening.
Viola: You were listening, I don't know where I was, I didn't hear that one. I'd get part of it, I didn't get the other part of it.
Irene: Boiled him and boiled him and he finally flew away. Now he has that in music. That record would get it straight, because I have it all twisted. I know it was a ridiculously long time. Falling and cooking and finally flew away. That was just a tale to make the kids laugh. He loved children. I think, cause he took so much time with us.

It's always been said that Huddie Ledbetter was a great children's entertainer and these two ancient ladies gave a glimpse into that aspect of Huddie's life.

Leadbelly & Lomax: 1934-5

2008-02-23T14:29:00.000-08:00

At left, John Lomax (center) with some of his interviewees. (not Leadbelly)
John and Alan Lomax returned to Angola in July, 1934, only to find the irrepressible Huddie begging, pleading, and urging that they take his pardon song to Governor O.K. Allen (J. Lomax, Negro 32). He had written the song in 1932, had been revising, improving, and singing it to every white man he met ever since (233). He had tried to get it to the Governor (the hand-picked successor to then-U.S. Senator Huey Long) in the form of a poem, but it had been intercepted by "Tighty" Himes.
John Lomax was impressed with Lead Belly's shrewdness in his choice of tunes to go with his pardon lyrics, tunes which were "direct Negro modifications of white melodies, the sort of tunes the average white man likes best to hear Negroes sing" (232). It is difficult to reconcile this attitude of Lomax with his requirement that folk music be pure and unadulterated. If he was looking for a folksinger who had not been subject to white influences or to the music marketplace, Ledbetter seems like an odd choice; if he was looking for someone to attract attention, he found the right man.
The song "Governor O.K. Allen," which the Lomaxes recorded and took to Baton Rouge for the Governor to hear, is more interesting for its overview of the whole political situation in regard to prison paroles than as an individual plea. It tells how general manager Himes, had seen the need to relieve overcrowding, and how he went to Warden Long (Huey P. Long's cousin) to tell him about the arrangements he and the Governor were making to free a certain number of prisoners. A personal note comes in when Huddie recounts seeing an article in the Times of Shreveport which told of the release of a certain number of prisoners, and how that made him think of his woman at home. He then praises Governor Allen for his kindness in reuniting so many men with their wives, talks about Lieutenant-Governor Fournet, and closes with a verse like the end of the Governor Pat Neff song:

Had you, Governor O.K. Allen, like you got me,
I'd wake up in the morning, let you out on reprieve.

It would be interesting to speculate on a meeting between Leadbelly and Huey Long, if the latter had remained governor instead of entering the national political arena. But tragically, as it turned out, Long's ambitions went far beyond the confines of Louisiana, so he never received Leadbelly's plea for a pardon in musical form. As far as we know. In fact, the plea may never even have reached the desk of O.K. Allen.

On August 1, Huddie Ledbetter was released from Angola and though Louisiana prison authorities denied that the song was the reason, John Lomax said he liked to believe otherwise (J. Lomax, Negro 232). In a letter dated 13 May, 1939, Warden L. A. Jones of Angola wrote to the Chief Probabtion Officer of the Court of General Sessions in New York with the following information about Ledbetter.

“This man has been recipient of wide publicity in various magazines of national circulation, the story usually being that he sang or wrote such moving appeals to the Governor that he was pardoned. Such statements have no foundation in fact. He received no clemency, and his discharge was a routine matter under the good time law which applies to all first and second offenders.”

Huddie made his way back to Shreveport and renewed his relationship with Martha Promise. Martha (b.1906, and thus about 17 years younger than Huddie) was originally from Longwood, near the Jeter Plantation, and had known Huddie all her life. She had a twin sister, Mary, the mother of Tiny Robinson who has been instrumental in keeping the Leadbelly flame burning. (See Leadbelly Foundation).
He must have felt a strong connection to John Lomax, however, because he wrote him four letters asking for employment; he was eventually rewarded with a telegram arranging a meeting in Marshall, Texas, a city thirty miles west of Shreveport, close to Huddie's family home.
Lomax enjoyed recounting the story of their meeting in Marshall on September 1; it appeared not only in the book on Lead Belly published in 1936, but also as a re-enactment in a March of Timeïnewsreel (Ramsey, "Leadbelly" 17), in a Time Magazine article, and in a New York Herald Tribune story, 3 January 1935:
I was sitting in a hotel in Texas when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and there was Lead Belly with his guitar, his knife and a sugar bag packed with all his earthly belongings. He said, "Boss, here I is." I took him up to my room and asked him what he was doing there and he replied, "Boss, I came here to be your man. I belong to you."
I said, "Well, after all, I don't know you. You're a murderer." He said, "Boss, it wasn't my fault. They attacked me. I had to fight back." I told him that as a matter of fact I did need a driver for my car and might be able to use him, but I added, "If some day you decide on some lonely road that you want my money and my car, don't use your knife on me. Just tell me and I'll give them to you. I have a wife and children back home, and they'd miss me. ("Lomax Arrives")

However it came bout, and it seemed like a mutually beneficial arrangement, the two set off on a tour of Southern penitentiaries, looking particularly for Negro work songs still used by black gang labor. Their first stop was Little Rock, Arkansas, where Lomax, as was his custom, visited with the state governor to get approval for his quest. During four days spent in Little Rock, recording in the Negro district, Lomax found how useful Lead Belly's playing and singing could be: when other singers heard him, they came forward with their own material. The same thing happened subsequently in the prisons: through Lead Belly's singing, the convicts were quickly able to understand what was required of them (J. Lomax, îNegroï 37).
In “Negro Folks Songs as Sung by Leadbelly,” Lomax says he had no idea what was going on in Lead Belly's mind (35), yet the written word constantly reveals the latter's thoughts. When new clothes were provided to take the place of his Angola prison garb, Huddie's "face was aglow with happiness." Lomax had him keep the prison clothes, "though he always hated to wear them" (36), so that he could don them for concerts, especially for white audiences. When Lead Belly managed to commandeer a free tank of gas from the State of Arkansas, over Lomax' mild protestations, he said, "Shucks! White folks always has plenty of everything. Dey won't miss a little gas." And more than all else, Huddie was clearly depressed by the constant visits to prisons: "I'm tired of lookin' at niggers in the penitenshuh. I wish we could go somewheres else" (39).
There were visits back to Shreveport for Huddie to visit Martha Promise and to show off his new clothes and job — not a particularly strange desire on his part. There was also a trip to the Lomax home in Austin, Texas, where Huddie composed a song about the family. The song, "Elnora," was based on a prison work song; it was also the name of the Lomax maid:
El-nora/ O Lawd, Lawd/ El-nora/ O Lawd, Lawd.
The verses were simply names of family members: John the bossman, John Jr., Alan the little bossman, etc., and the address of the Lomax home, but everyone seemed to enjoy and appreciate it (îNegroï 95).
When John Lomax decided that the penitentiary tour was over, he dropped Lead Belly in Shreveport and determined to have nothing further to do with him (43). There had been too much stress and friction beween the two; their backgrounds and agendas were simply too far opposed. John Lomax was a serious scholar in his mid-sixties who probably felt himself too old to be tramping around the countryside; Huddie was a compulsive musician, fifty-ish but in excellent physical condition due to years of hard labor, who liked to drink and party, especially among others of like mind. It was not an ideal match, yet together they accomplished a great deal, and at this point they were only half way through their adventure.
Lomax returned to Austin in November, and Huddie wrote him several letters begging to be taken on the upcoming New York trip. Lomax had been asked to make a Folk Song presentation at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in Philadelphia at year's end, and he was asked to bring Lead Belly. “American Ballads and Folk Songs,” meanwhile, had just been published, and there was some scholarly interest in the Lomaxes' activities. Alan urged that Lead Belly be included in the trip and at last his father threw "caution to the winds," and agreed (J. Lomax, Negro 43).
Early in December, 1934, Huddie was picked up in Shreveport and squeezed into the car which held the recording equipment, three people, two guitars (Alan played, too), and various personal effects. There were more penitentiaries along the way, in Georgia and North Carolina, before this odd trio arrived in Washington, D.C., where the attention started to come from white intellectuals. This was to be Huddie Ledbetter's paying audience for the rest of his life; they did not pay well, but they did like his music.

In Philadelphia, meanwhile, the interest of newspapers had been aroused by his queer name. Reporters crowded into my room, while I hid Lead Belly. His singing and playing while seated on the top center of the banquet table at the smoker before a staid and dignified professorial audience smacked of sensationalism. (îNegroï 45)
Ninety-three people turned up the next day at 9:00 a.m., December 29, at the Popular Literature section, to hear "Comments on Negro Folk Songs" by John Lomax, illustrated by the singing and playing of the "Negro convict Lead Belly of Louisiana" (PMLA Supplement 1325). That evening a group of intellectuals in evening dress, at Bryn Mawr College, "listened curiously to 'Dicklicker's Holler' and 'Whoa, Back, Buck!'" (J. Lomax, Negro 45) The latter, an ox-driving song, contains grunts, yelps, and the unforgettable refrain:

Whoa, back, buck and gee by the lamb,
Who made the backband?
WHOA God-DAMN!

"Dicklicker" was the name of a fellow convict in Texas, and Huddie simply ascribes the "holler" to him. He offers no further explanation of the name (îNegroï 116). Several years later, Huddie made a recording of "Dick Ligger's Holler"; this may be a closer rendering of the convict's name, but Lomax evidently preferred the single word (Ramsey, "Sessions" 4).

On New Year's Day, 1935, the two Lomaxes brought Lead Belly to the "city of [his] dreams," New York. Apart from discovering that his color barred him from getting a hotel room south of 110th Street — he stayed at the Harlem YMCA — Lead Belly made quite a splash in the city. He played for a group from Columbia and New York Universities on New Year's Day and was given some media coverage. According to John Lomax, the term "bad nigger" only added to his attraction (Negro 49). Obviously, Lomax had hoped for something like this. After all, he had made him keep his prison clothes for future use ·—· a photograph of him thus attired appeared in the 14 January 1935 issue of Time Magazine (50) — and he had billed him as a "convict" at the M.L.A. meeting in Philadelphia. The New York Herald Tribune, said Lomax, described Lead Belly as "a saturnine singer of the swamplands," (îNegro ï49) but "saturnine" was Lomax's word; it was not in the newspaper article. To Lomax, Huddie was saturnine: gloomy and unfathomable. To the Herald Tribune reporter, he was
“a powerful, knife-toting Negro, who has killed one man and seriously wounded another, but whose husky tenor and feathery, string-plucking fingers ineluctably charm the ears of those who listen. . . His voice causes brown-skinned women to swoon and produces a violently inverse effect on their husbands and lovers.” ("Lomax Arrives")
Huddie was excited to be in New York and obviously planned to do more than be an exhibit for these curious white folks. He had gone off on his own to check out the Harlem nightlife, much to the concern of Lomax, who was trying to make arrangements that would benefit his enterprise and, he thought, his protege (îNegroï 48). But the protege returned the morning after to the Lomax's flat in the Village, somewhat hungover.
"Lead Belly sang in Manhattan last week for University of Texas alumni. And John Lomax was nervous. Theatrical agents and radio scouts insisted on hearing his protege who had been out on a wild 24-hour rampage in Harlem. Until it was time for him to sing Lomax kept his hell-raising minstrel locked up in a coat room." ("Murderous Minstrel" 50)
The performance went off without mishap, the report went on to say, and Lead Belly was praised for his rich, clear voice. As a result, he was featured in the March of Time newsreel, which was a re-enactment of Lead Belly's release from Angola, his subsequent meeting with John Lomax, and his marriage to Martha Promise; in articles in the New York newspapers and national magazines; in dispatches from the Associated Press; and in a poem, "Ballad of a Ballad Singer," by William Rose Benet (J. Lomax, Negro 49). The American Record Company (A.R.C.) recorded at least forty-nine sides by Lead Belly during five separate studio sessions in early 1935: on January 23, 24, and 25; on February 5; and on March 25 (Dixon & Godrich 381). For some reason, the bulk of this material was not released until Columbia Records, which had taken over A.R.C., put out an album called "Leadbelly" (Col 30035) in the 1970's.
The famous March of Time newsreel (3:39):

During Huddie's 1935 New Year binge, he apparently ran across bandleader Cab Calloway, arguably the most popular black performer of the era. The Herald Tribune stated that Huddie claimed to have received job offers from Calloway, but in return had expressed his contempt for Cab. "He don't know nothin' 'bout singin'," said Huddie, according to the newspaper report.
Members of the New York press were fascinated by the prison record of the performer and they were charmed by his music. They could hardly understand the lyrics because of Leadbelly's thick plantation accent, but they were moved by the power and raw emotion of his performance. (Brand 74)
In mid-January Huddie, no doubt feeling like a fish out of water or, perhaps, in a goldfish bowl, sent for his lady-friend Martha Promise of Shreveport, and the two were married in Wilton, Connecticut. John Lomax had borrowed the country cottage of a friend in Wilton, and he and Alan had moved Huddie there, away from Harlem. Jerrold Hirsch (personal interview) points out that Lomax deliberately set up house in Wilton because he thought of Lead Belly as a "country" Negro, unable to cope with the poison of the big city. Of course, the genteel Connecticut countryside would have been a far cry from the backwoods of Caddo Parish. Also, John Lomax wanted to keep his "subject" to himself.
The wedding between Martha and Huddie was widely reported; even the Shreveport papers, usually oblivious to the social lives of "negroes," mentioned the occasion, though not on the bridal page. "Negro to Join Radio Artist Mate in New York," announced the Times of Shreveport:
Martha Promise Ledbetter, 30-year-old negro, will leave Shreveport next week to join her husband singing cowboy songs in the east for John A. Lomax, folk song composer. The woman formerly worked in a local laundry. (18)
That was the whole story and, brief though it was, it gave a rather skewed picture of what was happening. Martha was actually going to get married; she and her husband were not likely to be performing cowboy songs together; and if people do "compose" folk songs, John Lomax certainly didn't, he collected them. Although pretty harmless, the story is a good example of how information can be misleading. The Shreveport îJournalï took more interest in the event, running a four-paragraph story:
"Martha Promise Ledbetter, 30-year-old Shreveport Negro, will lay aside her duties checking garments at a local laundry next week and go to New York, where she will join her husband in singing for John A. Lomax, writer of cowboy and folk songs.
"The Ledbetter woman, who is one of the principal sopranos in the Silver Leaf Jubilee Choir, local negro singers, will have transportation provided by the Macmillan Publishing Co. and Lomax through C.M. "Red" Leman of the Hirsch and Leman Co. Lomax, the song writer, hails from Austin, Texas, and he recently published a book of cowboy and folk songs. Lomax heard Ledbetter sing and had him come to New York last November shortly after he and Martha Promise had married. Ledbetter is reported to be giving Lomax 'inspiration for his negro songs.'
"A few days ago Mr. Leman received a telegram from the Macmillan company asking if he would make transportation arrangements for the Ledbetter woman. He agreed to do so and later Lomax communicated with him. Money for the woman's expenses was wired here. (3)
Apparently the reason for announcing that the Ledbetters were already married had something to do with Lomax's fear of being accused of white slavery (J. Lomax, Negro 50). The term "white slavery" seems odd in this instance. The Herald Tribune had the most colorful article on the wedding celebration.

GAY LEADBELLY IN CINNAMON SUIT
WEDS MARTHA ON 46TH BIRTHDAY
Sheds White Gloves After Ceremony in Connecticut,
Seizes Guitar and Has Preacher and Deacon Tapping Feet.

WILTON, Conn., Jan.20 - Precisely at high noon today the saga of Lead Belly, which had begun forty-six year ago to the hour in the bayou swamps of Louisiana, reached an emotional climax in a 200-year-old house perched on a Revolutionary Connecticut hill near this village.

There was a picture of the bride and groom (above) and a solid two-column article which described their clothes, listed the guests, and gave an account of the party which followed the ceremony. Huddie was attired in "an enchanting" double-breasted cinnamon suit with red checks. Martha wore a black silk frock with a brightly striped yoke and sleeves. She had bought it "on sale" in Norwalk for three dollars, reduced from $12.95. They both wore white gloves for the ceremony, but Huddie removed his immediately afterwards, took up the guitar, and sang,

I'm in love with you, honey
You said you'd love me, too, honey
I'm in love with you, honey
It's funny but it's true, honey
None but you will do, honey.

The ceremony was performed by the bespectacled Rev. Samuel Weldon of the Bethel A. M. E. Church of Norwalk, who arrived in the company of three church deacons. John Lomax gave the bride away and Alan was the best man; he dropped the ring at a critical moment, but other than that, the ceremony went without a hitch. Alan's brother John, Jr., was also there, with Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, who owned the house, and two Lomax friends, Margaret Conklin and Gertrude E. King.
After Huddie sang his love song, one of the deacons let out a "Whoopee!" and everyone smiled and applauded. Then Huddie sang one of those blues songs in praise of darker skin-tones:

A yellow-skinned woman keeps you worried all the time
A yellow-skinned woman makes a moon-eyed man go blind
But a dark-skinned woman makes a jack rabbit hug a hound
And makes a brown-skinned preacher lay his Bible down.

Martha was slim and tall, with a large, infectious smile and dark skin. As Huddie finished the song and the applause died down, the Rev. Welden clutched his Bible tightly and uttered an embarassed, but good-humored, "Oh, my!" Deacon Leonard Brown laughed and told him he'd better "hold that Bible tight."
Lead Belly laid down his guitar and went into a tap dance. With a broomstick on his shoulder he shuffled and slapped and clicked his glistening heels in the ineffable rhythms of an impromptu buck and wing.
"Man, oh man, look at that boy dance," said Deacon Brown.
"Step it, step it!" cried Deacon Maurice Podd.
"He's goin' to town," shouted Deacon Sol Nichols.
"I never saw him dance like that before," said Mr. Lomax in astonishment. "He pulls new rabbits out of his hat every day."
"I never been so happy in my life," said Martha. ("Gay Lead Belly")

According to Lomax, Martha Promise adapted well to her changed circumstances. She was, indeed, a happy bride. She and Huddie divided up the household chores while the Lomaxes went about their ethnography. John was in the process of putting together the book which would come out as "Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly". They made many recordings of Huddie at Wilton, and deposited them in the Library of Congress (Dixon & Godrich 380). Huddie made the fires, carried the water, cleaned and drove the car, shoveled the snow, and helped Martha wash the dishes; Martha was the maid, cook, and laundrywoman. (J. Lomax, îNegroï 53) "He's a fine driver and keeps the car looking like new," said the elder Lomax. There's not a lazy bone in his body." (Lomax Arrives)

John Lomax set up a tour of colleges, mostly in New York state but including Harvard and Yale, and he and Huddie set off together once again, leaving Martha behind at Wilton.
For some of the audience, it was more fun than a bear-baiting, but just about as culturally valid. But many remembered that vital figure on the stage beating out the rhythms and pounding out the lyrics of "Goodnight, Irene," "The Rock Island Line," "The Muleskinner Blues," and "Silvy." When Leadbelly sang "Midnight Special" and "Boll Weevil," they began to foot-tap to their own surprised delight. Perhaps he was rough and crude, and his guitar-playing was often untutored, but Leadbelly was a man. And his music was full of a joyful singing that was rare among the choked-up megalopolitans. (Brand 74)
There may have been good moments on the tour, but the overall impression from the Lomax narrative is that the relationship between the two men quickly deteriorated and John remembered why he wanted to leave Huddie in Shreveport in the first place.
I reminded him that I was trying to help him, that I had made only a few requests of him, and these for his protection in a strange country; that I wanted him to eat good food, to take plenty of rest, not to play and sing for groups of Negroes late at night, and not to drink too much. (Negro 59)
Lomax felt that he had failed, that someone else would have to help Lead Belly. He was "threatened" over a money incident; Lead Belly "had swapped his comfortable black overcoat for a gray and green combination with loud checks;" and he was not one to moderate his drinking habits or stay away from the black sections of the cities they visited (60). Lomax had always considered Lead Belly to be a "natural," a sort of primitive who had no idea of money, law, or ethics, and who was possessed of virtually no self-restraint. ("Lomax Arrives") Eventually the whole sad business affected the poor man's health and he became "deathly sick," while Lead Belly had become sullen, demanding, overbearing and unreliable (see: saturnine); by the end of March, they all agreed to part company (Negro 62). Monday, 25 March, was the last A.R.C. recording date, and Tuesday was the Ledbetters' day of departure from New York. "The last glimpse we catch of this incorrigible wastrel and his woman, is to see them depart, in a Greyhound bus, for their beloved and more congenial Shreveport" (Engel 388).

This last sentence is taken from a scholarly review of Negro Folk Songs. The review is a harsh condemnation of Ledbetter combined with sympathy and reverence for the work of John Lomax. Possibly that is what Lomax was going for, because it is easy to interpret the book that way. A Time magazine writer in 1976 felt that the "Lomax version shows Leadbelly as both a genius and a dangerously wild creature" ("Cinema" 76). Huddie is said to have been very unhappy about Lomax's book, feeling that he was completely misunderstood by the author. According to Arnold S. Caplan, Ledbetter managed to stop distribution of the book and later wrote, "Lomax did not write nothing like I told him."

Chapter 6: I'm Sorry, Mama

2008-02-23T13:38:00.000-08:00

This chapter covers the period January 1930 to summer 1934. The title refers to the fact that his mother died, perhaps of a broken heart, only a few weeks after Huddie was incarcerated in Angola.

Irene: He got sent to prison in Mooringsport and then my grandmother came to live with us — my husband and me. She lived with him until he got into trouble. She was living with him in Oil City and we were living here in Marshall on Alvin Street. So, she came and lived with me until her foster daughter, Australia Carr — she never carried "Ledbetter," (never called herself Ledbetter) she would always keep her family name, "Carr" — she finally came and got her from my house. Grandmother went to live with Australia until she passed. Australia was living in Dallas but she moved to Marshall and took care of my grandmother until she died. And after that, she went back to Dallas.

Irene's father had died in 1929. Alonzo Batts had earned a dual living as a minister and a barber — he preached and he worked in a barber shop in Marshall. He was a relatively young man — in his early fifties — when he died of a kidney condition. The elder son of Sallie Ledbetter, his death was a blow to her. But when her younger son was convicted of assault to murder a few months later, it was too much for the old lady. She was grief-stricken. She and Huddie had always been close; there was an almost mystical attachment that overcame the superficial differences on religious matters. She would certainly have preferred Huddie to be the preacher and Alonzo the entertainer, but these last few years had found Huddie settling in to a routine — his day job at Gulf; Saturday nights at the country suppers; and lots of family visiting. But now, arrest and conviction on a trumped-up charge that would put him away for perhaps ten years. Sallie Ledbetter passed away early in 1930 and Huddie, impotent in prison, was guilt-ridden.
There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that he was lucky not to be lynched by the white citizens of Mooringsport who had been so offended by him. According to the Times of Shreveport, it was only the prompt response of Tom Hughes' office to a call for immediate assistance that saved Ledbetter from mob violence at the hands of a "band of men" who stormed the Mooringsport jail that Wednesday night. The mob was held at bay by officers Stewart and Arnold until Bert Stone and A.C. Collins deputy sheriffs, drove up from Shreveport. ("Deputies Rescue")
The Shreveport Journal reported that "there was some talk of violence against the negro" ("Charge Negro") Lynchings were still a common occurrence well into the 1930's. In the fall of 1930, a federal commission was appointed to investigate lynchings and a year later there was a report: "Lynchings and What They Mean - The Report of the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching." 95% of all lynchings during the previous five years had been in Southern states, and 90% were mob murders of negroes. In the states with a dense negro population, the rate was least in the old black belt counties; the negro was found to be in most danger in sparsely settled areas and in newly-developed territories. In half of the cases there was real doubt about the guilt of the victims, and there was a direct relationship between lack of education, low economic status, and lynching. Of the twenty-one persons lynched in 1930, for instance, only one had gone beyond fifth grade, and eleven were considered illiterate. As for the lynchers, indictments were returned in only six of the twenty-one cases, and only four of the forty-nine persons indicted had actually been convicted of a crime as of November, 1931. In other words, blacks were being lynched by whites, who were being protected by the legal system in the South. None of this was very surprising, though an interesting statistic involved the amount of money spent on the "separate but equal" education system. In a group of Southern states where blacks made up 40% of the population between the ages of six and thirteen, they received only 10% of the total education dollars. Statististics like this eventually helped to end segregation in the public schools.
In February, 1933, a black man named Nelson Nash was lynched near Ringgold, in northwest Louisiana's Bienville parish. Mrs. J. P. Batchelor reported to Sherriff Henderson Jordan that her husband had been murdered in a wooded area near their home. The couple, she said, was roused by an intruder in the middle of the night. When the intruder, who she later identified as the lynch victim, tried to attack her, J. P. came to her aid and was beaten to death as a result. The Sheriff assembled a posse of five hundred locals who rounded up Nash, strung him up by the neck, and fired fifty bullets into his slumping form. There was no further investigation into the case.

Between 1910 and 1933, impressive advances had been made both in the technical development of recording equipment, and in the reception given to folk song collection (J. Lomax, "Field" 58). To a certain extent, both advances were due to the success of the commercial recording industry, which had sent those field recording teams all over the United States during the 1920's and had mined a rich musical vein among the hillbillies and bluesmen of the South. By the early 1930's, however, radio was infringing on the territory of the record companies by unearthing and showcasing local talent. At the same time, the Depression was causing cutbacks in recording activities. Field recording survived in the hands of regional radio stations (such as KWKH in Shreveport), scholars, and folk song collectors.
John Lomax had first recorded folk songs on his fifty-pound Edison phonograph between the years 1907 and 1910, traveling through Texas and the western United States. He added these field recordings to the songs he
had collected in his memory during a boyhood on the Old Chisolm Trail south of Fort Worth during the heyday of the American cowboy, and published a book of Cowboy Songs in 1910. By 1933 Lomax had acquired, through his association with the Library of Congress, five hundred pounds of state of the art equipment: a one hundred pound amplifier; a one hundred pound turntable; two seventy-five pound batteries; and microphones, tools, and cables. Recordings were made on 8- or 12-inch aluminum discs; although acetate discs, which used steel needles and registered a wider frequency range, were used by the professional companies, Lomax preferred the aluminum discs, which used wooden (!) needles which had to be sharpened frequently. For his purposes, the latter were less fragile, yet gave a dependable record of the music (J. Lomax, "Field" 59).
In June, 1933, John, now 66 years old, and his son Alan, 17 years old and a college junior, packed this equipment, and their camping gear into the back of their Ford and set out from Dallas on a three-month quest that took them through five states. The main object of the journey was to record, for deposit in the Library of Congress, the folk songs of the Negro; songs that "in musical phrasing and in poetic content, are most unlike that of the white race, the least contaminated by white influence or by jazz." (J. Lomax, Hunter 112).
John Lomax felt that in the remote logging camps, plantations, and penitentiaries of the Deep South they were most likely to find blacks who were living in a world out of touch with contemporary popular culture,
where traditional songs would have been passed on through the generations in a pure state.
Portable recording machines are necessary for a folk song collector who wishes to secure music in its native habitat, where there is least likelihood of the inclusion of jazz influences, and where the singers feel at ease in their own homes or amid scenes familiar to them for a lifetime. Unless the collecting work can be quickly done, it is my opinion that the influence of good roads and the radio combined will very soon put an end both to the creation and to the artless singing of American folk songs. (J. Lomax, "Field" 60)
He clearly felt that time was running out. Contamination was imminent.
(Photo) A folksinging Alan Lomax, probably in the 1940's.

On July 21, 1933, John Lomax wrote from New Orleans to the "folks back home" that he and Alan had spent four hard days at the Angola Prison Farm, eighty miles north of Baton Rouge, where they found that the prisoners were not allowed to sing as they worked. This was a great disappointment since the Lomaxes were hoping to find work songs and field "hollers" dating to earlier times; but they had met one man who almost made up for the deficiency. "Lead Belly," wrote Alan Lomax, "was some consolation."
"I is de king of de twelve-string-guitar players of de worl'. When I was in Dallas, walkin' de streets an' makin' my livin' wid dis box o' mine, de songsters was makin' up dat song 'bout Ella Speed. Bill Martin had jes' shot her down an' lef' her lyin' in her blood up near de ole T.P. station. An' dis is de way dey would sing:

Bill Martin he was long an' slender,
Better known by bein' a bartender.

Ella Speed was downtown a-havin' her lovin' fun,
'Long come Bill Martin, wid his Colt forty-one.
("Sinful" 126)

John Lomax was so impressed with Ledbetter's vast store of folk songs that he checked the prison records in Baton Rouge to see if he could get him out on parole. He was "so skillful with his guitar and his strong baritone voice that he had been made a 'trusty' and kept around Camp 'A' headquarters as a laundryman so as to be near at hand to sing and play for visitors." (Adventures)
Ledbetter not only sang the kind of songs the Lomaxes were looking for, he also sketched in the origins of the songs, and gave long, elaborate narrations to go with them. In the earliy years of the 21th century, we might call it "rapping." He seemed to be a walking folksong encyclopedia, complete with descriptive footnotes.
Lomax has a habit of calling prison inmates by nicknames. Two oft-mentioned characters in the “Adventures of a Ballad Hunter,” for instance, are Clear Rock and Iron Head; in Jackson, Mississippi, he jotted down several nicknames of convicts: Rat, Tight Eye, Log Wagon, Goat Face and many more (Hunter 124). No doubt these are the names that were given to him, or understood by him; it would be easy to interpret "Ledbetter" as "Lead Belly," given the regional pronounciation, and it certainly caught on as a name for Huddie. It is part of the Ledbetter legend that the name had meanings to do with strength or sexuality, but it may be that Lomax simply misheard it and and found it suitably colorful. He always wrote it as two words, though later on it was often contracted: Leadbelly.

Huddie had sold John Lomax a line of talk during this first visit to Angola. He told Lomax that he was in jail because he had drunk too much corn whisky and gin (that part was probably true), but he denied having any prior convictions or being guilty of misconduct while at Angola. Prison records at Baton Rouge revealed Ledbetter's thirty-year Texas prison sentence as well as two whippings in Angola: ten lashes for laziness in 1931 and fifteen lashes for impudence in 1932 (Ramsey, "Leadbelly" 16). He was thus not eligible for parole, and Lomax frankly worried about the mental picture of himself and his teenage son (Alan) asleep in the swamps with "this particular black man on his cot near by" (J. Lomax, Negro 45).
During the week following the Angola experience, John Lomax came down with a case of malaria in New Orleans, and Alan carried on the song collecting activities alone. They had little success in collecting secular
folk songs, which they dubbed "sinful" songs, from blacks in the South before they arrived at Angola Penitentiary in Louisiana that summer.
"We had found the educated Negro resentful of our attempt to collect his secular folk music. We had found older Negroes afraid for religious reasons to sing for us, while the members of the younger generation were on the whole ignorant of the songs we wanted and interested only in Blues and in jazz." (A. Lomax, "Sinful" 105)
According to Alan Lomax, the Negro churches placed a stricter ban on the singing of non-sacred music than they did on theft. One night in New Orleans, Alan got two policemen to accompany him to some black bars in the hope that this would help him gather music. He had no luck that night but the next day he met a customer from the night before who explained that having cops with him had caused everyone to clam up. "I didn' know
how to trus' you," said the man, who had been arrested once before and sent to the penitentiary when he had not been guilty of any offense ("Sinful" 117). It seems very naive of Alan, in retrospect, to expect cooperation from barroom customers under such circumstances; but he was only seventeen and doing his best to help his Dad. When they worked the penitentiaries, of course, the Lomaxes were dealing with people who were already in jail and could perceive some benefit in being co-operative.
Later, Alan also came down with malaria, though he kept on working through a visit to Parchman Farm, part of the Mississippi prison system. Anyone who has spent a summer in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Texas will attest to the difficulties presented by the heat and humidity; the Lomaxes' task cannot have been an entirely pleasant one. Nights spent on camping cots in the open air wouldn't offer much respite from an unrelenting climate. No doubt it was hellish for the prisoners who spent long hours chained together in the cotton rows.
After their summer of collecting, the Lomaxes took up residence in Washington, D.C., for a few weeks and put together a volume entitled"American Ballads and Folk Songs" in which Lead Belly was first introduced to the public as the self-proclaimed "King of the Twelve-String Guitar Players of the World." Several of Huddie's songs, including "Bill Martin and Ella Speed," "Julie Ann Johnson," and "When I Was a Cowboy," were in the book, which came out a year later, in October, 1934, just three months before Lead Belly was introduced to the media in New York to help promote the book.
The book includes songs from lots of sources, not just from that summer's field trip. John Lomax, as has been noted, had been collecting American folk songs since he was a youth, and since his previous book of
"Cowboy Songs," many other collections had been had published. The Lomaxes drew heavily on the work of others and this helped to make "American Ballads" a definitive work. But they were particularly entranced
by the songs of African-Americans, who had "created the most distinctive of folk songs - the most interesting, the most appealing, and the greatest in quantity. . . ."
The Lomaxes delivered the manuscript to their publisher (MacMillan) and by the end of December,1933, were attending the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in St.Louis. John addressed the Popular Literature section on the subject of Negro folk songs and was approached by a representative from the Rockefeller Foundation who was eager to provide some form of financial assistance. Lomax asked for a small amount of money, which he got, so that he could build a special frame to hold the recording machinery in the back of his car. He was preparing for another field trip during the summer of 1934.
The second field trip would result in a second book, this one devoted entirely to the songs, and the life, of Huddie Ledbetter. Huddie's cowboy song provides an ample warning to his potential biographers not to take his own words too seriously as fact. In the song, "When I Was a Cowboy," he presents the following biographical data:
He made a million dollars as a cowboy on the Western plains; the hardest battle he ever fought was at Bunker Hill, when he and a bunch of other cowboys ran into Buffalo Bill; and, when he and a bunch of cowboys ran into Jesse James, also the "hardest battle" he ever fought, the bullets fell like a shower of rain. John Lomax, of course, didn't take it seriously as biography; he called Huddie's adventures in the West "purely imaginary."

In the spring of 1934, while Huddie was languishing in Angola, the stuff of legends, folksongs, and Hollywood movies was being played out in northwest Louisiana. It was Jesse James all over again: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, (Bonnie and Clyde on Right) a couple of gun-toting outlaws from Dallas had been robbing banks and staging shootouts with law officers for a couple of years by the time they were tracked down to the Majestic Cafe on Milam Street in downtown Shreveport. Jack Brown delivered milk to the Majestic from the Nelson Dairies in Stonewall, south of the city. He also delivered to the Inn Hotel two blocks up the street where two Texas lawmen on the trail of the marauding couple were staying.

Jack Brown: I didn't find out til a couple of days later when they was gunned down, but Bonnie and Clyde was waiting outside the Cafe while I was carrying in the milk cans. I must have been standing as close as I am to you. Suddenly, they revved up that engine and they was gone and I remember thinking that was strange, but that's all I thought. Seems they'd seen these police go by and they just wasn't going to wait around for a sack of sandwiches — I guess they figured they'd take their chances starving to death rather than catch a few bullets.

Jack Brown's story essentially matches that of the lawman who wrote of the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde. One of the Barrow gang came from rural Bienville parish, where Henderson Jordan was still the sheriff, and there they found relative safety. They never robbed or killed in the area, so none of the neighbors was inclined to turn them in. Bonnie and Clyde, together with their Bienville parish confederate, were on their way from Texas to the safe house when they stopped in Shreveport to get some take-out food. The couple waited in the car on Milam street while the third member of the party went in for sandwiches. But when they saw a police car cruise by, the couple lost their nerve and whizzed out of town, planning to meet up at the Bienville hideout. The pursuers got together with Sheriff Jordan and set up an ambush on a lonely country road about forty miles east of Shreveport. On 23 May, 1934, the bullet-riddled bodies of Bonnie and Clyde were laid out in Arcadia by Ed Conger at his funeral parlor next to the furniture store where Victor Records' Ralph Peer had auditioned the Grigg family six years previously.
Word of the killing of Bonnie and Clyde spread quickly and thousands of curious folks from all over the region descended on the little town, perhaps hoping for a souvenir or a glimpse of the corpses. For Arcadia it was the biggest news event ever in the town’s history. (Bottom: Lawmen framed in the driver's window of the bullet-riddled car.)

Leadbelly's Backwater Blues

2008-02-17T14:54:00.002-08:00

Queenie Davidson, Huddie’s cousin who was about 100 years old at the time, is being interviewed at her house on the Ledbetter home place. Her daughter Mary, a youthful 70, is with her.

Queenie: He was in prison when his daddy died, but he sung his way out of that one. He played guitar and sung his way out of that one. It was way out yonder somewhere, I don't know wherever it was now, but the governor - what was the governor's name?
Mary: Governor Neff.
Queenie: Yes!
Mary: He sung his best song, and I mean he was really picking that guitar. That's the best song I heard him play. I mean it. And he sung,

"Governor Neff, if I had you like you got me,
I'd wake up in the morning and set you free."

He really was picking that guitar, I'm telling you. He wanted to get out, and he did!
Queenie: He say he wake up at night and think about what to put on that song and he had a paper under his pillow and he'd wake up and think about it and he'd put that down. Then he'd think about something else and he's put that down. He'd have it under his pillow at night, and that's the way he made that song up.
Huddie was released from the Texas prison system after serving seven years of his thirty-year sentence. Or thirty-five year sentence, according to the pardon proclamation. He was granted a full pardon, "restoring him to full citizenship, giving him the full right to testify inany and all courts, and the full right of suffrage." What an entertainer!

Preston Brown, sixty-five years after the fact, was still amazed and fascinated by the whole story:
“I heard him sing that song. After he come back. (From Jail in Houston) Sitting as close to him as I is to you! He was here for a while after he got out of the can, you know. He went to the penitentiary and he played himself out of the penitentiary. Just singing and playing. He was playing, and when he got up to the governor, the governor started (to turn) away. He seen he were fixing to leave and he got there and he told Governor Neff —

‘you hear talk of Governor Neff? That was the governor's name - when he saw him, he said,
Governor Neff been here and gone,
Left me here singing this same old song.’
“Then he told the governor,
‘If I got you like you got me,
I'd get up in the morning and I'd set you free.’
“The governor come back and turn him loose.” (Preston)

It seems that everyone who knew Huddie, his friends, neighbors, and family, are fascinated by the pardon story, and everyone has an individual variation on the theme.

Upon his release, Huddie said he went to Houston to meet up with a woman named Mary, whom he had met while in prison. According to the Lomax chronology (Negro 2), Huddie stayed in Houston until 1926, working for a Buick automobile agency.
The only Buick dealer in Houston in 1926 was the Brazos Valley Buick Company, 1315-21 McKinney. Mr. A. D. Sory was the president of this company and not only has the company been out of business for a long number of years, but Mr.Sory has long since passed away.
(Letter from the Houston Chamber of Commerce, 1964.)
McKinney is in downtown Houston, now the site of modern skyscrapers.

While Huddie was in Houston, he went to theaters and saw such currently popular blues singers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters. Soon he was playing in local barrelhouses and performing in vaudeville (Russell 13). When he returned to the Caddo Lake region, he got a job with the Gulf Refining Company and a house in Oil City, Louisiana.
The picture of these next few years that emerges from friends and relatives of Huddie is quite different from the one painted by the folk song collector and Lead Belly biographer, John Lomax. The two pages Lomax devotes to this period (1925 to 1930) are filled with the stories of three violent incidents.
The first occurred at Oil City, Bout 20 miles north of Shreveport, where Huddie was playing a dance. A man came up behind him while he was playing "Mr.Tom Hughes' Town" and "stuck his knife in my neck an' was pullin' it aroun' my throat jes' tryin' to cut my head off."
This is one of about three stories Huddie tells to account for the "smile-shaped scar" referred to in the Shreveport Journal of 1988. After having his throat slit, Huddie walked down to the police station "bleedin' like a stuck hawg" and was told to go home and not play in Oil City any more (Negro 22). Oil City is just across Caddo Lake from Mooringsport. The oil boom of 1910 had spawned a red-light district that came close to rivaling Shreveport's; though much smaller, it was, perhaps, much rougher. "You could get killed real easy in Oil City." (Stuck 64).

Pinky Williams paints a much more placid picture of the Oil City years. A widow, Pinky is one of cousin Edmon Ledbetter's daughters, and as such refers to Huddie as her uncle. Technically, he is her second cousin, but since Huddie and Edmon were like brothers, the technical terms hardly matter. Pinky recalls Uncle Huddie coming to pick her and her grandmother up in his car, and taking them to his house in Oil City for weekends. He lived there with his mother and, for a time, with a woman named Era Washington. Pinky's grandparents were Bob and Ada Ledbetter. She thinks Huddie was a general laborer, working on the grounds of the Gulf Refining Company. Others have said he was a driver. Pinky also remembers him visiting her family home, playing guitar, and chatting with her father.
“We lived near the Shiloh Church and Huddie used to come out there. He was first living in Mooringsport; then he left Mooringsport and went to Oil City. He lived in Oil City a long time, and he used to come to our house and they'd get out in the yard. He'd play the guitar and sing. I can remember ‘Irene Goodnight,’ ‘If I had you like you had me, I'd unlock the jail door, set you free,’ and ‘Take me back to Mary.’ I can't remember any more. I did know lots more when I was young cause I used to could sing them. But since I got up in age I just forgot them, you know. That's another one he used to sing - ‘Mama, mama, look at Sal, eating all the meat soppin out of the pan.’ I remember that one.
“He liked to play for kids. He used to play funny little songs, kids songs. He used to love to play for us, and we'd sit out and listen cause it wasn't then like it is now. The grownup would dance, but the kids would stand back and look.”
Pinky has lived in Shreveport since 1941. She moved into town with her husband Sam Williams because times had gotten kind of tight in the country. Sam got work with the railroad and later opened his own auto body shop. Pinky in her seventies, looked much younger, and she looked very much like a Ledbetter. She lived next door to her sister and still maintained a membership in Shiloh Baptist Church, out in the country. She started singing in the Shiloh choir at the age of seven and she still sang there at the time of this interview. Her father is buried in the churchyard near to her Uncle Huddie.
“We were living back of Shiloh Church, back there. That's where I was born, in 1917. And when I got around fifteen years old, we moved to Longwood and that's where my father was living when he passed. The roads are the same now, but where we moved from has grown up, there's nothing but woods back there. Used to be cotton fields. I don't think I could even find where we used to live.” (Pinky.)
On Saturday nights during the "Roaring Twenties," Huddie played music, but not at dance halls or public juke joints. He played house parties in the Caddo Lake area. In fact, they weren't even called "house parties" at the time; they were called "suppers." He played at Edmon's house, Blanche's house, and at Uncle Bob Ledbetter's house.

“He was the one they used to follow. Mister Huddie. He buried up there to Shiloh. That's my membership. My mother buried not too far on the other side.” (Liz)
Liz and Leonard Choyce live in Mooringsport. Leonard is retired now, but he used to work for Frank Jeter, managing the Jeter place where Huddie was born. He has had a case of hiccoughs for several years, and he is somewhat incapacitated by it. Liz is more active — she takes care of the house and garden. She decorates her outdoor cactus plants with brightly colored sections of egg crates, making them look like flowering plants from a pychedelic fairyland. Leonard was brought up on the Jeter place, and Liz on the Currie place, which was just down the road.
Leonard: People, when they heard tell he was playing somewhere, they would always go. He'd have a crowd. Have a big crowd. Awful good music player. When you say you're going to have a dance there, you're going to have Ledbetter, they'd say "who?", and you'd say, "Huddie", boy, you'd hear them say they "We're going!" Mr. Huddie? - yes, I knowed him good.
I couldn't tell you how many times I heard him play - I heard him so many times. We never did have him to the Jeter place. He was round in the neighborhood, all around from Shiloh on and in Texas. He was down to my Uncle Ben's; Uncle Ben gave a party and he played. He'd go to different places, and he'd be playing by himself. I remember some of his songs - "Goodnight, Irene." And there was another one, I can't think of it. I used to could think of a lot of them.
He used to be in the penitentiary, so they said he played his way out of prison. That song was — his Captain was Governor Neff — and he sung it to Captain Neff. Singing this song about,
"Woke up this morning,
had Governor Neff like he got me,
I'd wake up in the morning,
and I'd set him free."
And they say he kept playing that, and they say he did sing his way out of prison.
Liz: There was another song he used to sing. Leonard's brother what died used to sing too, about "Becky Dean, she was a gambling gal." His brother could sing it. That was one of Mister Huddie's songs. What was it? "Win all the money, something, and the skinner lay . . . and the skinners laid it down." He tickled me. Singing. He could really play, though, I used to love to hear. (Liz)
When Huddie played a house party, that was the place to be. He had a devoted following; was the most popular musician in his community. He did not play taverns, saloons or public dance halls; just as he had before his seven years in prison, Huddie played at private houses. This is not to deny the possibility of violent incidents at these affairs. But it was the violence which grows out of long-standing feuds and grudges, not the random, impersonal violence of strangers.
Liz: "He told me, one time - I was a big girl then at the party - he called me to him, and my Uncle Ben told him that I was his brother's daughter, and he called me and he talked - he always talked soft talk, you know, - he tell me, he said,
"Listen, baby, listen here to Mister Ledbetter, if I had've been there, the day your daddy was killed," he said, "I'd've saved your daddy." That's what he told me. He know my daddy well. He know my daddy, my daddy used to go all around up in Texas fore they moved from up there. He remembered. (Liz)
A man with a guitar was always welcome at a party in those pre-jukebox days. He would be welcomed into stores, houses and even cars, plied with food and drink, tipped and appreciated. It was easy to move from town to town, and many musicians traveled between New Orleans, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas searching for the elusive recording session with Paramount, Okeh or Victor.
There is no indication that Huddie pursued a musical career in this way during this Golden Age of blues recording, though he must have been aware of the possibilities. He played his music at house parties and worked at his day job; he may have felt himself too old - he was in his late thirties - to pursue a full-time musical career. Or he may have been contented to be living in his home stomping ground, amongst relatives and old friends. Perhaps he'd had enough rambling and trouble for one lifetime.
Obviously, he spent some time in Shreveport during these years, because he recalled hearing a piano player named Dave Alexander (Russell 12. Also see article “Lead Belly and Baby Face” in this blog archive.) Alexander was very popular on the local scene during the late 1920's and spent some time on the parish farm (jail) himself. "Some for things he did and some for things he didn't did," says a contemporary. Alexander eventually left Louisiana because he was tired of the continual racial hassles.

By the mid-1920's there was a non-stop rail service between Oil City and Shreveport, a trip which took less than a half hour. Huddie also had his own car, so it was easy for him to drive to the city. He met his future wife Martha Promise during these years. Actually, he had known her when she was a young girl growing up in the Shiloh-Longwood community near Mooringsport. Martha had moved into the city and was sharing a house in the Bottoms with her twin sister, Mary. Martha worked for the Excelsior Laundry next to the new (1925) Strand Theater on Cotton Street, and Mary worked as a cook for a family in the posh Highland residential district. Martha was also a soprano in the Silver Leaf Jubilee Choir.
Many country folk were moving to the cities in search of higher pay and release from the relentless labor of the small farms. They often found that work as maids or day laborers was just as relentless in the cities, but by that time it was too late to return. Meanwhile, country life in the 1920's and '30's was much the same as it had been at the turn of the century.
Pinkie Ledbetter recalled: “We worked in the fields until I got grown. Go to school some days, and some days I had to stop and work in the field. Cut bushes, sprouts; thin corn, chop cotton, pick cotton, pull corn, pull peanuts - all of that - dig potatoes in the fall of the year. My daddy did most of the planting; but when they came up, we had to get the hoe.
“We had mules. I didn't do any ploughing, though. My daddy would do all the ploughing; we would do all the chopping. Chopping cotton, picking cotton, pulling corn. . . which my kids don't know anything about. I was raised up on the farm.
“My mother used to do a lot of laundry. We had rubboards, tubs; we had to carry the water to wash with. My daddy would cut the wood to heat that smoothing iron to iron clothes with and we would have four or five families of clothes. We'd work in the fields and then wash those four and five family clothes, and my mother and dad would take them to Mooringsport on Saturdays. I didn't come up on a feather bed.
“You had to heat the smoothing irons by the fire. My daddy cut the wood, set the irons to the fireplace, and we heated irons like that. My grandaddy used to make those rubboards out of wire and wood. We had the rubboards and we had the big Number 3 tubs to wash the clothes. Had a big black pot. We boiled those clothes in that pot and washed them. Then we'd rinse them in two waters and hang them on the line to dry. Then we'd get those smoothing irons and iron them.
“We had about five families that we'd wash it out for in Mooringsport. We would go to the field and work until Wednesday noon. Then we would do a wash on Wednesday evening, with rubboards, and then on Thursdays we'd finish washing, and then on Fridays we had to iron those five families of clothes, get them ready for our mother to take them to Mooringsport. We really had to work hard when we were coming up. We had to. We didn't know nothing else to do.” (Pinkie)

On the Louisiana side of the line, the school year was much shorter for the black children in the country. Many people talk of spending three months or less in the classroom. But in Texas, school began in the fall and broke up for the summer in May.
Huddie played at school closings, the year end celebrations in the region's black schools. Mary Jenkins remembers him for his tap-dancing — playing and tap-dancing at the same time — and for accompanying the marches and dances at the graduation ceremonies.
Mary Brown, Preston’s wife: “We had songs and little plays - we called them "dialogues" — like these soap operas on TV, that's what they was. We practised marching every Friday, and on The Day, we marched - 1,2,3,4, and we'd have a hoop under our skirt, and we'd get the hoop to swing thisaway and thataway. . . we had lots of fun! In the daytime we had a dinner. There'd be a big turnout with all the schools meeting together, feeding kids from the little tots to the seventh grade. When you got to seventh grade, you couldn't go to school out here in the country, you had to go to Marshall . . . and then, that night! That's when we'd show off. (Laughs) Everyone have a beautiful dress with big bows back on our hats, long dresses and hoop skirts.” (Mary Brown)
Huddie's cousin Queenie, also remembers Huddie at her daughter Mary's school closing:
“At the school closing, my cousin named Irene Batts had done got Bo Pete to play guitar. She couldn't catch up with Huddie. My sister Mattie was making Mary's dress for the school closing, so the man drove up who she had done got to pick. He was sitting on the front seat there, and my sister come up bringing the dress, and Huddie come up with her. Huddie come in there walking with his guitar on his shoulder, and Bo Pete eased on out of doors and he didn't come back in there. He left, and didn't show up back in there no more, 'cause Huddie could play a guitar! “(Queenie)
“Nobody fooled with no guitar when he was around. I knowed two who used to play a little bit, but they couldn't play with him, you know. You had Manse Powell, he used to play guitar; Frank Gill used to play the guitar; and some others, but all of them was scared to play with him. They was scared because he beat em so bad, you know. If you was just learning to play, you wouldn't want to put yourself up there, and put yourself against the crowd, he'd just tear you all to pieces. You wouldn't do that; you do your cutting up when he's gone.” (Preston Brown)

The latter part of the 1920's was a boom time for the recording industry. The genre which has been variously known as black, soul, or rhythm-and-blues by the record companies, was then called "race." The early part of the decade was ruled by women blues singers who followed in the footsteps of Mamie Smith — Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, Ida Cox, Clara Smith, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith, (photo) the most popular of all. These "Queens of the Blues," the Divas of the day, were generally accompanied by small jazz combos, pianists or guitarists. Bessie was obviously a favorite of Huddie's. He learned her "Backwater Blues" from listening to the record and incorporated it into his repertoire. He even used the woman's point of view when he sang the song, which was about the catastrophic floods of 1927.

In June, 1927, David Sarnoff linked together fifty radio stations to form the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to broadcast - LIVE - the homecoming of Charles Lindbergh from his solo transatlantic airplane flight. Two weeks before Lindberg's achievement, the French fliers, Charles Nungesser and Francis Coli, had attempted the Atlantic crossing from Paris to New York, but their "White Bird" was last seen over the Normandie town of Etretat as it passed over to La Manche — the English Channel. In 1989, NBC broadcast an investigation of the Nungesser and Coli disappearance on its program, "Unsolved Mysteries."

The latter part of the decade now known as the Roaring 20's saw the rise of solo bluesmen who accompanied themselves, generally on guitar, and the prototypical bluesman of the era was Blind Lemon Jefferson. His brief but successful career began in 1926 when J. Mayo Williams, an African-American who was in charge of the Paramount label's Race recording operations, brought him to Chicago to cut records. Many followed in his footsteps - Charlie Patton, Blind Willie McTell, Ramblin Thomas, Lonnie Johnson and Texas Alexander. The photo shows Blind Willie McTell in an Atlanta, Georgia hotel room. The photo is taken by Ruby Lomax, John Lomax's wife, as he records the blues singer for the Library of Congress in 1940. Blind Willie, like Leadbelly, played a twelve-string guitar. He had begun his commercial recording career in 1927.
The record companies sent out scouts and portable studios to those parts of the South which yielded the best crop of bluesmen. Ralph Peer was Victor's traveling producer: he first hit paydirt with country singers Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family when he called for musicians in Bristol, Tennessee, in the summer of 1927. Over the next three years Peer arranged sessions on a regular basis in Dallas, Memphis, Atlanta, and New Orleans. There he discovered a wide variety of blues entertainers including Blind Willie McTell, the Memphis Jug Band, Sleepy John Estes, Tommy Johnson and Yank Rachel.
Guitarist Jesse Thomas of Logansport, Louisiana, spent some time hitch-hiking between Dallas, San Antonio and Houston in search of the elusive recording session, but he eventually got one with Ralph Peer in the summer of 1929 at the Jefferson Hotel in Dallas. Jesse recorded four "sides" by himself, and also worked as a sideman with Bessie Tucker and her pianist, K.D. Johnson.

The experience of the Taylor-Griggs Louisiana Melody Makers reveals the way the system worked. The Melody Makers were basically the Grigg family band from rural Bienville Parish, augmented by a lawyer named Foster Taylor from the town of Arcadia. Taylor played the fiddle and enjoyed the music of the Griggs — a father, two sons, and three daughters. The owner of the local furniture store-cum-funeral parlor in Arcadia was Ed Conger, a friend of Taylor's who often listened to the group during practice sessions. Conger liked music, but he also sold Victrolas and the 78 r.p.m. records that played on them, so he had a business stake in keeping the product attractive. He was familiar with Ralph Peer through his dealings with Victor, so he telephoned him in Dallas and asked him to stop in Arcadia to audition the local band. Peer agreed.
The musicians set up their instruments in the furniture store and were ready and waiting when Peer's train arrived at the little station on its eastward run from Dallas. Ed Conger brought Peer across the street to his store where the record man alternately sat listening and paced the floor as the group ran through a few numbers. At length Peer asked, "Can you folks come and meet me in Memphis in September?"
"This was music to our ears," said Ausie Grigg, the eldest son who played the big bass fiddle. Eight of them traveled from Bienville parish to Memphis where they stayed at the Peabody Hotel, where the ducks walk daily into the lobby. Foster Taylor's nephew Clavie brought his Chevrolet and Foster drove his Model T Ford. Robert Grigg was a breakdown fiddler and he brought along his two sons, Ausie and Crockett, and three of his musical daughters, Ione, Johnnie Maude and Lorene.
“I was seventeen, then. It was a wonderful trip, but it was dusty! We had no air-conditioning in the car and we like to burned up all the way and when we got there that night at the hotel, I'd looked at Ione, I'd look at Ausie and Crockett, and my daddy, and they had circles around their eyes. I got so tickled I couldn't stand it. It was all that dirt, you know, traveling. And we was sweating. We just looked like monsters!”(Lorene)
“We went to a makeshift studio on the second floor of the City Hall in Memphis,” said Ausie. “In this room they had big, thick curtains hung all around about two feet from the wall. There were no cooling systems. They had electric fans, but they couldn't use those fans when we were recording. So they'd pull those curtains over the windows. It was as hot as it could be! There was a red light over in the corner and this engineer came in and he talked to us and said, ‘When that red light comes on, just be quiet. When that green light comes on, start playing. Let it be over two minutes but not more than three.’ And we played.
“He came back in and said, ‘I want you to see how it sounds,’ but he told me before he went out, ‘Don't put the bass in there.’ I thought, my goodness, am I not going to get to play? He saw that I was confused about it and he said, ‘This test is cut on wax, and the vibrations from that bass violin will shatter that wax. So we can't take it on the test.’ So he played it back and the rest of it sounded pretty good. I didn't know what I was doing on the bass, though, so he said, ‘I'll show you what I'm talking about.’ He went back, set up again and said, ‘Play your bass violin,’ and I did, and played it back for us. Oh! The screeching and scratching and going on you had never heard. It sounded like cats and dogs.” (Ausie)
The first sessions of the Taylor-Griggs Louisiana Melody Makers were released in the fall of 1928 and sold remarkably well, especially in northwest Louisiana. Conger's store in Arcadia sold out of "Big Ball Uptown" several times, so another session was arranged for the following year. In the interim, most of the Grigg family gave up on musical careers. Ausie returned to Memphis with Foster Taylor and a couple of friends who played guitar and mandolin, but without the Grigg family, the Melody Makers were not as interesting or accomplished. By the fall of 1929, however, the studio technicians had learned how to record the bass on tests.

While all this recording activity was going on, Huddie Ledbetter was the most popular musician in his community; he was familiar with Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon, and Dave Alexander — musicians who did make records; and he could have driven to Dallas to audition for one of the traveling producers. All he needed was the burning desire to do so. But he was approaching the age of forty; he had his mother to take care of; he had a regular job at Gulf; and he lived in a community that loved and appreciated his talent. Perhaps he was contented with his life.
All that was to change as the new decade began. The second violent incident referred to by John Lomax is dealt with so off-handedly that it is difficult to know what to make of it. Huddie claims he shot someone in self defense and successfully pled not guilty in court, but the police records in Louisiana mention only one criminal case involving Huddie Ledbetter, and that stemmed from an incident that took place on Wednesday, 14 January 1930. The story Huddie told to Lomax, the one which has generally been accepted and retold in accounts of his life such as the fictional “Midnight Special,” involved a run-in with a "gang o' niggers" as he was coming home from work that day, carrying his lunch bucket:
“Lord God, I was cutting niggers fast the next while! Pretty soon they was six of them running down the street with blood just gushing out. The police ran up and caught me by the arm and got me down to the calaboose. Next day Sheriff Tom Hughes carried me down to the Shreveport jail and kept me there till I come to be tried. “(Negro 24)
Time magazine reported that he had been "convicted of stabbing six negroes in a fight over a can of whiskey" ("Lead Belly," 77). Frederick Ramsey, Jr., who knew Ledbetter in the late '40's and recorded a highly praised series of records in his New York apartment (Leadbelly's Last Sessions), repeated the Lomax version in an oft-reprinted article for the Saturday Review of Literature (60). Ramsey wrote that "he was attacked as he was coming home from work by members of a gang who said he had whiskey in his dinner pail." The gang demanded whiskey; he eventually produced a knife and defended himself.
Many years later, Ramsey was to postulate a theory based on Huddie's never having challenged a white man, and thus never having challenged the system. "All of his convictions and all of his sentences were for assault, or assault with intent to kill — but never against a white person. He wouldn't have lived to be tried if he had [attacked a white]” (Ramsey, "Leadbelly" 10).

The fact is that Huddie did challenge a white man and lived; but apparently he never told the tale to a white person. The graphically lurid tale told by Huddie of the "crime" which led to his imprisonment in Angola, is at odds with contemporary newspaper accounts. These are accounts of a potentially terminal racial incident on the streets of Mooringsport. Cousin Blanche was aware of this incident: it seems that a Salvation Army band was giving a concert from the porch of Croom's store, across from the train depot, and Huddie, hearing the music, got the urge to dance. As he was singing and dancing in the street, "the law" stopped him and demanded to know what he was doing. Said Blanche, "All them folks around was white and Huddie was black; so when the law jumped on him, he sassed them back." (Windham 98).

DEPUTIES RESCUE NEGRO FROM MOB AT MOORINGSPORT

Dick Elliott, 36 years old, is in the Highland sanitarium suffering from severe cuts inflicted by a drank (sic)-crazed negro who attacked him late Wednesday afternoon at his home near Mooringsport where the negro was butchering a hog.
The negro, Huddie Ledbetter, 43 years old, is in the parish jail charged with assault with attempt to murder and only the prompt response of the sheriff's office for help saved the negro from mob violence at the hands of a band of men who stormed the Mooringsport jail Wednesday night. The mob was held at bay by officers Stewart and Arnold until Bert Stone and A. C. Collins, deputy sheriffs arrived. Elliott's condition was said not to be critical by hospital attendants Wednesday night.
A bottle of rubbing alcohol was found on the negro with more than half of its contents gone. Ledbetter incurred a gash on the top of his head during the altercation that took place. It could not be learned what caused the difficulty.

The above is reprinted from the front page of the Times of Shreveport for 15 January, 1930. The Shreveport Journal of 16 January, 1930, also carried a front-page report of the arrest of Ledbetter, though it said nothing of the butchering of hogs:

CHARGE NEGRO WITH STABBING WHITE MAN IN AN ALTERCATION
______
Alleged Drink-Crazed Black Starts Trouble by Dancing During Religious Service
______
The trouble with the negro started when he, while in an alleged intoxicated condition, was disrespectful to a Salvation Army meeting that was in progress on a Mooringsport street. According to reports, Ledbetter insisted upon doing a dance during the service, which aroused a group which included Elliot. In a scuffle which followed, Ledbetter drew a knife and slashed Elliot's arm.

A month later, Huddie Ledbetter, "negro," was convicted of assault with intent to murder one Dick Ellet, which apparently was the white man's real name. The Ellet family owned land near to the Bob Ledbetters, in Louisiana, and Dick Ellet was five or six years younger than Huddie. They had probably known each other all their lives.
According to the Times of 18 February 1930, the testimony showed that Ledbetter had "resented the efforts of white men to prevent him dancing" while the Salvation Army band played, and the resulting scuffle led to Ellet's arm being cut and Ledbetter being jailed. There was testimony to the effect that Huddie was drunk ("Negro Guilty" 9).

Viola Batts, Huddie’s niece: “When I saw him I was in Kilgore. He walked up with Martha one day. That's the first time I saw him after DeKalb, lots of years later. And he said at that time - let's see, how was this - I didn't ever see him, because he landed in Mooringsport and worked for the Gulf, I think, and this is where he got into the second thing.
“He was coming from Angola prison when he came to me in Kilgore. Cause he was with Martha, then. And they only wedded in New York City. He said ‘I'm going to New York. And that's where they're gonna — they want me there, for my music.’ And they left, and that is my first time seeing him since DeKalb.
“Didn't see him that Christmas when he got into trouble, and went to the prison, and we didn't get to see him, and he came back and somehow or other he was in Mooringsport working for the Gulf. But I'm in Arkansas so I didn't see him; that's where we was living at the time. But I'd hear about him - where he was, you know, and then, he told me about this incident and getting into Angola.
“He came from work and a group of people — and this white person — they were trying to sing one of our spirituals. And he got into voice and started getting it right, like it should be, and they were just singing away and that made the man mad, and he walked up and kicked him. You don't do that to Uncle Huddie. That was the end of that —he was out with his knife and started cutting him. And they sent him to Angola.
“That's the only incident he talked about. He'd talk about that — that much. He didn't tell you much. And then in that conversation he said, ‘Most of my problem has been with music and women. For the people that I killed.’ Period. I didn't have a question. My mind was just blank — I didn't ask nothing. That's just the statement that he made. Now he'd never talk about it.
“But Mooringsport was neither women nor. . . he was meddling. Many people don't sing songs the same way, but you don't just butt in. “(Viola)

Viola’s sister, Irene Batts: “I saw him in Oil City in the late 1920's. I was living here in Marshall, going to school, and grandmother — his mother — came to live with him, and, yes, I was there, too, ‘cause she finally came to live with me when he got in trouble again — these people singing the song wrong and he's going to correct it — and he got sent to prison, in Mooringsport, and then my grandmother came to live with us. My husband and me. We were living on Alvin Street. Yes, I do remember. But I just saw him a short while, I didn't live with him.” (Irene)

For some reason, Huddie found it necessary to concoct a mostly fictional account of his "offense," one which deleted all racial overtones. He may have believed he had no chance of success in the white world of the Lomaxes if the real story were told. The Lomaxes could accept him as a "mean nigger" amongst his own race. A different light is shed by a remark of Bessie Love: in her interview with Loree Ousler, Mrs. Love said that she hadn't told many folks what really happened because she was "scared they might come and get her" (5). Perhaps Huddie feared for his family's safety. He told John Lomax that while he was in the Shreveport jail, none of his people came to see him; however, he didn't blame them because they were scared that if they came around to the jailhouse they would get into trouble (Negro 24).
Alan Lomax, John's son, was later to quote a black Louisiana informant, a contemporary of Ledbetter's:
“They were always runnin after the colored folks down there. When they would hear of a colored man doin wrong or practicin anything they didn't like, they'd go around with a crowd and call him out and warn him and tell him what they wanted him to do. Some places they'd go and take a fellow out and whip him. Some places they'd turn him loose. But the thing was they wanted to keep us afraid and keep us down” (A.Lomax, Rainbow 143).

Anna Patterson, born in 1932, is a black woman from Belcher, Louisiana, rich oil and cotton land about seven miles northeast of Mooringsport. She has vivid recollections of white-on-black violence and of the Ku Klux Klan:
“We had about six or eight Klansmen that lived in Belcher. They killed one of the black men here, out here where I live. They carried him, they cut him up, they cut his private out and rammed it down his throat.
“He had gone in the cafe in Belcher the front way. We were supposed to go in the back and they thought he was being smart. That's the kind of thing that they were killing people about. If they wouldn't say "Yassir" and "Nossir" then they thought they were being smart.
"Mr. Ed Cox, Mr. T.D. Conn, and Mr. - whatisname - it's W.H. Green brother and him and his brother Alonzo, there was quite a few of them. Klansmen. Mr. Ed Cox was the sheriff of Belcher. I don't remember [Caddo Parish Sheriff] Tom Hughes. I remember Mr. Burns. Mr. Burns was one of the sheriffs, because the black people couldn't walk the road at night — they would run them off the road. And if they'd catch em, they'd whup em.” (Patterson)

The case, The State of Louisiana versus Huddie Ledbetter (La. state court number 28640), was based on Dick Ellet's testimony and charges. The jury believed him and Huddie was found guilty. He was sentenced to 6 to 10 years at Angola, the Louisiana state prison north of Baton Rouge. While incarcerated at the sprawling, swampy, penitentiary-farm, Ledbetter bitterly complained of lawyers and the law; in the words of his song, "The Shreveport Jail," to the tune of “Birmingham Jail.”

(speaks) I think about how the lawyer done me. (sings:)
Send for your lawyer
Come down to your cell,
He'll swear he can clear you
In spite of all hell.
(speaks) He gonna get the biggest of your money and come back for some more. (sings:)
Get some of your money,
Come back for the rest.
Tell you to plead guilty,
For he know it is best. (J. Lomax, îNegroï 230)

It was at Angola, in this bitter mood, that Huddie Ledbetter met John Lomax in 1933.

Chapter 4: 1917-1925: Gov. Pat Neff

2008-01-31T10:03:00.000-08:00

If you ever go to Shreveport, Louisiana, you'd better walk right
You'd better not quarrel and you'd better not fight
Coz the sheriff will arrest you, and he'll take you down
You can bet your bottom dollar, you're penitentiary bound.
(The Midnight Special)

The case against "Walter Boyd" was a lot more serious than quarrelling or fighting, but the sentiment in the song, a favorite amongst prisoners in the southern penitentiaries, is clear: a black man had better watch his ass/behaviour or he will end up on the "farm."
The legend had it that if the headlight of the train — "The Midnight Special" — shone on a prisoner, he would soon be set free. There was no escape for Ledbetter this time:. at the beginning of 1918 he embarked upon a thirty-year sentence which would eventually find him on the Imperial prison farm at Sugarland, near Houston.
The effect on his family was dramatic. His father and mother had already given up thirty acres of their land to defend him, fruitlessly, in the 1915 case. Elethe was left alone and realized that her marriage was a lost cause. She headed back home to Terrell, and eventually became a preacher. Cousin Blanche said the last she heard of her, Elethe, was in Kansas City. The two nieces, Viola and Irene, were taken back by their grandparents after their year in DeKalb. Viola had wanted to go to college in Marshall but she now had to give up that dream. In 1919 she got married to an oil field worker and spent the next twenty years in the boom towns of northwest Louisiana and East Texas. The next time she saw Huddie was fifteen years later when she was living in Kilgore, Texas, and he washeading for New York.
"We've had a hectic life. It's all mixed up in little pieces," says Irene, who eventually worked her way through college doing domestic work, and became a school teacher. She saw Huddie again about ten years after DeKalb. Both Irene and Viola spent some time with their uncle in New York during the last year of his life. [1949]

The year 1918 is mainly remembered as the year the Great War ended, with the Armistice on November 11. There was also a major world epidemic of influenza that year. In the United States alone, 548,000 deaths were attributed to the virus.
On 16 January 1919, the Prohibition Era began with ratification of the constitutional amendment by the 36th state, which happened to be Nebraska. Prohibition led to an increase in illegal activities such as moonshining, though many towns and counties in Texas — including Harrison county — had enacted their own "dry" laws long before the Federal government did so. During Huddie's youth, it had been necessary to go over the Louisiana line to buy liquor. For the people of the Caddo Lake region, this was not a long trip. The state line ran through the middle of Morgan's General Store near Leigh, on the Latex (Louisiana/Texas) Road. Liquor could be purchased on the Louisiana side but not on the Texas side of the store. But that was before Prohibition, and before Huddie's prison term.

Queenie: [Huddie] was in prison when his daddy died. Me and my husband bought this place from my uncle Wes — that's Huddie's daddy. My uncle Wes had a house on that knoll up yonder beside them pines right there. He was on his death-bed and I came over to see him. I was staying on the other side of them woods and I come over one day after I cooked dinner. I come on down to see how he was.
He said he wanted to see me so I come on down here and he say — he called me "Sis" — he say, "You the onliest one I believe will keep this land and I want you to buy it. I done willed so much to the girl I adopted." That was Australia Carr. The girl was in the kitchen and he called the girl out and said, "Now I know you ain't going to keep that land what I already deeded you. You let Sis have it when you get ready to sell it, cause you ain't going to keep it."
So she said she would sell it to me and come one evening I was way up in the field, I heard the car horn blowing but I didn't have time to go to the house to see who it was cause I was chopping cotton. And so the next
morning I was chopping down next to the road and York Bickham came by and asked if I heard the car horn blowing and I said, "Yes," but I didn't have time to come down there. So he told me Australia said she wanted to
sell that land, so I say, "Alright, I'll tell my husband when he comes in for dinner." York say he take us to town if we want to go cause he's going to carry his mother to the doctor. So when he come on back I said, "Yes, my
husband said he'll go." So when you get there all you got to do is call Australia, and Australia come to the office and so we bought.

Queenie married Early Davidson in 1912; five of her nine children survived past infancy. She and her family have lived on what was once the Ledbetter home place ever since Wes's death in the early 1920's. Later in that decade, she bought the remaining land which was owned by Huddie and Sallie.

In August, 1920, the first regular radio broadcasting license in the United States was issued and in November, radio station KDKA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, broadcast the results of the presidential election. The Republican ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge was victorious. The radio broadcasting business exploded during the next few years until, by 1924, there were about 1,400 stations on the air in the United States, and one-third of all the money being spent on furniture went for "wireless" sets. In those early days, radio didn't know whether to view the record business as an accomplice or a competitor. Commercial radio has now become a promotional arm of the record companies, but in the 1920's, the two fledgling industries were jealous of their own domains. There was a close association between the furniture business and the recording industry: Columbia and Victor both manufactured records to go with their gramaphones, or talking machines; the Starr Piano Company of Richmond, Indiana, begat the Gennett record company; the Wisconsin Chair Company of Port Washington started Paramount; and the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company of Chicago, which manufactured billiard tables and bowling alleys, created the Brunswick label.
In the area of black popular culture, there was no problem between radio and the record business — radio simply ignored blacks. The recording industry, meanwhile, had begun to take an interest in black performers. In
February, 1920, "contralto" Mamie Smith recorded a couple of songs, "That thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down," written by a black music store owner from Chicago named Perry Bradford. They were "jazzy" numbers with a kind of old-time show business bounce to them, and the original idea was to get Sophie Tucker to record them. But Bradford pushed for Mamie and prevailed. Mamie Smith wasn't a blues singer, she was a vaudeville entertainer, but she accomplished the task of breaking the color ban in recording, and setting the stage for the era of the "Classic" blues singers which followed.
"There's at least fourteen million Negroes in our great country," Perry Bradford had said. "A lot of them own phonographs, and they will buy records if they are recorded by one of their own." Nobody paid much him much
attention until he went to OKeh, then an aggressive, independent company that was a bit more willing to take chances.

Okeh agreed to record Mamie Smith singing the two Bradford songs, though they prevaricated for a while before finally releasing her record in August, 1920. And although she was not advertised as black, Negro newspapers like the Chicago Defender let out the news, and the record took off and sold an estimated 75,000 copies. The lesson was not lost on OKeh: they got Mamie Smith into a recording studio immediately, cut another record, and released it, this time proclaiming her as black in advertisements. It went over better than they had hoped — and all of a sudden the "Race" race was on. (Cook130) The way was paved for popular singers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, who were touring the country's black vaudeville theater circuits.
Perry Bradford, who subsequently did well for himself as a songwriter and entrepreneur, had been proven right. There was a black audience out there and they were willing to pay plenty. Those first records by Mamie Smith on the OKeh label, for example, cost a dollar each. Bessie Smith records on Columbia towards the end of the twenties went at seventy-five cents each and sold better that 20,000 copies. In spite of inflation, the price of a single record did not change appreciably between 1920 and the 1980’s when CDs started to appear in the musical marketplace. In other words, they were originally quitw an expensive item which Afican-Americans were willing to purchase.

The Ku Klux Klan was officially revived in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1915. The original organization, which thrived briefly after the Civil War, was all but eliminated around 1870 when the Federal government's reconstruction policy got underway. The new Klan had a slightly different purpose than the original: it set itself up as the national arbiter of morals, not so much as a tool to keep blacks in place. Klan members helped to enforce Prohibition and kept a close eye on gamblers, pimps, adulterers, and generally rowdy folk. It was like a resurgence of violent puritanism, and there was a prepoderance of preachers and policemen in this new movement. Not all white-on-black violence was perpetrated by the Klan in the years after 1915, but the re-emergence of the Klan gave the violence a certain legitimacy. There is a kind of familiarity to the incidents which occurred, and the case of Thomas Rivers is unfortunately typical. The New York Times ran the following brief story on page 17. The year was 1922.

Louisiana Mob Lynches Negro

Shreveport, La., Aug. 30 - The body of Thomas Rivers, a negro, who
confessed he was he assailant of a young white
woman of this city, was found this morning by
Bossier Parish authorities hanging from the limb
of a tree near the Shreveport-Bossier highway
in Bossier Parish, about twelve miles from
Shreveport. He was taken from officers by a
mob late last night as he was being transferred
to Benton, La., for safe-keeping.

There are certain elements that are common to all such stories. First, the "negro" confesses to his crime. Rivers was arrested at 3 o'clock in the afternoon of August 29th by Shreveport Police Chief D.D. Baser. There had
been a complaint by a young white woman, and the woman's family was determined to teach the offender a lesson. During questioning, Rivers also conveniently stated that he had tried to attack a young girl in Marshall, Texas, the previous month. He was identified as the attacker by the Shreveport woman, thus "guilt" was firmly established.
At that point, it was deemed by the authorities that the Shreveport jail is not a safe place for Thomas Rivers, because an irate mob is likely to storm the place, capture him, and lynch him. In reality, of course, there was collusion between the police and the mob. In order to make it easier for the lynch mob, the police decide to drive Rivers to the Bossier Parish jail in Benton. It was 11 p.m. and the mob knew exactly where to intercept the police car.
The official story states that Detective John Hudson and Deputy Sheriff Bert Stone were driving along the road to Benton at a high rate of speed when they were suddenly confronted by an armed band of masked men. Rivers was kidnapped by the marauders and the officers were ordered to turn around and go back to Shreveport. There were about twenty-five of these masked men, but who they were, or where they came from, was a mystery to everyone. Sheriff Adair of Bossier Parish stated that he was positive that there were no Bossier citizens in the party, because nobody in Bossier knew about the transfer until the Shreveport police told them about the seizure, after the fact. And, of course, nobody in Shreveport had the slightest idea how the news of the transfer might have leaked out.
A newspaper reporter from the Shreveport îTimesï spent the whole night searching for Rivers. Early in the morning, someone mentioned that he might want to look at a place known locally as "lyncher's stamping ground." The reporter was directed to a small side road in the cottonfields between the hamlets of Brownlee and Willow Chute. At the time he thought that the mob must have known the territory very well; it was difficult to follow the twisting trail and the reporter got lost a couple of times. There were small decrepit bridges spanning the creeks which were watering holes for the cattle which roamed about, and he worried that one of these bridges might collapse under the weight of his Model-T Ford. Eventually, the reporter came upon the grisly scene.
The rope that held Thomas Rivers' body was tied to a young oak tree that bent over the trail and entwined with an elder tree on the opposite side of the roadway. In stark contrast to the violence, the trees formed a peaceful arbor which provided the only shade from the blistering sun for miles around. It was a place where the field-workers sought shelter during their noon-time breaks.
The dead man was dressed in the same clothes he had on the day before. His checkered cap was still on his head, pulled halfway down his forehead. His hands were hanging limp at his side. His neck was swollen at the back and appeared to have been broken. His ragged shoes were about eighteen inches from the ground and a small notebook was in the right rear pocket of his khaki trousers. He was wearing wrapped leggings, which suggested he may have been a veteran of the Great War. A three-ply knot was hitched at the back of his neck; the rope was looped over a sturdy limb and tied to the trunk of the elder.
There was a small group of blacks gathered near the body. The younger men kept a respectful distance, but one ancient gentleman hobbled over to the hanging form, stared at it over his glasses, and then touched one of the lifeless arms a couple of times. The ancient shook his head and muttered sadly to himself.
According to the Times reporter, it was a fast and efficient lynch job. The several cars which carried the masked men easily found their way to the lynching ground where they prepared the rope, and ordered the victim to step up to the running board of a car. With the noose securely in place, the car drove away and left the body struggling in thin air. The verdict of an on-site inquest was that Rivers had come to his death at the hands of "parties unknown," and no further investigation was considered necessary.
The Shreveport newspapers, the Times and the Journal, usually reflected the Southern white supremacist opinions of the era, though there was an occasional bow to the growing national consensus against lynching. On 19 February, 1925, for instance, an editorial in the Journal praised the citizenry of Natchitoches, Louisiana, for its law-abiding behaviour during the arrest and trial of Sam Prater and Almo Smith. These two black men had been convicted of murdering a popular white high school student named Dan Barr.
The Journal spoke too soon, however. The following day, Prater and Smith were dead, each shot in the head by the Sheriff and his Deputy who were taking them to the state penitentiary at Angola. The officers' version of the incident could hardly be repudiated since there were no witnesses. They had stopped to change a flat tire when the two prisoners, who were handcuffed together, had attempted to escape. Dr. Phelps, the coroner, exonerated the officers.
There was a tremendous amount of activity on the part of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920's. Wendy Russell, a white woman who later became an international fashion model and patron of the arts, grew up in poverty in Marshall. She said there were regular Klan meetings opposite the house in which she was raised. The young girl watched in awe as the white-sheeted and hooded figures, many of them "respectable" citizens by day, gathered, burned crosses, and marched on some hapless victim. Russell witnessed two blacks burned alive on a courthouse square, and several incidents of tarring-and-feathering.
On Mardi Gras, 24 February, 1925, seven thousand Ku Kluxers held a parade in Shreveport. Cars were parked all the way from the State Fair grounds to Flournoy, Louisiana, a distance of six or seven miles. The number one man in the Caddo parish Klan, the "Exalted Cyclops" if you please, was Reverend E. L. Thompson of Central Christian Church.
The next day, a lynch mob got hold of Joe "Son" Airy, a black man who allegedly slew a state highway officer in Bossier Parish. According to a report from the Bossier Sheriff's office, Airy was surrounded by a posse when he drew a revolver and was promptly wounded by a deputy. The mob then strung him up, said the report. As the body lay on the ground, it was mutilated for souvenirs. The victim's fingers, toes and ears were cut off, bits of his clothing were torn, and the rope with which he was hanged was cut to pieces. The coroner reported that "Joe Airy came to his death from gunshot wounds while resisting arrest." The incident took place outside the house of one of Airy's relatives, who was too terrified to claim any part in it.
Just a few weeks prior to this incident in his home region, Huddie Ledbetter was released from the Texas penitentiary. Almost unbelievably, he received a pardon from outgoing governor Pat Neff.

Pat Neff had been a "reform" governor. There has been a tendency in both Texas and Louisiana politics to alternate populists and reformers in the governor's office. The populists, like the Fergusons in Texas and the Longs in Louisiana, appeal to the common people but have a tendency towards ostentatious corruption. This leaves an opening for reform governors to be elected periodically on a "clean-up" platform. Neff had decided that there were to be no pardons on his watch. According to the Austin American of 5 April 1925, Neff abolished the board of pardons, and would only pardon in very extreme cases, "where the convicts were friendless and penniless and no voice of mercy or persuasive lawyer could speak for them."
The pardoning policies of Neff’s predecessors, Jim and Ma Ferguson, have been termed "liberal." Jim Ferguson made penitentiaries his hobby and was far more liberal in giving pardons than was Neff. While in the Governor's office, he issued pardons to 3,000 convicts, while Neff, in his four-year term, extended pardons to a grand total of two men. “The former was criticized in the last political campaign for being too lenient and the latter is being lampooned for being too strict.” ("Honor")
The popular image of southern penitentiaries prior to World War II is of almost medieval institutions where men in striped outfits were chained together and driven like animals to work in brutal conditions. It is surprising, then to discover that the public utterances of such governors as Pat Neff and Jim Ferguson display a liberal attitude towards the prisoners. It may be true that Neff pardoned only two prisoners during his four years in office, but he certainly took an interest in his prison system. He initiated a program for the maintenance of State Parks which employed prisoners working on an honor system. At Boerne, 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, twenty convicts serving terms from five years to life worked on beautifying a state park under the suveillance of a young Texas Ranger. Outside of working hours, the men were permitted to come and go as they pleased.
Neff also started an "honor farm" at Sugar Land. One hundred and fifty
prisoners were selected from prisons all over the state, guards were transferred, bloodhounds removed, and the men informed that they were free to come and go outside of the eight-hour work day. There were wake-up and bed times, however, and during the first two months of operation, eleven inmates walked away from the farm. Forger Charles Miller was the first to escape. He was a leader among the prisoners who made a speech and presented a gold fountain pen to Neff when the governor appeared at the launching ceremonies. Miller disappeared from the honor farm the following week but later relented and opted to return. In his absence, the other prisoners had vowed to punish Miller if he was recaptured, but since he returned voluntarily he was let off the hook.
Jim Ferguson, in his role as "Deputy Governor" to his wife Miriam, better known simply as “Ma,” vowed to continue Pat Neff's parks program. During his previous terms as governor, Ferguson had the prison system paying for itself, and he had always taken a particular interest in it. Perhaps there were fewer duties for governors in those days to account for their interest in prisons. In an article in the New York Times, Ferguson uttered remarks which would be unthinkable for many contemporary Texas politicians.
“Upon one visit to the Imperial Farm,” he said, “I made a speech to the men and told them that if they worked for the State and behaved, I would examine every record sent in to me when a pardon was requested. I promised them I would pardon where I could and shorten their terms.
“One fellow got up and made a better speech than I did. ‘You really mean that, Governor ?,’ he asked, and when I told him that I was serious he declared that he was guilty of theft, that his punishment was just, and that he had a wife and three children, and that he intended to work hard for his freedom. He got it, too.
“I could not be so hard-hearted as to refuse to listen to the plea of a human being, trapped up in a prison asking for a hearing and pleading the cause of his family. ("Honor")
During Neff's tenure, the prison system started losing money and he had to borrow $800,000 to keep it solvent. He was hoping that some of his reforms would put the system on a more secure financial footing. Money, apparently, was the major problem faced by the Texas prisons at the time. Pat Neff was a serious and determined man who had been a county prosecuting attorney and Speaker of the Texas house before being elected to the governorship. He later served for fifteen years as president of Baylor University in Waco, a Baptist institution. In his 1925 autobiography “Battles for Peace,” Neff described the circumstances which led to his pardoning one particular prisoner:
“On one of the farms, during my administration, was a negro as black as a stack of black cats at midnight. I visited a number of times, during the four years, the farm where he worked, and on each visit he sang a song which was a petition for pardon set to music. This negro would pick his banjo, pat his foot, roll his eyes, and show his big white teeth as he caroled forth in negro melody his musical application for pardon. In one verse he mentioned his wife; in another, his home; and I recall the third, closing with these words:

I know my mother will faint and shout,
When the train rolls up and I come stepping out.

Then, with much negro pathos and in full confidence, he sang:

If I had the Governor where the Governor has me,
I would, before morning, set the Governor free.

I listened to this song every visit for four years, and the day before I went out of office I pardoned the singer. He had been in the penitentiary some seven years, and had provedhimself to be a trustworthy convict (Neff 177).

Neff’s musician was, of course, Huddie Ledbetter (alias Walter Boyd) who had been in the penitentiary seven years when he was pardoned (pardon #18141) by Governor Neff on 16 January 1925. It was the day before Neff left office. Huddie told John Lomax that he decided, after a couple of failed escapes, to become a model prisoner and a leader of the chain gang. He worked harder and faster than anyone else, he claimed, and was highly regarded both by his jailers and by his fellow convicts. Then, in 1924, he had an opportunity to sing for Governor Neff.
“This here's a song I composed to Governor Pat Neff so that he would reprieve me from the thirty years I had in the Texas penitentiary. When he come to visit Camp A, Imperial State Farm, he had his wife and a carful of ladies with him. They all listened when I sing the song I had composed to Governor Pat
Neff:
"Had you, Governor Neff, like you got me,
I'd wake up in the mornin', and I'd set you free", (Negro 200).

Once, Neff entertained folk song collector Dorothy Scarborough, at the˙ Governor's mansion in Austin. He told her the story of a convict who approached him after supper during an official visit to a prison farm and asked if he could sing the governor a song. Scarborough quoted Neff who was reciting from memory:

If I had the gov'ner
Where the gov'ner has me,
Before daylight
I'd set the gov'ner free.
I begs you gov'ner
Upon my soul:
If you won't gimme a pardon,
Won't you gimme parole.

Scarborough was collecting for her book, “Negro Folk Songs,” at the time, but apparently Neff did not mention the prisoner by name, and did not say whether the pardon song was successful (Scarborough 30). And even though there is no other mention of banjo playing anywhere in the Huddie Ledbetter canon, we can safely assume that he was talking about our man. Perhaps the idea of a banjo fitted in best with the rest of Neff's picture of the black minstrel, or maybe Huddie was, in fact, playing a banjo. It would not be beyond his capabilities.

Twenty years later, In 1945, Pat Neff, then president of Baylor University, wrote to Mr. Huddie Ledbetter at a Hollywood, California, address:

Friend Ledbetter:

Do you remember me vividly and distinctly? Do you recall how at the Imperial Penitentiary Farm you picked the banjo many times for me as I visited the penitentiary system? Do you recall that one of the last things I did as I left the Governor's Office was to sign a pardon for you?

Neff went on to say that he had heard good things about Huddie and to
suggest that he should come and give a free concert for the faculty and students, if he should ever pass that way. Huddie gave a concert at the University of Texas, Austin, in 1949, but there is no record of him
accepting the invitation to visit Waco.
It became part of the legend of Huddie Ledbetter that he had sung his way to freedom twice. Such journals as Time magazine and the New York Herald-Tribuneï repeated it as fact during the 1930's, and though Ledbetter's release in Louisiana nine years later is an entirely different matter, it appears that he did, indeed, sing his way to freedom in Texas.
This was certainly an unusual and unorthodox way of achieving
release from a murder conviction. Was Governor Neff acknowledging, by this whimsical act of mercy, that black prisoners in the Texas system were more akin to political detainees than serious criminals? Or was there something about Huddie Ledbetter's (Walter Boyd's) trial and subsequent conviction that made Neff realize that he shouldn't have been in prison in the first place? There were 3,600 convicts in Neff's prison system; he extended pardons to just two of them.

Chapter 3: 1909-1917: Elethe

2008-01-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

30 May, 1909: National Conference on the Negro which led to the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. The only black person on the nine-member Board of Directors was W.E.B. DuBois. The photo of DuBois was taken in 1904.

Preston: (Huddie Ledbetter’s neighbor near Leigh, Texas, Preston Brown ) I'll tell you what [Huddie] was — a good time man, that's all he was. You didn't bother him, he wouldn't bother you. He'd treat you nice. But he wasn't scared of nobody! If you fooled with him, he'd fight you. He went to prison twice. Twice to my knowing. They sent him [up] for fighting, you know. Louisiana and Texas.
The woman he married — he left here and went to West Texas, — and when he come from West Texas, he brought this lady with him. Little woman named Elethe. I mean she was little and low. I know Queenie's brother, George Pugh — Huddie and George was first cousins — and Huddie and him married two sisters from West Texas. They'd go out there and pick cotton. Yes, Huddie could pick cotton. He made plenty money picking cotton, and so they would go out west and they got going with these girls and he married Elethe, and he brought her here. Farmed right up the road there. And then, come picking cotton time, she'd go with him up there to
West Texas and they'd pick, make a lot of money up there. And then they'd come on back home.

Preston Brown grew up next to the Ledbetters, and remembers them well. It was all cottonfields around the south shore of Caddo Lake, and when a farmer had picked his own cotton crop, he was free to help pick the neighbors’ crop, or hire himself out to one of the larger plantations. There were plenty of these plantations to the east in Caddo parish, around Dixie and Belcher, or further west towards Dallas, and northwest towards DeKalb.
Huddie met Elethe Henderson in Terrell near where his Uncle Terril (or "Tell") lived, and they married in 1909. Elethe's sister, Alice, married Huddie's cousin George Pugh at about the same time and her brother, Gritt
Henderson, proposed marriage to George's sister Queenie. Queenie declined, opining that there were enough Hendersons in the family already.

During these years John A. Lomax, a tall, scholarly Texan in his early forties who had only recently earned an M.A. in English from Harvard, was putting together his collection of “Cowboy Songs, and Other Frontier Ballads.” The work was published in 1910.
Lomax was born on the frontier in Mississippi in 1867, and his family pushed westward into Texas two years later. Growing up on the Chisholm Trail, he became intrigued by the idea of folk songs as literature quite early in life, though it took him a while to get the idea accepted by anyone else. In fact, English professors at Harvard accepted the idea more quickly than the folks back in Texas.
“Very few of my associates at the University of Texas expressed sympathy or took the project seriously,” Lomax later wrote. “For them, this crude product of the West had no interest, no value, no charm whatever. Governor Jim Ferguson quoted stanzas of my cowboy songs in political addresses to cheering crowds, and sneered at the University of Texas for having me on its faculty, just as he sneered at a teacher of zoology, asserting repeatedly that this professor was trying to make wool grow on the backs of armadillos and thus bring down the price of sheep! Both of us were sorry fools to him.” (J.Lomax, “Adventures” 41)˘
Lomax persisted with his project, however, and with the aid of some annual $500 grants from Harvard, was able to travel extensively through the cattle regions of Texas, New Mexico and Wyoming, collecting songs from the cowboys in stockyards and saloons. He carried a fifty-pound Edison recorder which transferred live sound to cylinders through a microphone which resembled one of those large speaker horns pictured next to the dog in His Master's Voice advertisements. Most of the ballad contributors were either scornful of the horn, or frightened off by it, and preferred to transmit the tunes to Lomax by ear. At a cattlemen's gathering in San Antonio, Lomax was jeered and hooted at for his troubles. Said one conventioneer,
“I have been singin' them songs ever since I was a kid. Everybody knows them. Only a damn fool would spend his time tryin' to set 'em down.“(41)
But set them down he did, in the first collection of American folk songs to include both words and music. And in a meeting with former President Theodore Roosevelt in Cheyenne, Wyoming, he picked up an endorsement, and a preface, for his book. Nearly a quarter of a century later, Lomax was able to pursue his other major folk song interest — the songs of American Negroes — which led to a fortuitous meeting with Huddie Ledbetter.

Most summaries of the life of Ledbetter, including the one later published by John Lomax, refer to Huddie as a rambler who left home at an early age and traveled extensively throughout the Southwest. In fact, though, outside of his trips to Dallas and Terrell to see family and friends, and to pick cotton, he traveled very little. When someone from out of the region hears the term "West Texas," for instance, they may conjure up images of El Paso or Amarillo. But when someone — especially an African American — from Shreveport or Marshall says "West Texas," they simply mean anywhere in Texas that is further to the west than themselves. Like the way New York City dwellers refer to anywhere in the state north of Yonkers as "upstate." Dallas certainly qualifies as West Texas in these terms; so, too, do Tyler and Terrell.

In the middle of April, 1912, the White Star ocean liner "Titanic" sank in the North Atlantic. One thousand, five hundred and three passengers and crew members perished in the disaster, which was the result of the ship hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Most alarming, to many people, was that the ship had been declared unsinkable, a marvel of modern engineering. The sinking of the Titanic was an incident of mythic proportions at the time, and for many years to come; a widely-circulated ballad emerged and remained a part of the popular culture well into the 1920's.
For the black community, there was a further dimension to the disaster, which involved the world heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson. The story goes that Johnson had planned to book passage on the Titanic's maiden voyage, but was refused on account of being "colored.” Huddie, like many minstrels of the time, had his own Titanic ballad:

(Jack Johnson/Library Of Congress.)

“Jack Johnson wanted to get on board,
Captain said, "I ain't hauling no coal,"
Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well. . .

“Jack Johnson was so glad he didn't get on there.
“When he heard about that mighty shock,
Might have seen the man doing the Eagle Rock,
Fare thee, Titanic, fare thee well. . .

“Nineteen hundred and twelve: Blind Lemon [Jefferson] and myself, we used to do this [song]. And I want to say something about Jack Johnson. [He] was a prize fighter about the time of Jim Jeffries, you know, 1912, or something like. . . but this is when the Titanic went down. . . and down there — the people use the name "crackers" which I don't use that name. [They’re] just people, you know.
“But anyhow, this is the song about it, this tells the true story of what happened on that ship in nineteen hundred and twelve. It's the first number I learned how to play on the twelve-string guitar, nineteen hundred and twelve.”

There is a beautiful symmetry in Huddie's learning to play the 12-string in 1912, and it may have just occurred to him on the spur of the moment. And it is revealing that he gratuitously introduces the term "crackers" in referring to white people, a term he says “he” doesn't use. The Jack Johnson story, true or not, apparently put the black community in a state of shock; they thought they'd been making progress against racism, but now one of their most prominent citizens is treated with contempt. Of course their attitude changed a couple of days later when the unsinkable white ship hit the famous iceberg in the mid Atlantic, and sank. Then, the catastrophe was seen as divine retribution for the captain's decision not to accept Jack Johnson as a passenger. It is clear in Huddie's spoken introduction to the song, that he was still trying to communicate the bitter feelings of blacks. One can imagine the celebrations that might have occurred when the Titanic sank.
Blacks derived particular satisfaction from the irony of the disaster. Jim Crow laws had guaranteed that no black person would be among those aboard White Star's acme of floating luxury and technological achievement. Black interest in the disaster led to a milestone in black underground literature known as the "Titanic Toast." This long narrative poem tells the story of Shine, a black stoker aboard the ill-fated ship. (Wade 435)
There were many variants of the "Titanic Toast" in ciculation for decades. The "toasts" were recited at parties and gatherings in much the same way as jokes are told. The most popular toasts are "Stagolee," "The Dirty Dozens," and "The Titanic," and in many versions they sound like long, rambling dirty jokes, lavishly laced with explicit sexual language and innuendo. Shine, for instance, jumps off the sinking ship and starts swimming for shore, but the Captain's daughter tries to get him to save her by lifting up her skirt and promising sexual favors. Shine knows what's best for himself, however, and by the time the news of the disaster reaches New York, he's
in a saloon getting drunk. In reality, there was no such person as Shine because even the most humble members of the Titanic's crew were white.
The toasts highlight a strong or wily quality in their heroes, and fall into the same broad African tradition as the Brer Rabbit stories.
Huddie continued to sing "The Titanic" long after there was any currency to the news; he was comfortable in the knowledge that few of his white listeners had any inkling of the underlying references in the song, but he knew the resonance for his black listeners. When the Cunard liner Queen Mary was built in the late 1930's, Huddie tried to adapt the song to fit the new ship, but since the Queen Mary never sank, the song doesn't make too much sense.
The Titanic disaster had a major effect on the development of radio since many of the survivors, the people who fitted into the inadequate supply of lifeboats, owed their lives to the radio distress signals sent out from the bridge. A nearby ship heard the signals and picked up survivors, and the news spread quickly. Marconi, the inventor responsible for the Titanic's communications system, was highly praised, and radio was brought to the forefront. Marconi had been experimenting with wireless for more than a dozen years before Titanic. His idea was to sent messages from one point to another point, but within the next decade, radio was developed into an
entertainment medium where the signal was, to use the agricultural term, "broadcast."

Queenie Ruffin Batts got married to Huddie's half-brother Alonzo in 1896. They lived with their three children in the next farm over from the Ledbetters. In 1913, Queenie died. The elder daughter, Viola, was just 11
at the time; Irene was 8 years old; and the boy, Alonzo, Jr. — Lonnie — was 5. A family conference took place and it was decided that following the funeral at Elizabeth Church, the children should go to live with their grandparents, Wes and Sallie Ledbetter, on the Ledbetter home place.

Irene: [a retired teacher in Marshall, Texas] My father Alonzo Batts was a preacher and Uncle Huddie is my uncle — that was father's half-brother. Their mother was Sallie Cassandra Ledbetter. Uncle Huddie's father was John Wesley Ledbetter, but that was not my real grandfather. Alonzo's father was Batts. (Irene)
Viola: There were the three of us kids. We had a brother, Alonzo — we called him Lonnie. My sister, Irene, and my brother and I. Irene was in the middle and Lonnie was the youngest. There were other youngsters in the
neighborhood, like the Davisons, and the Browns five or six miles away,
maybe two or three miles away, really country, miles apart nobody just next door, like now. But anybody living a mile was close. Through the woods. You could run a mile in a minute, almost. Run! We didn't do nothing else. They'd tell you to hurry up, and you knew that meant, "go fast." So we'd run. We — my sister, my brother and I — lived with my grandmother and grandfather Wesley Ledbetter until — must have been 1919. Something like that. We went to live with them when our mother died. Stayed with them from that day, after the church. In 1913. From the funeral at Elizabeth church to their house. That church is right there now. It's a small brick church just down the road from the lake, going south - they bricked it. (Viola)

We never lived with my mother's family; we always lived with my father's family when my mother died. The question was, now who will take the children? And it was decided that my grandmother would. She was the one that said, "I'll take the children," and my grandfather said, "Yes, if I have a piece of bread, they will have a piece of bread." We were all poor; very, very poor.
But, not all that poor. He was a good farmer. He owned his own land. It was nice fertile land. It raised good crops. And, he lived well. Horse and wagon days, that's what it was. He had his horse and wagon and he'd go to
town, weekends. They raised just about everything they had — they ate — had to have. But clothing. It was a hard life, but it was a good life. We were happy. It was fun because we thought that's the way life was. (Irene)

There were mostly cottonfields around there. Just cottonfields and woods. And a small board house. The kitchen was log: at that time, the kitchen wasn't built in the house. Even my grandfather, where my mother's father lived, had a plank walk to the kitchen from the house. And that kitchen was a great big log house. Well, it was a good-sized log, but it was log. Perhaps the first thing they had for the church was a log cabin. Then they built the [permanent] church, later.
My father wasn't the pastor when my mother died. Someone else was pastor, but he did pastor there at one time. I can't remember what the preacher's name was when my mother died.
The school was right on the church campus. And we went to school with Preston's wife, Mary Jenkins. Yes, she was our friend, we had school with her. Mary Jenkins. Seems to me I lived there til I was about thirteen years old. Uncle Huddie? He'd help his father raise the crop, pick it and leave to pick cotton in West Texas. That's how he did it. And he could pick! Twelve yards of ducking in his cotton sack — he got it on like suspenders on his back this way. And wore knee pads. And crawled between two rows just like he was [hearing] music, you know, to a rhythm. Pick it. (Viola)

Pick a bale of cotton." You've heard that song? "Pick a bale a day." We thought everybody picked cotton! We enjoyed picking cotton. Uncle Huddie had a game with it. He would have two rows. He had a long sack and had the strap so it would go over both shoulders; and he'd pick with both hands. He'd pick this row and he'd pick that row and he'd put it into his bag. He was a “professional” cotton picker. Yes. He went out to West Texas. During the harvesting season, he'd go out and pick cotton and make good money. Make what he thought was plenty of money.
Picking cotton came way down near Santa Claus time. Winter time. That's when he would make his money. Well he made plenty money — some money — picking his guitar all the time. Weekends, he'd always have a sukey jump [laughs]. Like a barn dance.
He played for church programs. Religious songs. And school closings. Huddie Ledbetter always played for the school closings. That was a great time. The schools were glad about that. He played the music that's good for schools; and he had music appropriate for religious services; and he had his music for his dances. He played them all! (Irene)

I remember Uncle Huddie playing the mandolin! I wanted to play it so bad but it just wasn't in me to play. I liked the mandolin, you know. "In the Good Old Summertime" — he could play it so pretty, SO pretty on that mandolin. He could play a tune on just about any kind of instrument. We didn't have a piano, but if he went somewhere there was a piano, he would play it. (Viola)

And he could play the organ. The piano, the banjo and the - what's that? the mandolin. He was talented for playing music. He said the first instrument he had was a weed. There is a weed out there that is open — it has a hole in it. If you break it at the joint — it's jointed, like cane, and in that weed, you'd have some white filler. You'd push [the filler] out and then it'd be hollow. And he would cut holes where it needed to be to play music. He'd put his hand over one hole, kind of like a flute instrument; and that was his first instrument that played for him. [laughs] I think though, really, the mandolin is said to be his first instrument. He started playing that before his feet could strike the floor in his little child's rocking chair. He had an accordion, too. His uncle, his cousin - Ledbetter, what's his name? His uncle's name that gave him the windjammer? Tell. Terrell Ledbetter, I believe. (Irene)

Sometime he would go visiting, he would take us kids, "We're going visiting today," he'd say, and it happened that this particular place I'm thinking about now, it had a piano. And he played it. When we went visiting, we went walking. Or in the wagon; sometime in the wagon. Or on the horse, but all of us couldn't ride the horse. (Viola)

Caddo Lake at that time, on the bed of the lake, we could find the mussels in the sand, and they would take a day off, stop working on the farm one day, and have a picnic on the lake and hunt mussels. Well, we were getting the mussels because we were looking for jewelry — pearls! Sometimes they did find them and they would get some money for them, and anytime anyone would get money, that would boost us to go and hunt for pearls. Uncle Huddie would carry us down, and we would go down to the lake in the wagon. The children would just sit right down in the bed on the floor. And grown people would sit on seats and chairs and whatever, and he would be among the ones to go. We'd have a party. We'd have a guitar-picking and dancing and plays, and of course, we had meals. We always had a picnic lunch; spread the table. We call it "dinner on the ground." They were good times.
There was a Mrs. Betty Wilson. She lived a long time, too, she lived after we were married, my husband and I. And, Myers - Sterling Myers and Jamieson, Roscoe Jamieson. And Tom Marshall.
Tom Marshall finally came to Marshall and bought property, just down the road here, across from the church, the first church you get to. Black church on the right hand side going — it's called St. Paul. He bought property across from St. Paul; he bought all of that. And of course he maintained his home in Leigh, also. And he had a store in Leigh. He was one of the prosperous ones. In Leigh there, where Antioch is, Tom Taylor had a store and then Marshall had a store. Marshall looked just like he was white, too; somebody was his daddy, I don't know who. And he had a store there, down from the church. When we had homecoming day at the church, we'd always go to those stores and purchase soda pop and candy. Things to eat. We had peppermint, great big sticks, and it was stripes. Do you ever see large peppermint sticks, now? They had the small and the large, too. But the thing that's gone now is the soda pop. They had the pop where you hit the top to open it. And it fizzes out when you hit the top. Then you have to hurry up and drink [laughs]. That was fun.
I must have been about nine years old the first time I went to Louisiana [1914]. We went in a wagon. And that seemed so far away, that was a long distance then. Right now it's an hour, maybe forty-five minutes. But it was a long ways away then. It was our mode of travel, it was the way we had to travel. Got into the wagon and went. The wagon would be pulled by two mules. They'd get a day off from the field and they'd carry us to town. Only way we had to go. Boy, that's a long way back in time. We would go to Shreveport for the parade. You know, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey? They'd come through, and everybody went to see the parade. In the wagon. Right down on the Avenue. Texas Avenue.
I don't remember going to the circus when I was a child, but we saw the parade. And we ate the popcorn and we ate the peanuts, and a stick with something good on it. Cotton candy! Oh, that was a great day. That's once in a lifetime! Didn't go every year, but we went sometimes. With grandfather and grandmother. I don't remember ever going with my parents. I don't remember much about my parents. I guess we were just so young. I remember going to church, I think. My father was a preacher; he preached. My grandmother was a song leader, in the Amen corner. That was a place where the ladies sat when they're going to say "Amen" and they're going to lead songs and they're going to pray, and they going to carry on the worship service. They're instrumental in giving leadership to the worship. We don't have that anymore. Sometime, some places they have the Amen Corner, but we don't have that anymore. We had it then at Elizabeth, and Antioch. Antioch at Leigh. (it's still there at Leigh). Elizabeth's still there, too, down near Caddo Lake. It's still there. The buildings, of course, have been changed a litle bit, but they're there.
Grandfather [Wes] was a worker in the Sunday school. He was a Bible scholar. He could read, you see, very few of them could read, but he could read enough to teach the lesson and learn the lesson, and learn enough to tell others the story of the lesson for today. So that's what he did. He was a Bible teacher. (Irene)

My father [Alonzo Batts] had a buggy. That's how we got to church and that's how I got to school. Once we had a buggy, we'd go in the buggy. Didn't have it long. You walked where you had to go, even if it was five or six, seven or eight miles, you walked. That's how you got there. That time of my life when we were living with my grandmother and Wes Ledbetter, that was happy. Oh, beautiful, because you see you didn't know — children nowadays knows everything — but, of all we shouldn't know, we didn't know!
Uncle Huddie'd play music for us; and the songs he wanted us to know, he'd play them. But all that stuff he'd play over there — those blues and party songs — my God, we didn't hear that. One thing about it, we didn't know the people, where he's going to play and have these suppers and things. My grandfather's laying into him about that, "you got to stop this, you don't carry that gun with you cause you looking for trouble," and he'd get a lecture; grandfather was a lecturer.
Uncle Huddie used to tell grandfather, "I won't be bothering nobody, but if they bother me, I will. My name is 'Will'." He will shoot it, that's what he was saying. And that would end the conversation and he'd be gone. These people [the unsavory sort] didn't come to the house; he'd go to another one who'd planned to have a party. He'd go, but we didn't ever see them.
Uncle Huddie had a horse — what I call a black horse. [See the blog entry on "Huddie's Booker."] My husband that raised horses, he'd call it a mahogany bay, but it was black. And two white front feet, socks, you know. He may have had a white spot on his forehead, I don't remember, but I know these feet. And he had that horse shining all the time. And a lap robe across his lap keeping his suit from getting hair or whatever on it. And that's how he traveled. With his guitar.
He was a real snappy dresser, everything had to be just so. His overalls were washed, starched and ironed. Clean pair every day. Aunt Elethe — his wife? — that's the one who would do the ironing. She was a beautiful person. To us, you know. She loved children. And we were crazy about Aunt Elethe. "Don't leave me." I remember that part of it. We were crazy about Aunt Elethe. We call her Aunt Elethe.
They met out there somewhere near Terrel, I think, but some of her people were in Big Sandy. But she said Terrell. They said Terrell. That's not too far from Big Sandy, anyway. They're not too far apart. Little towns, close together.
[Viola has not got her facts straight here: Big Sandy is in Upshur county and Terrell is in Kaufman county, seventy miles further west. From Marshall, they are both in "West Texas".]
Grandfather's brother lived there. We never did see him. He played guitar, we were told. Showed Uncle Huddie how to play the mandolin, didn't he? I don't know who taught him. . . The windjammer! What's the windjammer? That's the accordion, isn't it? Accordion's what he had — and gave me the rocker — Tell bought him a little rocking chair when he was little. And when I came into the world I had the chair. And they said before his feet could touch the floor in that little rocker, he was playing the accordion. He played. . . when he be here, too, he played.
He was a natural born musician. Just natural born. He'd take a reed — we had the reeds, you know, with the hole in the center? - he'd break the joints, they had joints in them, and clean that out, and you had a hole in there, and he'd cut just enough notches in it to make the tune he wanted to make, and he'd play a song on it. It was just natural. (Viola)

We played yard games like "ring round the rosie," "here we go round the rosebush," and "London Bridge is broken down." Then we had a song, "I measure my love to show you, and we would march up and down and all around and then we'd get to the end and we measured our partners love.

(sings) O! we have a game today
O! we have a game today
I can't remember all the songs really.

(sings) Here we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.
Here we go round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning!
We were skipping and dancing, and he would play. The guitar would be going all the time — strum! strum! — and we would keep time with the music. (Irene)

The life of Huddie Ledbetter in these times seems fairly settled. He was living with Elethe in his own house; his mother and father lived in their house on the same 68 and1/2 acre home place. They were raising their three grand-children, and Huddie and Elethe also pitched in and helped. Like their neighbors, the Ledbetters raised cotton as a cash crop, and several vegetables and farm animals for home consumption. They owned mules for ploughing and pulling the wagon; Huddie had his horse for transportation. They did most of their shopping in Leigh at Morgan's or T.J. Taylor's store, though they visited Shreveport once a year, and Marshall perhaps more often.
[Note: The T.J.Taylor referred to above was the father of the, then, future First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson.]

The church was a strong element in the lives of Wes, Sallie and Elethe; it also played a role, albeit a less important role, in the life of Huddie. He played music in church on an occasional basis; he played for church suppers and picnics, and for school closings. He was a respected member of his community, and his playing for Saturday night sukey jumps may have been a cause of irritation within his family, but in no way did it diminish his standing among his peers.
All seemed to be going fairly smoothly until June 1915, when he was indicted by a Grand Jury in Marshall, in Harrison county, on a charge of assault to murder. The incident in question took place after a house party on June 13th at the Akin place near his home. Although the details are sketchy, Huddie apparently argued with, and shot, a neighbor named Jim Coleman. Six witnesses, including the said Jim Coleman, testified against Huddie, and Sheriff John Sanders was given an arrest warrant (Capias) which he executed on June 24th. The other witnesses to the altercation were named John Lee, T. J. Miles, Charles Jones, Celeste Lee, and Tobe Jerry.
The grand jury indictment read that "[Huddie Ledbetter] did unlawfully and with malice aforethought make an assault in and upon the person of Jim Coleman with the intent then and there on the part of him the said Huddie Ledbetter to kill and murder him the said Jim Coleman."

"Well, the first time he killed — he didn't kill the man. He shot him in the stomach, and he had a bullet in his stomach. He was named Jim Coleman." (Queenie)

I remember one Saturday night, just before day, he shot Jim Coleman. Got fighting over a, you know, female. Quarreling over girl friends. Shot him twice, and that's the cause of Jim Coleman being dead today. Shot part of his liver off. He lived about four, five years [afterwards.] Sunday morning, 'fore day, down here in the Akin place. That's when his daddy put the place up. Huddie got out when his daddy sold that property, got him clear. He got Huddie out right away. He didn't go to jail at all. (Preston)

Every Saturday night he'd go play somewhere. That's the way they'd enjoy themselves in the area, you know, and this particular Saturday night, he was playing and somebody. . . well, I have to say it like he said it — "My trouble, when I got into it, was my music — and women." — well, these women, you know how they, I don't know how they do it, but anyhow a man got mad, and he came at Uncle Huddie with a knife —
(“I'm listening! I'm looking at him tell it after he got to the house, jaw was ripped open”)
— and he always had his gun, somewhere, somebody was holding it for him this night, you know, and he says he threw his arm up, he didn't want him knifing him, cutting him anymore, and grabbed this person with the knife, and it was a woman holding the gun, and I don't know which way she went, but anyway, he took the gun and shot and he got the man in the arm, he didn't miss him, but he got the arm, and he got in trouble for shooting somebody that night. Saturday night.
And, of course, when they had the trial they put him on what they call the "farm" county road. He had chains around his ankles, and of course, the chain ate a sore in there, like that. . . and that's when he ran away. He was working on the farm, county road, I imagine it was this road out here. . . between Marshall and Leigh, and he ran away, he jumped the fence. . . and Sallie - my grandmother - she felt it somehow (I guess she saw it like vision). A little before the sun went down that particular day he left the road where they had him, and at that same time grandmother put the hoe down. She said, "My child needs me and I'm going to him," and she walked away, out of the field. And we were all shocked. Grandfather went with her finally, after he got to thinking about what was happening, and we got her back to the house, and that night at 12 o'clock, he walked in.
Grandmother had walked the floor up until 12 o'clock. She'd just walk the floor and look out the window.
He told about how he got away and what all he went through to get there. He found a space to make a run for it — had these chains on him, you know — and he made it to a farmer's house. And he did what it took to get the chain loose. He came home with one — one on his leg, and one in his hand . . . The farmer got these chains off his leg, and then he was just running. He ran and he heard the dogs, but we have some big creeks in that area — had big creeks, they've dried up now — so he got him a cane and went down under the water, used the cane to breathe, and when they left, he ran some more. Finally made it home. It wasn't all that many miles, but we walked and ran anytime wherever we were going. Anyhow, he made it home at 12 o'clock that night. (Viola)

These are competing versions of what happened after Huddie was indicted for assault: Preston Brown plays down the melodrama, saying simply that Wes Ledbetter made the whole charge go away by paying a certain sum of money raised by selling part of his land. On the other hand, Viola paints a vivid picture of a man escaping from the chain gang, running from tracking dogs and a sheriff’s posse in his striped clothing, hiding underwater with a reed to breathe through. True or not, Viola’s version has become part of the legend of Leadbelly.
Although Huddie was arrested on June 24th, the case was not scheduled for trial until October 11th. His father and mother had put up thirty precious acres of land to pay legal fees to the attorneys, W.C. and William Lane of Marshall. Viola’s story continues:

And when he left, he went to New Orleans; and that's the beginning of him making his moves, from the farm, cause he took to West. . . well we say West Texas, but it's Central Texas, I guess, up around Dallas and Terrell. Cottonfields. He'd slip home and help his father raise the crop, and leave, and pick cotton around Terrell, and get the crop in, that's how he did it.
That's when he started his traveling. Up until then, we were just family. Family and community. He'd go jamming every Saturday night, and many other nights, he'd go picking the guitar. And we didn't know about Uncle Huddie's life then. They just didn't let us know it. All we knew is, Uncle Huddie's home. Or he's not here.
Of course, I saw that. . . . Saw him coming back from that Saturday night when there was blood on his jaw and his face was wide open. The man (Jim Coleman) opened this slit and the blood was running down. I saw that. That was a cut on his jaw. Did you see him? [She’s asking Irene, who didn’t see it.] You never saw him? He wore that scar the rest of his life, and it just barely missed his eye. Barely missed his eye.
Up until that time it was a pretty peaceful life. When my mother died in 1913, that was a sad time. But straightaway we went to live with grandmother and that was a happy life. They loved us and they were kind to us, and he, we'd see him every now and then, cause he'd stay out most of the time. . . but he was around, working on the land. Yes, he'd work on the farm.
After he escaped from the county farm, he took on an alias, "Walter Boyd." Eventually, he rejoined Elethe and they farmed near DeKalb in northeast Texas. Uncle Huddie had a cottage on that farm in DeKalb. He was sharecropping with somebody and calling himself Walter Boyd. I don't know how it was shared, but it was not his land.
Grandfather left the home place and went to work to get some money to pay for Huddie's legal problems and us kids left because he was going away and my grandmother left the farm and went down Louisiana where her folks were, you know? Her aunt. We stayed there a year with them. I know we went to school there, so we stayed that long. And that's when Uncle Huddie found out what was going on and he sent his wife, and her niece came because it was Christmas [1916], and where we were staying there wasn't a lot of room, cause we were staying with my grandmother's cousin, and Elethe asked to let us go visit with them for Christmas. And we did. We left Burch's house in Mooringsport and went to DeKalb with them. I think we must have ridden a train, cause we didn't have cars, and no buses running, and we sure didn't walk! I would have to say train. A train out of Mooringsport.
That was the beginning of us leaving the area. We went with Aunt Elethe when she went back to Huddie after that Christmas. They had arranged to get us away from where we were, and go with them to this place in DeKalb where he farmed, made a crop, and he asked our cousin to let us come and stay with him, to visit him. That was his way of getting us there to help him make the crop, I think. But anyhow, we went to DeKalb that year and when Christmas came again, we came back to see grandmother and grandfather. See, we stayed there and made the crop, and then we came back to Mooringsport at Christmas [1917] and while we were at home celebrating Christmas, he got into trouble. That's when he killed this man.
We went to school there in DeKalb — finished a whole semester — a school term there, til Christmas. At Christmas I was supposed to have gone to College — Bishop in Marshall — but this tall trouble came up and ended that part of it. I got married a little better than a year after.
Grandmother and grandfather had moved to Mooringsport. They had left the farm because he sold the land to try to save Uncle Huddie, try to get him out of trouble, and he lost his farm, and he was down there working as a delivery boy for a grocery store. And so, they lived there in Mooringsport. It seems to me that grandfather lost the farm in 1915 and if Huddie and Sallie had some kind of property rights later, well, I don't know what they had. If they had it, they sold it. Uncle Huddie would sell anything he had, you know. And if he had it, he must have sold it. Cause he didn't finally have it. In my experience. Mr. Davidson — Early Davidson — bought it and he died and his son Early, Jr. has it now. His son and his mother — Early Davidson's wife, Queen. (Viola)

Wes and Sallie Ledbetter did not, in fact, give up their entire farm in the summer of 1915. They sold, or at least handed over, thirty of their sixty-eight and a half acres of land to the law firm of Lane and Lane attorneys W.C. and William Lane. The rest of the farm was not sold until the 1920's when it was bought by Huddie's cousin Queenie and her husband Early Davidson. The Davidsons still lived on the land into the 1990’s.
If the year 1915 was pivotal in Ledbetter's life, it was not nearly so memorable as 1917 — for the world as well. On the music front, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white band claiming to be the "Creators of Jazz," recorded the first jazz sides for the Victor Talking Machine Company on February 26th.

Apparently Freddie Keppard, the black New Orleans' trumpeter who had been touring with his Original Creole Band since 1913, had been asked to record in 1916, but refused. The story goes that he didn't trust the recording process. He thought that other musicians would copy him and he'd lose his personal magic. Whatever the reason, the impression was created that white musicians originated jazz because they recorded it first. (p.102 of "Bourbon Street Black.") Blacks did not join the recording process until 1920.
To followers of the world scene, 1917 is best remembered as the year the United States declared war on Germany. For Huddie it was a year of sharecropping in DeKalb, his last year of freedom, and probably the year he met Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Huddie made music in Dallas, in the black section called "Deep Ellum" (Elm Street), on the streets, in the saloons, and at house parties. One night he met Blind Lemon Jefferson. (Negro)
“Him and I used to sing. . . in Dallas, Texas, and that was around nineteen hundred and four, you know.” (Last Sessions)
Huddie and Lemon may indeed have sung together in Dallas, as Huddie claims, but not in 1904. Lemon would have been just eleven years old. He was born in the community of Couchman, Texas, in July 1893, to Alec and Clarissa Jefferson. One of six children, he was legally blind from birth and lived at home well into his twenties. He learned to play the guitar early and sang in front of businesses and on the streets of nearby towns like Wortham, Streetman, and Kirvin. A local man recalls:
“I knew Lemon Jefferson when he was playing guitar on the streets here (Wortham) all his life and I was on the streets. So, I pitched quarters and nickels to him and he'd play. . . at any time of night he'd be there playing the guitar.

At that time, people used to be crazed by guitar music, and black and white people used to come watch him over at Jake Lee's Barber Shop. That's where he played every Saturday. And the white folks came out and they'd throw quarters, nickels, or dimes.
He's get on this road at 10 or 11 o'clock and he'd walk to Kirvin, seven or eight miles. And he'd play and keep a walkin'. He was blind, but he knew where he'd be goin'.” (Steinberg)
The Jefferson family were members of the Shiloh Primitive Baptist Church in Kirvin. Performing spirituals at religious services and picnics, and blues at dances and suppers. Blind Lemon, like Huddie Ledbetter, became one of the most popular performers in his Central Texas area. "He'd be singing in a church one day, singing at a house of ill-repute the next," said a retired Wortham postmaster. In 1917, he caught a train for Dallas, seventy miles to the north.
At the time of Lemon's arrival in Dallas, the black population of the city was undergoing a rapid expansion. It was the time of the Great Migration which saw hundreds of thousands of rural Southern blacks leave for northern cities like Chicago, New York, Cleveland, and Detroit. At the same time, many simply migrated to the nearest Southern city to take advantage of higher paying jobs which resulted from the Great War. Sometimes, this was a first step on the longer journey, but often they just stayed in the Southern cities. Even before the U.S. entered the War, American industry was producing more and more material for the European war machines. Then, when America did enter the war, millions of white workers joined the military, thus creating employment opportunities for blacks and women.
During this period, black singers from various parts of Texas and from Louisiana were becoming quite conspicuous in Dallas. In such a rich musical atmosphere, Blind Lemon Jefferson influenced other singers and was, in turn, influenced by them. In his singing he expressed all of the loneliness and poverty of the dry empty fields of Central Texas where he had his roots. (Uzzel)
Huddie claimed that he helped Blind Lemon get around and that the two played music together. At least three other famous black singers have also laid claim to guiding the blind singer around. Josh White started as a boy early in South Carolina, and Blind Lemon is only one of several blind street singers he claimed to have guided. Later he was to play the role of "Blind Lemon" in a short-lived Broadway production which starred Paul Robeson. Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, who came from Centerville, Texas, and T-Bone Walker of Dallas, also led Blind Lemon, helped him fill his tin cup, and picked up some songs and guitar licks. T-Bone recalled:
Blind Lemon I remember well. Though I was only a kid, he had me to lead him around. He kept the guitar strapped on his chest, a tin cup on the neck, and on Central Avenue, people stopped to listen, clinking coins so he could hear them drop. Afterwards, I'd guide him back up the hill, and Mama would fix supper. She'd pour him a little taste, and they'd sit quiet for a while. Later on, if they played, Marco and I would listen, or Marco would get out his bass. (Dance 11)
T-Bone Walker later moved to Los Angeles and became an innovator on the electric blues guitar; he was born in Dallas in 1910. His mother played guitar, and his step-father, Marco, could play an assortment of stringed instruments. His comments were transcribed in a 1987 biography by Helen Oakley Dance. T-Bone said that his mother was a good enough guitarist to have played with Huddie Ledbetter, more than once, during Huddie's visits to Australia's house at Central and Allen in Dallas.

"Australia [Carr] stayed in Huddie's house after Huddie left and went to Terrell, and she stayed there in Huddie's house when she was married to Allen Davis. After she separated from her husband, she went to Dallas, and that's where she died." (Queenie)

"[Australia] played, but not like Uncle Huddie. She wasn't skilled like he was, but she could play, and they played together. They had a way of tuning the guitar so they would have melody, you know, blend like more than one part." (Irene)

During the late 1920's, about ten years after Huddie knew him, Blind Lemon Jefferson became the most popular male blues singer of the decade. His influence on commercial black music, and thus on the whole of black America, is enormous: he charted the course of the blues up until the present time. Some blues scholars consider him "the greatest of the early country blues singers, the first to codify blues in the form that is familiar to us today " (Harris 276).
“Lemon sang things he wrote himself, about life, about good times and bad. Mostly bad, I guess. Everyone knew what he was singing about.” (T-Bone Walker)

Deep Ellum was an African American community that engulfed maybe five or six blocks on Central Avenue, and extended for about two blocks on Elm Street. The crossroads, Central and Elm, was where trucks from white plantations came to hire black laborers to pick cotton. Blind Lemon Jefferson stood on that corner, too, and it was likely that Huddie Ledbetter met him there while waiting for a ride to the fields. Black folks gathered round the street singer, but the whites went about their business on Elm Street. There were Jewish shopkeepers, secondhand clothing stores, pawnshops on the other side of the same block. The railroad tracks ran up Central Avenue and the street was lined with dance halls, Fat Jack's Theater, the Tip Top Club, shoeshine parlors, and beer joints.
[Lemon] was a little chunky fellow who wasn't only a singer. He was a bootlegger and when he'd get back home he had such a sensitive ear. He didn't want his wife to drink. Well, when he'd go away, she'd take two or three drinks out of the bottle and she'd think he wouldn't know it. But he'd take the bottle when he came home and say, "Hey, how you doin' baby? How'd we do today?"
"Nobody bought no whiskey."
Well, he'd take the bottle and shake it, and he could hear that there were two or three drinks missing. And what he'd do, he'd beat the hell out of her for that. (Sam Price)

According to Huddie, he and Blind Lemon Jefferson made lots of money whenever they played together. One favorite source of income for the two minstrels was the interurban rail system that ran between Dallas, Fort Worth and towns to the east and south. The conductor let them ride for free as they arranged two seats facing one another, got out their guitars and serenaded the passengers. In his introduction to the song "Silver City" on Leadbelly's Last Sessions, Huddie explained:
“We used to play all up and around Dallas, Texas, Fort Worth; we'd just get on the train — in them times you'd get on a interurban. That interurban run from Waco, to Dallas; Corsicana, Waxahatchie, from Dallas, and then they had an interurban that run from there to Fort Worth. We'd get out two guitars, we'd just ride any[where] — wouldn't have to pay no money in them times. We'd get on the train, ride to Terrill, Texas, anywhere we wanted to go. Well, we'd just get on, the conductor said, "Boys, sit down, y'all going to play music," we told him, "Yes, we're just out collecting money," — that's what we wanted — extra money. And so we'd sit down and turn the seats over and he'd sit in front of me and I'd sit down, then, we'd start. Now just to remember him I'll just do this little number.
[They've] got a Silver City out there, too. We always go through Silver City, and when we get on the bus, we're Silver City bound first. A lot of pretty girls out there, and that's what we were looking for. You know, we like for women to be around, 'cause when women are around, that bring mens, and we'll get money. 'Cause when you get out there, the women get to drinking and not thinking, and just fall all up on you, and that makes us feel good and we tear them guitars all to pieces. Never would quit playing.”

Sings:

Silver City bound, Silver City bound,
Gonna tell my baby, I'm Silver City bound,
And me and Blind Lemon,
Gonna ride on down.
Blind Lemon - oh, baby
He was a blind man.

“That was a place out from Dallas called Silver City. That was me and Blind Lemon's hangout, you know. We had about twenty-five or thirty girls apiece out there, and we'd just go out, you know. . . and have a good time. (Last Sessions)

"Silver City" does not appear on any maps of the Dallas-Fort Worth area; from the way Huddie talks, it likely refers to a black area in the bottom land by the Trinity River, the area which the interurban traversed after leaving the Dallas terminal on the way to Fort Worth. Huddie said he gathered several musicians around himself and even serenaded rich white people. But Huddie has been known to tell tall stories.

“Here's a song I composed about my friend Blind Lemon. We was running together for so many years in Dallas. He went away and he stayed away from his wife and they didn't get together until they were seventy-five years old apiece. And his wife lied down and dreamed about him one night and she woke up on the second night, here's what she said:
Dreamed last night and all night night before
Heard my baby knocking on my door.”
It turns aout that the song, "Blind Lemon," provides an opportunity for Huddie to showcase his 12-string guitar playing. He makes his instrument sound like a piano. Although he played several different instruments, the mandolin was most prominent until he saw a man at a traveling circus with a twelve-string guitar; he had to have one for himself (Lomax, “Negro” 9). In later years he would bill himself "King of the Twelve-String Guitar Players of the World." It was mentioned in his Newsweek obituary (51) Indeed, on one occasion Huddie explained his taking up the twelve-string in the following tongue-in-cheek story.
One night he was playing at a sukey jump with a regular guitar and one of his strings broke; but since a pretty woman was eyeing him, he kept on playing. Then another string broke and she started coming on to him and he kept on playing and she kept on flirting until he had only one string left. "I played that one string 'cause I liked that thing, but I made up my mind right then that I'd go out and get me a twelve-string guitar" (Lee, "Lead Belly" 137).

In December, 1917, "Walter Boyd" got into "tall trouble," the most memorable event to round out a memorable year. Some sort of argument with a couple of acquaintances landed him in jail again, this time charged with murder and assault. He never denied to the Lomaxes that he had killed; he said that the man "shouldn' been messin' wid" him. Ledbetter's account of the event, as retold by John Lomax, is not the only one available, but it is the one that has been handed down, with slight embellishments, to the present time. This is the story as written by Lomax:

On December 13, 1917, Walter Boyd (alias Huddie Ledbetter) was lodged in the New Boston, Texas, jail charged with murder and assault. He had started out through the river bottom one evening late to a dance. Two of his friends were along and he was armed, presumably because the bottom was a dangerous place at night. Alex Griffin began to "jive" Will Stafford about the way his girl had been playing around with other men. Walter Boyd's name was drawn into the talk and Stafford drew a pistol. Walter Boyd shot Stafford through the middle of his forehead . . . . (“Negro” 14)
Paul Oliver, the English blues scholar whose work is highly regarded, made this account into official blues history on page 55 of his 1969 opus, “Story of the Blues.” In the January 1, 1988, edition of the Shreveport “Journal Magazine,” Phil Martin did a story on Ledbetter to mark the singer's induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. He may have got the story from Oliver, or he may have got it direct from Lomax. It's the same story, slightly dramatized:
“. . . three men made their way across the river bottoms near New Boston, Texas, on their way to a dance . . . . They were musicians, and they were nominally partners, and it is among such men that things like what happened usually happen. Alex Griffin said something about a woman — a prostitute — that Will Stafford had taken up with. Stafford was offended, and the guitar player, a powerful, heavy man with a smile-shaped scar ringing his neck who called himself Walter Boyd, stepped in. Maybe Stafford's last mistake was pulling a pistol, maybe that is only the story that they tell. But the court records contend Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Walter Boyd, . . . shot Stafford dead on the spot.” (12)

In this way, as in many other instances, the story told to Lomax has simply been passed down through two generations, embellished but virtually unchanged. But is the story true? Huddie's cousin Blanche Love said that he always told her the truth; she is sure that he never killed anyone. The version of the incident that he told her was of a big fight amongst some itinerant cotton pickers at DeKalb, Texas, in which one man ended up dead "when the dust settled." Huddie stayed by the body of the man, Will Stafford, who was married to Mary, a cousin of his. He was next to the body when the law arrived. The evidence against him in court centered on his wearing running shoes matching the footprints in the dust. Later, it was revealed that all the other men, the ones who had run off, were wearing the same kind of running shoes, but Huddie was sentenced for murder and nobody showed any interest in reviewing the case (Ousler 20).
Queenie Davidson said she knew nothing about the details of the killing, except that Will Stafford was her cousin Mary's husband.
Ledbetter, as Walter Boyd, was certainly jailed in 1917. He remained in the custody of the state of Texas, in the Shaw State Prison Farm and in Sugar Land penitentiary, until January1924. He had been sentenced to thirty years for the killing at DeKalb.

DeKalb blues, babe, make me feel so bad
Mmmmm DeKalb blues, babe, make me feel so bad
Just to think about the times I once have had.

Bad man comin', comin' wid his gun
Now there's a bad man comin', comin wid his gun
I ain't got a gun but I ain' gonna run (J. Lomax, “Negro” 141).

Chapter 2: Sukey Jump: 1889-1909

2007-12-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

According to Eric Partridge's “Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English,” one meaning of the word "sukey" (circa 1820) was a general servant or "slavey." Hence a "sukey jump" referred to a dance or party in the slave quarters; after slavery, it was simply a term for a house dance.

Huddie William Ledbetter was born on the Jeter Plantation, about a mile and a half southwest of Mooringsport, Louisiana, on the 20th of January, 1889. The telephone, the automobile, the electric light and
the Kodak camera were all recent inventions, though none of these were manifest in the Ledbetter household.
The census-taker spelled the lad's name "Hudy," which is the way it sounded. Huddie is probably a variation of "Hugh;" William was either in honor of the baby's uncle, William Terrill Ledbetter, or of the owner of the plantation, William Jeter. The proud parents were Wes and Sallie Ledbetter, both of whom had been born into slavery. The baby, Wes's first, was born in the ninth year of his marriage. By then Sallie's first son, Alonzo, was fourteen years old.
Though Huddie's immediate family was small, his extended family was ample. His uncles and aunts all lived close by in the quarter, and he had several first cousins of his own age: Edmon, son of his Uncle Bob; Percy, son of his Uncle Terrill; and George (Pugh), son of his Aunt Mary. By the time he was two years old, he had also gained two girl cousins, Edmon's sister Blanche and George's sister Queenie, as well as a sister by adoption. In 1891, Wes and Sallie adopted a baby whose mother had died in childbirth. This was Australia Carr who was born in Mooringsport. The quarter was home to dozens of field workers and their families and everyone benefitted from a built-in child care system.
The children began working in the fields as soon as they were able. There were many light tasks which they were best suited for: feeding the family poultry; weeding the truck patch; and following along behind the mules in cotton-planting season, dropping the seeds into the furrows. At certain times of the year the cotton demanded everyone's attention; men and women, boys and girls, all worked long hours during spring planting, summer chopping or weeding, and fall harvesting. After the crop was harvested, sometimes close to Christmas, there were about three months of relative calm before the cycle began again. In Louisiana, these were the three months when black children could go to school.
Huddie's musical education began before he was old enough to go to school, however. By the age of five he had already attracted the attention of the grown-ups with his singing and playing of the kazoo, jew's harp, reed flute and various mouth instruments. Then he started to agitate for a "windjammer," a small diatonic button accordion introduced to the region by German settlers and later popularized by South Louisiana Cajuns. According to Huddie, his Uncle Terrill brought him one when he was five years old. He was just "a little bitty fellow" when Terrill came up from Mooringsport, riding a mule, and gave him a present of a windjammer. But his cousin Queenie remembers it differently:
“Huddie come down to my daddy's house and he told my daddy he wanted an accordion. My daddy, Ken Pugh, was his uncle. My daddy said,
"Well, you help me find some of this fat pine and I'll carry it to Shreveport and sell it, and I'll get you an accordion." Well, my daddy did. He and Huddie got the pine — Huddie wasn't nothing but a boy — got the pine and they went on to Shreveport in the wagon, sold the pine, and got the accordion.” (Queenie)
"He was a natural born musician. His daddy bought him a little rocking chair when he was little and, they said, before his feet could touch the floor in that little rocker, he was playing the accordion." (Viola)
It soon became obvious that Huddie, small as he was, was deadly serious about his music. Bob and Terrill brought out their guitars and taught him many of the fiddle tunes that were so popular at the breakdowns or square dances; and Huddie transposed them to his little accordion and mastered them. Tunes like "Dinah Got a Wooden Leg," "You Can't Lose me, Charlie," and "Poor Howard:"

Poor Howard's dead and gone,
Left me here to sing this song.

These first few years in the communal atmosphere of the quarter, surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbors, shaped Huddie's whole life. He never liked to be alone; he always liked to be surrounded by music and friendly faces. But after the cotton harvest of 1894, when he was still five years old, the Wes Ledbetters made a move. In terms of distance, it was not far — about three miles — but symbolically it was a giant step. They had several reasons for moving, and one of them had to do with the new management at the plantation.
William Jeter died in 1893 and left his plantation to his second son, Francis Ford (Frank) Jeter. The eldest son, Virgil, had become a physician, and had no interest in running a cotton plantation. Frank Jeter moved to establish his authority early, and both Wes and his younger brother Terrill found themselves in conflict with the new boss. Terrill moved with his wife and son to the fresher fields of Terrell, Texas, about twenty miles east of Dallas, but Wes didn't feel the need to go so far. He called on an old friend, a black man named Henry Sims, and made a deal to rent some land just across the state line in Harrison County, Texas. Sims had left the Jeter Place some years earlier and accomplished the rare feat, for a black man at that time, of buying his own land.
There was a feeling of freedom in Texas, renting from a fellow black and dreaming of actually owning land. All around them, landowners and renters alike, were members of the black community. Huddie started at Lake Chapel school where he made friends like York Bickham, Clarence Ruffin, and Sterling Myers, some of whom kept in touch with him all his life. Out in the fields the children started learning "hollers," the rhythmic songs that accompanied the work and made it more of a social activity.
When I was a little boy, going to a country school, we was living in the woods about three and four miles apart from each other. First little boy gets up in the morning, he wants to let the other one know he's up, wants to see which one beat the other. They had a little "echo" called "Ho-Day." And the first one get up, he'd run out and start hollering,

Ho-day! Ho-day! Ho-day!
The other one, way over yonder, holler,
Ho-day! Ho-day! Ho-day!
One right up close,
Ho-day! Ho-day! Ho-day!
Then I would say,
Ho-day! Ho-day! Ho-day!
Then I would say,
Ho-de-eddla-ay! Ho-de-eddla-ay! Ho-de-ay! (Huddie)

And from way over yonder came the echoes of the young boys within earshot in the Caddo Lake country. This was Huddie's own description of a holler from the 1890's, though he greatly exaggerated distances beween houses, which were a quarter- to a half-mile apart at most. It was only three and four miles back to the Jeter Place. Neighbor Preston Brown remembered Huddie as an integral part of a close-knit community.
“I knew him for a long time. Huddie Ledbetter and them [the other Ledbetters] used to use water out of our spring when their well went bad. They had a well on their place, didn't have a spring. We had a spring on our place. Back then, this country was thick with houses, they was just all around everywhere. All out there, you'd see them plowing. Farmers, dogs and hogs a-hollering and singing everywhere. It weren't lonesome, cause we stayed too close together.” (Preston)
Not as close as the houses in the quarter, which were only a few yards apart, but it was still a close-knit community on the Texas side. Often the cousins came to stay with Wes and Sallie, and often Huddie and Australia went back to the Jeter place to sleep over at Bob and Ada's, and visit with Uncle Ken and Aunt Mary. Within the community, first cousins were practically like brothers and sisters. Having only one boy and one girl, Wes and Sallie were short of hands around the farm, so the cousins served a practical, as well as a social, purpose. Likewise, Bob and Ada Ledbetter had only the two children, so they borrowed Huddie and Australia when they needed additional help on the land.
More musicians were flowering in the family. Edmon learned to play the guitar from listening to his father, Australia began to show an interest in playing, Queenie took up the organ, and all the children were sang. Huddie preferred to be unique and refrained from taking up the guitar for the time being. Instead he learned the mandolin, piano and organ and his parents encouraged him to play in church.
During their first few years in Texas, Wes and Sallie were able to save up enough money to achieve their dream of owning land. In 1897 they bought sixty-eight and a half acres down the road from Sims, near the south shore of Caddo Lake. The seller was "Doc" Wascom, a white man who had somehow come into possession of large swaths of land in Harrison County. He was gradually selling off portions to the blacks who moved in to the area, many of them from just across the Caddo parish line.
The acreage that the Ledbetters bought from Doc and Sue Wascom was known as Block No. 1 of the John Carroll survey, one mile south of Caddo Lake, and about nineteen miles from Marshall in Harrison County, Texas. The total purchase price was $240, to be paid off in four annual installments of $60, due each year from 1898 through 1901 on New Year's Day. The original deed and certificate of authentication were filed at the county courthouse in Marshall in February, 1904, indicating that the land was bought and paid for. The price may seem low, but only a few years earlier William Jeter had bought 160 acres, more than twice as much land, for only $300.
Wes began a few months of unprecedented hard work. He was still farming the Sims land, bringing in the cash cotton crop, when he set about clearing brush, cutting trees, and building a house for his family on his own land. He was working sixteen-hour days. Sallie worked at his side and the extended family helped. Edmon and Blanche spent many days and nights at the new "home place" in Texas. Huddie and Edmon were both eight years old when Wes bought the land, and Blanche and Australia were big enough to do chores. To make things more difficult, however, the Ledbetters lost one full-time helper in the midst of all this furious activity. Sallie's son Alonzo married Queenie Ruffin, older sister of one of Huddie's new Texas friends. The newlyweds rented a place nearby, and kept in close touch. While he was farming for halves, Alonzo began a part-time career as a preacher.
Alonzo Batts would have been the perfect son for Wes; he was the image of his step-father: serious, religious, reliable, and hard-working. Huddie, by contrast, was fun-loving, free-thinking and mischevious, though certainly capable of bouts of industriousness. Wes would have been happier if Huddie, not Alonzo, had become a preacher. Though he was never a devoted churchgoer, Huddie became an accomplished cotton-picker and shouldered his share of the chores around the home place.
Chores varied from family to family, but it didn't always mean less for those in a large family. Queenie Pugh, for instance, was the eldest of six girls who came in succession after a string of six boys. Her father, Ken, died when she was ten and when the youngest Pugh boy grew up and left home, Queenie helped her mother out by taking over the family plow. Unfortunately for Queenie, none of her sisters learned to plow, so she was forever stuck with it.
“Cause the others claimed they didn't know how to plow! I knew how to plow. I had to get up in the morning, go to some people's cow pen and milk, for to get milk for us, and then I had to come back and get my plow.” (Queenie)
At night she did the sewing for the rest of the girls. Apparently, her sisters never learned how to sew, plow, or even to milk a cow; but whoever she was sewing for held the light while Queenie operated the turn-of-the-century Singer sewing machine.
“I'm sewing on my machine my daddy bought before he died. I used to have to iron. My mother, she washed and ironed for white people, and I would have to stand up on a box and iron. I been working hard all my days.” (Queenie)
Preston Brown remembers not having to work too hard when he was small. He was the youngest member of his family. After school, the "grown" kids went into the fields while Preston tended to the family geese. His job was to keep the geese around the pond and see to it that they didn't get into the crops and eat the growing corn. "We had a great big bunch of geese," said Preston, "and we had to mind them geese!"
Huddie often got so involved in his music that he neglected his chores. At times, Wes was exasperated by his son's attitude, and Sallie was called upon to mediate. From the very beginning, Huddie loved to sit around with Bob and Terrill, learning reels and breakdowns and watching the joyful faces of the dancers and listeners; he particularly enjoyed the attention from the grownups who marvelled at his diverse musical talent.
At age fourteen, Huddie finally decided he must have a guitar. When Wes bought it for him, he had no trouble learning to play some of the popular local square dance pieces; "Green Corn," he got from a player named Bud Coleman.

Green corn, come along Charlie,
Green corn, come along Charlie,
Green corn,
Green corn.

More and more, now that he had his guitar, Huddie spent Saturday nights playing at sukey jumps, especially at the Jeter Place where he and Edmon often appeared as a duo. The accordion was becoming a thing of the past. "Sometimes he played a mandolin and I'd second him with a guitar," said Edmon, "and sometimes we played the guitar together. Used to play all round here. Up to Mooringsport, over to Leigh, and back on the Jeter Plantation." When Huddie got the guitar, he taught Australia to play.
“I didn't ever play with him, but Australia and Huddie - them two played together. Played guitar together. When Huddie learned Australia how to play guitar, she have a good time and he would have a good time. Huddie learned Australia how to play guitar.” (Queenie)
In the following conversation, recorded by Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax in Washington in 1940, Huddie gives us some idea of all the dancing going on at a sukey jump, circa 1900. The conversation is being recorded onto discs which contain perhaps three or four minutes each, and are spinning around at 78 revolutions per minute. There is no time for long pauses or considered answers. While the interview sounds a bit like a word association game, it does gives an impression of what the dances were like.

Lomax: I want Huddie to tell you about the way they put on the square dances down in Louisiana when he was a boy, growing up, in the backwoods. Huddie, what did they call square dances?
Ledbetter: Called them sukey jumps.
Lomax: Why did they call them sukey jumps?
Ledbetter: Well, because they danced so fast, the music was so fast, and the people had to jump, so they always called them sukey jumps.
Lomax:ú Do you know what "sukey" means?
Ledbetter: Sukey - well, that's a cow sometimes when you tell her, "Sukey, sukey, sukey," you know, keeping the cow away.
Lomax: Did they ever holler that at the dances when they had them?
Ledbetter: They'd just holler "Sukey jump!" and they'd holler, "One dollar bill, baby, won't buy you no shoes," just anything they feel like singing in there.
Lomax: What kind of music did they have?
Ledbetter: Well, they had a fiddler in them times; and accordions.
Lomax: And what were the names of some of the tunes they played?
Ledbetter: The tunes was "Poor Howard," he was a poor boy and he played the fiddle. He was the first fiddler after the negroes got free from slavery time. Poor Howard was a negro used to play for them at the sukey jumps. And the number he played was "Poor Howard, Poor Boy."
Lomax: How does that go?
Ledbetter: [Plays and sings.] "Poor Howard, Poor Boy" goes like this.
Lomax: Huddie, did they call the sets [as in square dance calls] at these dances?
Ledbetter: They called the sets all the time when they danced; they called "Shoo-fly," you could shoo-fly, and the square dance.
Lomax: How did that sound? Give us a sketch of how they called the sets down there.
Ledbetter: When they called the sets, they holler,
"Hey, man, you swing mine and I'll swing yours,"
but when they first get on the floor, they holler,
"Grab your partners, step the right way round,"
they always drive right way,
"Now, man, you know you're going wrong,
now circle left way round,
and when you get back to your home,
grab your partner,
the first man on the head, shoo-fly."
When you get the shoo-fly, then they holler,
"Shoo-fly, Shoofly"
then they come to the holler,
"One dollar bill baby won't buy you no shoes."
[Huddie goes on singing and playing, calling the set "One dollar bill. . ."]
Lomax: Huddie, did they have any real fast numbers at these dances? Do you remember any of those?
Ledbetter: They'd pick 'em up.
Lomax: When they'd do the hoedown and. . .
Ledbetter: They'd pick 'em up, you know, they'd have some fast ones when they'd just go, like, "Green Corn, Come Along Charlie," "Gonna Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In," and, "Tight Like That," sometimes they'd holler, say, "Tight like this!"
[They are both talking at once through here.]
Lomax: What did they mean by that Huddie, really? I mean, tell us confidentially what they mean by "tight like that."
[Lomax may have been fishing for some sexual innuendo, but Huddie wasn’t playing along, perhaps realizing there was nothing confidential about this interview.]
Ledbetter: "Tight like that" means when you got your partner, grab and hug her tight, and keep her going, but when it comes time the boy grab his partner, he grab her and giving her a hug, he says, "Tight like this, it was tight like this, but now it's tight like this." And the boys'd be jumping on "Tight like that."
Lomax: What were some of the dance steps, Huddie, when they were playing some of these fast tunes?
Ledbetter: Well, ain't no dance steps you could do but "breakdown," and that's a fast number. You can't dance no tap dance, I don't think, a fast breakdown number, course you might, but that's where all the tap dances [Huddie is talking very fast, as though he's afraid of being interrupted] . . . all the tap dances come from the old "buck and wing" what they used to do. Well, the breakdown dance, nobody do 'em now, but I don't guess nobody know nothing about it very much, but me, and I do the breakdown. When you do it you got to do it real fast, and when you breakdown you ain't tapping, you just working your legs. Now, a long time ago my grandfather, great-grandfather, say, "you ain't dancing til you cross your legs." So I guess now, nobody dancing because they don't cross their legs hardly ever. But when you do that old breakdown, and wing down, and green corn and that old ground shovel and, uh . . .
Lomax: What about "knocking the pigeon wing?"
Ledbetter: . . . pigeon wing and . . .
Lomax: . . . cutting the back step?
Ledbetter: . . . cutting the short dog, well, you got to cross your legs.
Lomax: Huddie, play us one of those tunes, something like "Gonna Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In," and tell us what it means, too, you know.
Ledbetter: "Gonna Dig a Hole to Put the Devil In" - long years ago, that was when they see the boss coming, you know? And the boys would see the boss coming, well, they didn't like him, you know, but they'd be together, nothing but negroes all piled up there together. When they'd see him coming, they'd say, "Well, we're gonna dig a hole to put the devil in," boy they'd start a-jumping. [plays "Gonna dig a hole. . ." with very fast accompaniment on guitar.]
Lomax: Huddie, can you play "Green Corn" on the twelve-string guitar?
Ledbetter: I think I can.
Lomax: Let's hear a little of "Green Corn." [Huddie starts to strum his guitar. Lomax interrupts] Slow and easy and sweet, Huddie! [Huddie slows the tempo] What is green corn, anyhow? Tell us about it when you sing the song.
Ledbetter: [Strumming and explaining] Now, this is a fast sukey jump too, but the boys take it easy sometimes when they want to sukey jump; keep them dancing so hard and take it easy on the ground, shuffle around with your partner, [sings, but doesn't explain "green corn". Lomax tries to interrupt with "What is green corn?" but Huddie either doesn't hear, or ignores him.]
Lomax: [Just as the song ends] What is green corn? What is green corn, Huddie? [Lomax likely wants to hear that green corn is some form of white lightning, but, again, Huddie is not co-operating. He keeps it simple.]
Ledbetter: Green corn is an ear of corn - when it's green. What they mean by green corn, they're just putting that in the words, you know, 'cause the man is green and they didn't know what they was talking about themselves. What they was speaking about is an ear of corn when it's green. Down south when the corn gets dry, why then that's corn - hard corn, then. But when they say "green corn", that means it's green, you can go out in the field and pull it and roast it. . .
Lomax: I thought you meant green corn whiskey.
Ledbetter: No, not no green corn whiskey, they didn't know nothing about no corn liquor at that time. They had old-time liquor, you know, that's real good liquor, wasn't no bootleggers then. Couldn't make no liquor. How are they going to make liquor when they're all slaves? [Huddie sounds condescending] The old boss — they wouldn't get no liquor till the boss would give it to them.
Lomax: Huddie, at these old-timey sukey jumps, did people dance in their bare feet, or with shoes on?
Ledbetter: Well, them that could get shoes, they would dance like that and lots of them didn't have — 'cause I know plenty boys in my time —
Lomax: [interrupting] . . .what about the women? Would they wear shoes or not?
Ledbetter: Well, when they could get them. If they couldn't, they just go barefooted.
Lomax: Would they ever circle left in these dances, or
Ledbetter: They's circle left right, they'd start out right. . .
Lomax: . . .they'd start right first?
Ledbetter: That's right. . .
Lomax: [talking on top of Huddie] How many times would they go around right?
Ledbetter: Well, you see, when they'd first start right, they'd go around right and then the man would holler, "Circle left way round,"
Lomax: And they'd gone one time around?
Ledbetter: That's right and then he'd holler, "Circle right way around again, and when you get back home, grab your partner," so when they first start out circling right way around he'd tell them to skip on up ahead and catch the next partner in front of them, and they'd keep on catching and he'd say, "Now, when you get home, circle left way around" and when they get home, they circle left way around, he says, "Now circle right way around, and when you get back to the spot, settle down. First man on the head, grab his partner and shoo-fly." That's the way they do that down there. (Library of Congress)

Wes was sure there was the potential for trouble at the sukey jumps, which he personally did not attend, and he and Huddie got into countless shouting matches about the music. Wes thought he was helping by buying his son a pistol for protection. "Only for self-defense," said Wes. His fears may have been somewhat overstated, but Huddie was delighted to own a gun. At the same time, it was 1905, Wes bought a new horse and saddle for Huddie, which made it easier for him to get to the dances. This was like getting a new car for graduation. Huddie kept the horse for years; he took great pride in "Booker," a black stallion.

“He was black as a crow. He had a blaze face, and his name was Ol' Booker. I used to ride behind him, you know, on him. Used to go down to help him wash in that spring down there, further from the house that run right through their place. Used to take rags, take Ol' Booker down there, lather him all over, wash him, and we'd have brushes. He'd look so pretty. He had a curly mane, curly tail. He was pretty.
He'd go around to those dancing places and he'd come around and put me on the back of Ol' Booker; we'd go to the dances. He'd come around and ask my daddy to let me go with him. We'd go everywhere. All around over the country wherever they had those dances on Friday night and Saturday nights. I'd come in when he come in. (laughter) All of us danced. We were all dancing.” (Preston)

Huddie had an active adolescence. By the time he reached his full height of five feet, seven inches, at the age of sixteen, he had been playing at house dances for several years. He developed a strong personality and, as an obviously talented entertainer, he was attractive to many girls his own age growing up in the Caddo Lake community. Cora Brown for example, one of Preston's older sisters, was courted by the young Huddie. Preston laughs gently at the memory of the two teenagers who had to contend with the younger children kibitzing nearby.
“Huddie went with Cora. He courted her. He used to come up here in the summertime. Sat there and played guitar and us kids, we'd sit out there on the front porch - we weren't allowed in the room, you know. We'd be outdoors dancing, and they'd be in the house.” (Preston)
During his sixteenth year, Huddie began dating a neighbor named Margaret Coleman. Margaret's parents were Jim and Adline Coleman and they had four daughters. The oldest was named Pearl, then came Margaret, who was a year younger than Huddie, and the two younger daughters, Jiffy and Essie. Huddie began hanging around the Coleman household more and more during his last school term in the early part of 1905, and by early spring, Margaret was pregnant.
When Huddie finished school and got his horse, he started thinking about what he was going to do with his life. The most natural thing was farming, and Wes and Sallie suggested that he build his own house on the home place and start his own family. As the cotton grew taller and Margaret's belly grew larger, it became clear that some sort of decision had to be made. The young couple talked it over, the families discussed it, Huddie started building a two-room house but eventually, it seems, Margaret didn't want to get married.
Huddie could easily have started a professional musical career, if it had occurred to him, but he had no idea where to start. The Caddo Lake area was so cut off from the mainstream. He had seen nothing of the world beyond Shreveport, which the family visited, at most, once a year.
He knew the Caddo Lake country well. There were two general stores where local people did most of their shopping: T.J. Taylor's in Leigh, and Joe Morgan's on the Louisiana-Texas border, and there was a cotton gin in Jonesville, not far from Leigh. On the Louisiana side there was the small lakeside community of Mooringsport, the Jeter Place, and the Shiloh Baptist Church where Wes and Sallie had their membership. Huddie had an adolescent yearning to see more of the world. All of these destinations were within about half an hour's drive, even by mules-and-wagon. But a trip to Shreveport was an occasion and a whole day had to be set aside for it.
Margaret gave birth to a daughter, Arthur Mae Ledbetter, on the 28th of January, 1906, and Huddie took the opportunity to exile himself to Shreveport. Years later he wrote about leaving home in one of his most enduring songs, "Fannin Street." His mother was horrified at the idea of him going to work in Shreveport.
“She said something might happen to me, but I wanted to go down on Fannin Street. You couldn't go down there with short pants on, you had to put on long pants. When I walked up my mama caught me by the arm:

My mama told me
My sister, too
Women in Shreveport gonna be the
DEATH of yooooou.” (Huddie)

Shreveport was the big town and Huddie found it totally fascinating. He had seen the State Fair parade down Texas Street; the country wagons gathered to sell their produce on Commerce Street; the white folk in their finery, entering the hotels on Market and Spring; and he had heard about the night life on Fannin Street.
The 900 block of Fannin Street was the leading edge of Shreveport's legal red light district which had been set up by the city fathers in 1903. Things had been getting out of control, it seems, so the area known as St. Paul's Bottoms was set aside to contain prostitution, gambling and other forms of vice. The idea of having a red light district was not original to Shreveport; it was already being tried out in such places Memphis, Little Rock and New Orleans.
During the early 1900's, the Storyville section of New Orleans was a booming, legal red light district and the legendary birthplace of jazz. Its sporting houses served as a magnet for musicians, gamblers, pimps, prostitutes, and all manner of performing artists. Likewise, though on a smaller scale, the legal red light district of Shreveport became a magnet for similar folk in the Ark-La-Tex. The district was called a "bottoms" because it was a low-lying area near the Red River; during the sultry summer months there were fewer breezes and more mosquitoes than on higher ground.
The Bottoms, therefore, was home to a poorer class of people, generally blacks. When it was designated as the red light district, property values soared, existing large houses were rented to madams, and new house were built. The 900 block of Fannin Street was the priciest part of the new Bottoms, mostly because it was the closest to central Shreveport; it was home to the three biggest sporting houses, those run by Annie McCune, Bea Haywood and Nell Jester. These were houses of white prostitutes for the use of white men. Further into the Bottoms, there were houses of black prostitutes for white men, and black prostitutes for black men; generally the houses got cheaper and seedier all the way back to the railroad tracks. The large "white" houses on Fannin Street did not hire musicians, black or white; they had coin-operated player pianos which entertained clients waiting in the downstairs rooms.
There were two large saloons which catered to blacks right on the corner of Fannin and Beauregard which was virtually the gateway to the district. A third large saloon, the White Pigeon, looked over the railroad tracks at the north end of Beauregard. The Pigeon was owned by a white man; it catered to both black and white customers, each race having a separate entrance. The Fannin Street saloons were owned by and operated for blacks, one by George Neil, the other by Caesar DeBose. Neil was a light-skinned negro who could have passed for white. However that was not a safe thing to do in that obsessively color-conscious society. George W. Moxley, a light-skinned negro minstrel performer wrote to W.C. Handy about this very subject:
“I worked with several ofay [white] outfits in my time without any trouble. W.A. Mahara was the only minstrel company I traveled with, but I put on an Elks' Minstrel once in Shreveport and one in Dayton, both ofays. They would have hung me in Shreveport had they known that I was colored, and the same is true in plenty of other places.” (Handy 42)
Saloon proprietor George Neil had enough to contend with without trying to pass for white. The walls of his long, one-story frame building which housed a dance hall, stage, bar and restaurant, as well as a couple of gambling rooms, were reputed to be peppered with bullet holes. The Shreveport îTimesï reported that police had been openly assaulted by the clientele at Neil's, and "more than one Negro has been taken out, penetrated by a policeman's bullet."
It was a colorful enough place for the police chief to take a group of visting newspapermen for a night on the town. He sent word to Neil that he was bringing some out-of-town dignitaries, and Neil arranged a special show of hot ragtime music and specialty dancers. Pairs of dancers emerged in turn from the cakewalking crowd to put on a special "stunt" for the visitors. There were breakdowns, double shuffles, buck-and-wings and many more that the chief couldn't identify.
When two slender well-dressed couples started the show, the other dancers stopped and crowded around to watch, cheering, clapping and urging them on like testifiers at a backwoods prayer meeting. The first couples were young and supple, and "moved with the grace of leopards." As they finished, the music changed and a completely different pair moved into the limelight.
The man was undersized and coal-black. He was shovel-footed, buck-kneed and agile as a cat. The woman was chocolate-colored, broad, rather squat, bulged high in front and low behind, sort of shed-room-rumped effect, and badly pigeon toed. They faced each other and danced, turning 'round slowly, his huge foot slapping the floor with loud thwacks and her feet keeping time with a sort of forward and drag back movement. (Stuck 72)
The newspapermen were clearly impressed with the action in Neil's Saloon. There were can-can dancers whose act rivalled the well-known Moulin Rouge in Paris, though the Shreveport version was "perhaps more revealing;" and a hootchie-cootchie girl who performed a Little Egypt belly dance with sensuous abandon. The police chief noted in his memoirs that "her pelvis must have been hung on ball bearings."
Across the street from Neil's, next door to a Chinese restaurant, was the two-story frame building which housed Caesar DeBose's ground floor saloon. A stairway lead up from the rear of the saloon to a dark, unpainted hallway; off the hallway were doors leading to individual rooms. One upstairs room was set aside for high stakes gamblers, and the rest were for prostitutes. One day in 1908, a federal agent tracked down a notorious counterfeiter all the way from Florida to the gambling room at DeBose's saloon. In the middle of a game, the agent crept along the hallway, stealthily approached the door, drew his pistol and blasted the lock to smithereens.
In the pandemonium that followed, the counterfeiter leapt out of the window onto the roof of the Chinese restaurant and from there to the wooden awning on DeBose's building. He appeared to be heading for the telephone pole to slide down on when the awning collapsed under his weight, settling slowly to the sidewalk like an elevator, permitting the fleeing man to escape down the street. (Stuck 71)
Caesar DeBose was standing in front of his place, proudly surveying the busy street scene, when the awning came down and, with a tumult of crashing and creaking, knocked the cigar right out of his mouth. As the fugitive tore down Beauregard Street into the dark heart of the Bottoms, the terrified DeBose took off running in the other direction. The saloons run by Neil and DeBose are the places that Huddie Ledbetter knew in his youth, where he met a coal black piano man named Chee Dee and learned to "boogie the blues."
After he left home, Huddie got a taste of life in the Bottoms, but he also found out that it was a tough place to make a living as a musician. He could still make better money playing at sukey jumps than he could in the saloons of Shreveport, and he never learned how to get on with a traveling minstrel shows. Consequently, when Wes and Sallie suggested he finish building his own house and share the harvest on the home place, he moved back and started to work. Margaret Coleman, in the meantime, had moved to Dallas and taken a job as maid in a white household.
During his late teens, Huddie moved into his own house and helped to run his father's farm. Although raising cotton was labor-intensive, it was not a full time job and he began to go further afield. He discovered that he could pick up a lot of extra money by joining the itinerant cotton-pickers on the big plantations near Dallas, where his uncle Terrill was living. He generally traveled with his cousin George Pugh and his friend Clarence Ruffin, and all three of them made lots of extra money. While he was staying with Terrill and his cousin Percy, he ventured into Dallas and stayed with Margaret Coleman and his baby daughter.
Dallas was a much larger center than Shreveport, but Huddie's visits there were more concerned with family affairs, or with picking cotton, than they were with music. At the corner of Central and Elm, the crossroads of the large black community, workers gathered every morning during the picking season and waited for the white men's wagon to roll up and recruit day laborers for the plantations, and Huddie got in line.
And he could pick! Twelve yards of ducking in his cotton sack - he got it on like suspenders on his back this way. And wore knee pads. And crawled between two rows just like he was in music, you know, to a rhythm. Pick it. (Viola)
All was not totally sunny in the Cotton Kingdom in those days, and the dark cloud on the horizon was a little bug called the Mexican boll weevil. Shortly after the turn of the century, the boll weevil arrived to wreak havoc on the cotton crops. In 1904 the Texas legislature offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could solve the boll weevil problem which was costing cotton farmers $50 million in that year alone. Mexican boll weevils, by far the most destructive insects to attack cotton plants in the United States, were first found north of the Rio Grande around Brownsville, Texas, in 1892. They made it as far as Caddo Lake in 1904 and kept spreading north and east. They reached the Atlantic coast by 1916.
Many variations of boll weevil ballads spread throughout the cotton kingdom, but all of them featured the farmer tormented by the weevil character. It seems that the farmer was entirely at the mercy of this pest, and the frustration comes out in the song of the little bug who's "just looking for a home:"

The boll weevil is a little bug, come from Mexico, they say,
He come to try this Texas soil, thought he'd better stay.

Farmer took the boll weevil, he put him in the ice
Weevil said to the farmer "It's mighty cool and nice."

Farmer took the boll weevil, buried him in hot sand -
Weevil said to the farmer, "I'll stand it like a man."

Weevil said to the farmer, "You'd better leave me alone,
I ate up all your cotton, now I'm starting on your corn."

On Christmas Eve, 1907, Australia Carr married Allen Davis. The officiating minister was Alonzo Batts, and one of the witnesses was Miss Cora Brown. Huddie played for the wedding celebration and the newlyweds moved into Huddie's house. Soon after Christmas, during the slow season, Huddie and his cousin George went back to their uncle's place in Kaufman County, and shortly after that, they found themselves courting the Henderson sisters, Elethe and Alice.

Lead Belly and Baby Face

2007-10-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

Lead Belly: King of the Twelve String Guitar Players of the World

[This article, written by me (Monty Brown), was originally published in the Fall 1996 issue of Sean Killeen’s Lead Belly Letter. Sean was an ardent fan of Lead Belly and his little magazine, which lived from 1990 to 1996, reflected his passion. Sean, who hailed from Ithaca, New York, eventually gave up publishing the Letter, partly because there was not a large circulation, but mostly because he was battling for his life. He eventually lost that battle, but his legacy lives on with the back issues of his publication.]

The death of Jesse “Baby Face” Thomas (1911-1995) was reported in the Lead Belly Letter (5,3:2), appropriately, I thought, because of the shared musical heritage of the two men. Lead Belly and Baby Face were two very different characters whose lives, like their nicknames, were often poles apart. The last time their names appeared in such close proximity was in the pages of England’s Melody Maker (12/31/49). There it was reported that Jesse had been “assistant vocalist” to Troy Ferguson in Atlanta in 1929. The death of Lead Belly — Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) — was reported in the adjacent column.
I was a friend and a fan of Jesse’s and we spoke many times during the last decade of his very productive life. He was a small, almost frail man, the twelfth of thirteen children born to a sharecropper family in Logansport, Louisiana, thirty miles south of Shreveport. In contrast, Huddie Ledbetter was hefty and muscular, the only child of Wes and Sallie Ledbetter of Mooringsport, Louisiana, twenty miles north of Shreveport.
Huddie played the raucous music of the country house dances, pounding out basic, compelling rhythms, singing, dancing and generally overwhelming his audiences with the power of a one-man minstrel show. He charmed Governor Neff of Texas into a pardon in 1925. He could always charm a gang of children with whimsical words and rhymes recalled from his own childhood. Several people remembered him as being at least six feet tall, though he was only five-seven. Neff was alone in remembering him as a banjo picker; others recalled his ability on the mandolin and church organ. There are recordings of him playing the piano and Cajun accordion in addition to his trademark twelve-string guitar. It’s easy to see how he became a legend in his own time.
Jesse’s instrument was the six-string guitar. He was constantly refining his technique, striving to play in the more sophisticated style of the jazz-oriented musicians of his prime. Though he usually recorded solo, in live performance he was comfortable in the confines of a well-tempered combo. He was an early exponent of the electric guitar and later in life played a double-neck guitar/bass. During his lifetime, Jesse never ceased to be a student of music and the craft of song writing.
Jesse Thomas was a naive fifteen-year-old when, in 1926, he arrived in Shreveport to stay with relatives. He was straight off the family farm. At the same time, Huddie was a bruised and battered thirty-seven, recently released — pardoned — after eight hard years on a Texas prison farm. Like Huddie, Jesse was raised with the guitar. Unlike Huddie, he was surrounded by older siblings who played. His father, Joel, played the fiddle at local house dances. One brother, Willard, was about to land a recording contract with Paramount records under the name Ramblin’ Thomas.
But at fifteen, Jesse became fascinated with the piano, and this is where his life brushed up against the life of Lead Belly. At the time of his arrival in Shreveport, he couldn’t get enough of the piano. He went to movies at the palatial Strand and the other big downtown theaters primarily to hear the players who accompanied the silent pictures.
Did he have any favorite piano players?
“Yeah, there was a guy here named Dave Alexander,” said Jesse in a 1991 interview at his Abbie Street house in Shreveport. “He was good and I wanted to play like him. But I never did play piano like I would’ve like to played, ‘cause I didn’t have a piano to practice on.”
The name of this almost-forgotten piano man reverberated in my mind. Was this “Little” David Alexander who turned up in some lists of old blues recordings? Maybe. It certainly wasn’t the Dave Alexander who recorded for Arhoolie — too young. But there, in an old interview, was Huddie Ledbetter telling about the influence of a piano player named Dave Alexander. Huddie was sure he had incorporated some of Dave’s bass runs into his guitar style, but he couldn’t remember was it Houston or Shreveport? 1906 or 1926?
“I would see (Dave) playing all the time,” said Jessie, who also imitated those piano sounds on his guitar. “He would play in homes where people had pianos. He would visit different places where a piano was. That’s where I heard him playing. Mostly in homes.”
So, he played for house dances — that sort of thing?
“Yeah. And minstrel shows, places like that.”
Did you go to minstrel shows then?
“Oh, yes, it cost ten and fifteen cents and like that to see a good show. The minstrel show would be in a tent going from town to town, traveling. But they’d often pick up a local musician to play piano or maybe some other instruments for them. I played one time in a little minstrel show like that.”
How old was Dave Alexander then?
“Oh, he seemed to be in his twenties. He was a young man in his twenties, I was fifteen.”
This had to be around the same time Huddie had seen him!
Jesse went on, “Dave was pretty popular around here with people at that time. And at that same time those guitar players like Ed Shafers and (Oscar) Woods, they were here but I never did meet them. I’d just hear a lot about them. Never ran across them. And I don’t know where Ledbetter was at that time, either. He probably was in and out of here I guess.”
Jesse never heard Huddie play — he would have remembered — but it’s entirely possible that the two were in the same shotgun house together, enjoying the magic of Dave Alexander. From 1925 to 1930, Huddie was indeed in and out of Shreveport, but not well-known there. He was based some twenty miles north, living in the Caddo Lake area of his youth, working for an oil company and in great demand at Saturday night suppers.
“He was the one they used to follow,” said Liz Choyce, who was in her teens at the time, “Mister Huddie.”
When you say “they used to follow,” you mean his guitar playing?
“People, when they heard tell he was playing somewhere,” she said emphatically, “they would always go.”
“He’d have a crowd. Have a big crowd,” added her husband Leonard. “Awful good music player. When you say you’re going to have a dance there, you’re going to have Ledbetter . . .”
“. . .they’d say ‘Who?’,” Liz cut in, “and you’d say, ‘Huddie.’ Boy! you’d hear them say they were going. Mister Huddie — yes, I knowed him good.”
While Huddie was confining himself to the familiar Texas-Louisiana border country north of Shreveport, young Jesse was striving to get onto record. In Fort Worth he roomed with his big brother Willard. In Dallas he saw successful performers like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson. They taught him you could make money with the guitar, so he dropped his dream of being a pianist. Single-mindedly he hitchhiked from place to place — Shreveport to Fort Worth to Houston to San Antonio to Dallas — in pursuit of the portable recording studios. In small towns along the way he bartered music for lodging and a few dollars. Often he took temporary work in the cotton fields. Eventually, persistence paid off: Victor Records sent him a train ticket and he rode from Oklahoma City to Dallas to record four of his own tunes, including Blue Goose Blues.
“Blue Goose?” Jesse smiled a knowing smile. “Oh that’s a little place here in Shreveport, a little area they used to call the Blue Goose. You remember where the Union railway station used to be? Well that was just the name of that area. Like Mooretown, South Highland, Blue Goose. So I just thought of that ‘cause that’s where I stayed when I first came here, and I just — made up some words, put it on record.”
Blue Goose is like Silver City, I thought, the place that Huddie sang about traveling to with Blind Lemon in Dallas back before the Great War. I wondered why Huddie couldn’t have got himself on record just like Jesse did. Here was this green youngster, fresh off the farm and new to the business, getting onto Victor Records at age eighteen. Why not Huddie? The astonishing success of Blind Lemon during the latter part of the 1920’s had encouraged the record companies to scour the Southland for talent. And Huddie certainly had the talent. Plus, he was an old friend of Blind Lemon’s, wasn’t he? Led him around and played duets with him?
Oscar Woods and Ed Shafers got themselves recorded several times during the late ‘20’s and early ‘30’s. They even broke through the color bar on one occasion by providing backup for the white country-bluesman and future Louisiana governor, Jimmie Davis. Ramblin’ Thomas made quite a hit on Paramount and would probably have done much better had he not been addicted to the bottle. None of these performers was superior to Huddie, yet Huddie remained undocumented during this first Golden Age of blues recording. Why?
It’s true he had himself a steady job and maybe couldn’t get away to Dallas, San Antonio or Memphis for a few days, but there was even one recording session in Shreveport in 1928, and there’s no evidence that Huddie tried out for it.
Could it be that he had no wish to leave his safe and friendly environment? He’d been off in the world before and it had brought him much pain. The eight years in a Texas penitentiary, the subsequent estrangement of his first wife, the heartbreaking death of his father, and his commitment to his aging mother, all of these combined may have led him to re-examine his life. He was approaching middle age, perhaps thinking it was time to settle down. Whatever the reasons, Huddie never recorded during the 1920’s when all around him, artists of lesser talent were busy making names for themselves.
This is not to say that Jesse Thomas was a lesser talent. Listen to any of the spate of sides that he recorded in Los Angeles during the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s and you’ll be delighted with his drive and originality. But Jesse would be the first to admit that he didn’t possess anything like the charisma of Lead Belly. He was Baby Face, a cute little guy who charmed his early audiences with his ingenuousness. He was also known as “Careless Love,” not because of any tendency to womanize, but because he did such an appealing rendition of Lonnie Johnson’s hit recording of that name.
After he told me about Blue Goose, Jesse picked up his guitar and played Blue Goose Blues instrumentally. Even though his hands were often cramped by arthritis in his last five years, he still played with fluidity and distinctness. He finished with a flourish and a laugh.
“Got to get the words down. The music still sounds alright.”
“That’s a good song,” I said.
“Think so?” he laughed. "You know, I didn’t even know what I was talking about at that time. I think I saw some old man and he was real good on the guitar, on the chords. He didn’t sing that good, just play something like that, and I copied some of that and put the words to it. And Blind Blake used to have something kinda in that style. He would play in that style and I thought he was a real good guitar player. Nice chords. Played finger style.”
Jesse picked his guitar a little more and ended by singing the line, “I’m going down to old Blue Goose, got no time to lose.”
That’s it, I thought. Young Baby Face, with the impatience of youth, figured he had no time to lose, so he pursued the recording companies relentlessly. Lead Belly, on the other hand, was patiently biding his time. Which finally arrived.
In 1935, after a further five years of penitentiary time, Lead Belly was given his chance, and his musical career began in earnest. He recorded abundantly through 1948, which was the year Jesse Thomas took up his recording career again, after a nineteen year hiatus. For most of the years Huddie lived in New York, Jesse lived in California. They were both on the West Coast for one of those years, and both of them tried and failed to get into the movies.
Lead Belly returned home to Louisiana in 1949. He was in a coffin. Jesse returned in 1957 and kept on playing for thirty-eight more years. For many of those years he performed with a blind piano player named Peaches, led him around, drove him to and from the gigs. Like Huddie with Blind Lemon. The duo “Jesse and Peaches” was very popular in the Shreveport area. I suspect that Peaches played piano the way Jesse once wished he could.
Lead Belly and Baby Face — poles apart in many ways, yet in some ways quite close. Most of Huddie’s success has been posthumous. Jesse’s success may be bounded by his lifetime. But for those of us who knew him, like for those who knew Huddie, that will be quite sufficient.

Huddie's Booker

2007-10-14T15:31:00.000-07:00

Huddie’s Booker

[This article, written in 1992 by Marsha Brown, was originally published in the Leadbelly Letter, Sean Killeen's wonderful publication which ran from 1990 to 1996.]

I love horses. I have always loved horses and my strongest memory of growing up in upstate New York was wanting to have my very own horse, but that didn’t happen until years later, after moving to Shreveport, Louisiana. “Mack’s Pride” was his name, and he was big and beautiful: all black, except for a white blaze face and four white stockinged feet. I fondly recalled Mack when I heard a description of Huddie Ledbetter’s favorite horse, “Booker.”
We heard about Booker, my husband and i, from one of the Ledbetters’ Texas neighbors. We were driving down a dirt road looking for Swanson’s Landing, the supposed site of an East Texas riverboat disaster in the late 1800’s when we stopped by a small wooden house to ask directions. Preston Brown, a sprightly 93-year-old with a twinkling eye and a friendly manner, told us which way to go. For some reason it popped into my mind to ask him if he knew of Huddie Ledbetter.
“Knew him? He was my next door neighbor!” said Preston. “We used to draw wter out of the same spring.”
Needless to say, we were thrilled at this chance meeting with someone who actually knew Huddie and we stayed for a long chat. We have been invited back several times and this has led to a warm acquaintanceship with Preston and his wife Mary Jenkins Brown. She is in her eighties but prefers to be thought of as a spring chicken of perhaps seventy. That’s the way she looks and acts, and she has a delightful sense of humor.
Preston was the baby of the Brown family. He was born in 1897, eight years after Huddie, and he had several older sisters including Matilda, Clara and Cora Brown.
“Huddie went with Cora,” says Preston, thinking of a simpler, more innocent time. “He courted her. He used to come up here in the summertime, sat there and played guitar, and us kids, we’d sit out there on the front porch.” His face breaks into a smile here. We weren’t allowed into the room, you know, we’d be outdoors, dancing, and they’d be in the house.” He and Mary both laugh and we laugh with them.
But the horse? Huddie’s horse?
“He was black as a crow,” Preston recalls. “He had a blaze and four white feet and his name was ol’ Booker. I used to ride behind Huddie, you know, on him. Used to go down to help him wash in that spring down there that runs right through their place. Used to take rags, take ol’ Booker down there, lather him all over, wash him, you know, and we’d have brushes. He’d look so pretty. He had a curly mane, curly tail. He was pretty.”
We all compared Huddie’s grooming and pride in Booker at that time to a teenager today, polishing the chrome on his first Ford.
Presto helped with Booker in other ways, too. When Huddie had a trip to take on the train, to play a dance or just visit Dallas, Jefferson or Shreveport, he’d come and ask Preston’s father if he could take the youngster along to the depot. Many times they rode together to the station in Leigh, Texas, about two miles away. Huddie caught the train and Preston brought back the horse. He took care of Booker until Huddie returned and then he’d ride to Leigh to meet the train.
“He’d be gone two or three days, “ said Preston. “That was fun for me ‘cause I liked that horse. Liked to ride that horse.”
Preston and Mary still have horses today, two of them grazing next to their small house. They are among the few remaining inhabitants of what was once a thriving African-American farming community on Caddo Lake. They continued farming until retirement and witnessed the many changes in the area. In the 1920’s, people started working in the nearby oilfields, or going off to Dallas and Houston. In the early ‘40’s an ammunition plant was built in nearby Karnack, luring more workers from the land. Huddie Ledbetter left the farm in 1915, and he left the area in 1930 and eventually moved to New York. But he’s still remembered fondly in the beautiful countryside of North Louisiana and East Texas as the favoritr local musician. And ol’ Booker is still remembered, too.

Introduction to Leadbelly by Monty Brown

2007-09-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 8, 2007

When I started to write about black music in North Louisiana, I decided to begin with a chapter on Huddie Ledbetter. He is certainly the best known folk musician from the region and is thus a logical departure point. I assumed that there was a great deal of easily accessible information which could be compressed into a few pages so that I could move on to the more obscure players, Jesse "Babyface" Thomas, Willard "Ramblin'" Thomas, and Oscar Woods, who would comprise the meat of my thesis.
Huddie Ledbetter's name appears in dictionaries: look in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1971) and you will find him; in the American Heritage Dictionary (1973) there is even a photograph
accompanying the entry. Folk song anthologies tend to mention his name — he is usually called Leadbelly — with reverence: he is "the great negro folk singer" or "the great bluesman," or he is simply mentioned in the same breath as Woody Guthrie or Josh White.
I became acquainted with his music when I was an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver during the early 1960's. I spent many evenings listening to his songs, drinking beer, and discussing philosophy with my friends. I didn't know exactly where he came from, but I knew that it was the South, that he had spent some time in prison camps, and that he was a potent symbol of the strength and perseverance of an oppressed people. He was also a lot of fun.
When I moved to North Louisiana in 1980, I was intrigued to discover that this was Huddie Ledbetter's birthplace. Most people in the area didn't know or care but a few were aware and even proud of the fact. The Red River Revel Arts Festival, an annual event in Shreveport, produced a tribute to the man in 1984 that featured Pete Seeger, Brownie McGee, Sonny Terry and several other singers or folklorists who were associated with Ledbetter during his lifetime. At about the same time, the Shreveport city fathers changed the name of one of the oldest and poorest districts of town, reputedly an old stamping ground of Huddie's, from St. Paul's Bottoms to Ledbetter Heights. The topography remained the same in spite of the aspiration of the new name.
Most people who heard that I was writing about Ledbetter assumed, as I had, that his life was already well documented. It is not unusual, for instance, to run across such remarks as, "A number of books have been written about Leadbelly over the years" (Prime 13F). The truth is that only one book, "Negro Folk Songs As Sung by Lead Belly", has been written about him; that book, by John A. Lomax, was published in 1936. One quarter of its 242 pages is devoted to biography and the rest contains transcriptions of songs. About one half of the biographical material comes from Ledbetter himself and concerns his life until his mid-forties; the other half deals with the six-and-a-half months that Lomax and Ledbetter spent together in 1934 and 1935.
After he parted company with John Lomax, Ledbetter lived for fifteen more years, years in which he gained his place in the dictionaries, folk song anthologies, and hearts and minds of college undergraduates. Various writers took an interest in Ledbetter and thus several excellent articles have appeared over the years since his death in 1949. There have been a novel and a Hollywood movie based on his life, but there is no biography. Most of the writers, too, have had a tendency to accept the information contained in the Lomax book uncritically, so there has been no re-examination of Ledbetter's early life. Strangely, there are certain basics upon which there is no agreement, even among the people who knew the man: these include the date and place of his birth, the pronounciation of his name, and even his height. Little wonder he is often thought of as a legendary figure.
According to John Lomax, Huddie Ledbetter said he was born in 1885 (J. Lomax, Negroï xi). Ross Russell, who interviewed Huddie in Los Angeles, puts the date at 20 January 1889, "not 1885 or 1886, as has appeared elsewhere" (Russell 12). Frederic Ramsey, Jr., who recorded îLeadbelly's Last Sessionsï in New York, seems totally confused: in a magazine obituary, Ramsey mentions Huddie's death "at sixty years," in 1949, yet states four paragraphs later that he was born circa 1882 ("Legacy" 60). One jazz historian quotes two different birth dates, 1885 and 1888, on the same page (Tirro 127).
The tombstone in Shiloh Baptist Church's graveyard places Huddie's birthdate in 1889, but two census reports - 1900 and 1910 - both claim 1888 as the year of his birth. He was listed as twelve years old in 1900 and twenty-two in 1910. The most accurate date would have been provided by the 1890 census, which has been lost to posterity, but Huddie had clearly settled on the 1889 date by the time he spoke to Ross Russell.
The place of his birth, which his cousins clearly put between Mooringsport and Longwood in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, is generally accepted. As late as 1974, a group of Harrison County, Texas, residents planned to have Ledbetter's remains disinterred and moved to Karnack, where they would then erect an historical marker (Wilson 5). Texans have a good claim: the Ledbetters moved to Harrison County when Huddie was a boy. However, if he belongs to any region, that region is the Caddo Lake country, which has no regard for state borders. His Louisiana relatives, the Bob Ledbetters, lived only two or three miles away from the Wes Ledbetters who moved over the Texas line and bought land from Doc Wascom. The Texans apparently spurred the Louisianians into action - an historical marker was erected near Oil City, Louisiana, in the late 1970's.
There has been a certain amount of controversy over the pronounciation of the name Huddie. Blanche Love pointed out that her cousin's name was pronounced "Hew-die," not "Huddie" as some people say (Windham 97). At the Red River Revel tribute I heard Pete Seeger very carefully pronounce the name Hew-die. On the other hand, I have heard Ledbetter himself pronounce it both ways in different recordings. The census records him as "Hudy," which is the way the census-taker heard the name, and everyone who knew him in Louisiana uses the long "U."
There are also two different ways of writing his nickname, Lead Belly and Leadbelly. John Lomax, the man who probably invented the nickname, used two words but many people, myself included, have since contracted it to a single word. I will use Lead Belly only in direct quotations. As far as I can tell, the singer always referred to himself as "Huddie Ledbetter," and his cousin Blanche Love stated quite adamantly that his name was not Leadbelly, "it was Ledbetter" (Windham 97).
The question of Ledbetter's height is an interesting one: the legendary character is a "big powerful Negro" (Price 20), "one mean mountain of a man" ("Cinema" 76). The fictional accounts, both the novel and the movie, emphasize great size, and the most common perception is that Ledbetter was tall and husky. However, Ross Russell said that he "was not exceptionally big — in the 6-foot, 180-pound category" (Russell 12). Hector Lee, who met the singer in Salt Lake City in 1946, wrote that he was surprised to find Huddie was shorter than average (Lee, "Lead Belly" 135), and Pete Seeger, a fellow folksinger, wrote, "He was not tall — perhaps five feet seven or eight" (Asch & Lomax 7). His neighbor, Preston Brown, agrees with Pete Seeger. "He wasn't any taller than me," said Preston, which would place him at about five foot, seven inches. All agreed, however, that he radiated power and athletic grace. Journalist Ralph J. Gleason, who met Ledbetter several times in New York, put it this way: "He was not a tall man at all, but he was broad and chunky and gave an impression of terrific strength."

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Chapter 1: King Cotton

2007-09-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

Chapter 1: King Cotton: Pre-1889

Roque House, Natchitoches, LA. Circa 1790.

The cotton business received a tremendous lift from the invention of the cotton gin, a simple, yet efficient machine which separated the seeds from the fluffy white part. The gin was invented in 1793 by an American named Eli Whitney. The invention led to the clearing of millions of acres of forest lands, lands which were turned over to the growing of cotton. The Cotton Kingdom was thus established in the states bordering on the Gulf Coast, and the institution of slavery was revived during the first half of the Nineteenth century. As late as 1808, when slave importation into the United States was outlawed, popular wisdom said there was no need for any more slaves. It is estimated that 250,000 slaves were imported between 1808 and 1860, and had the practice not been illegal, there may have been many more. Slave labor made the Cotton Kingdom possible.
Caddo Parish, Louisiana, became a leader in cotton production in the years leading up to the Civil War. The population of the parish in the latter part of the nineteenth century was overwhelmingly black, particularly in rural areas like Mooringsport on the southern shore of Caddo Lake. The reason for this is simple: many of the white settlers who arrived from the Southeastern states prior to the Civil War came with their slaves. Thus a family made up of four or five white members might typically be accompanied by four or five times that many black people. Not all the white settlers were slave owners, of course, but there were enough to account for the population ratio. "The early settlers were nearly all rich men with many slaves and some fine cattle." (O'Pry 141). “A man named Erwin, founder of Erwin's Bluff in Shreveport (circa 1836), brought 100 negroes with him and a quantity of fine Kentucky stock.” (O'Pry 144) The 1870 census, the first to enumerate blacks as people rather than slaves, shows 15,799 blacks and 5,913 whites in Caddo. The 1880 census shows 19,283 blacks out of a total parish population of 26,303. That's a ratio of roughly three blacks to each white in the years following emancipation. The ratio actually widened during the 1860's, possibly reflecting the westward exodus of slave owners, and their possessions, to safer environs. [The decade of the Civil War.] It was 1920 before the census showed a majority of white residents in Caddo parish, and in the late Twentieth century, the pendulum is swinging back the other way.
There were two ways of getting to northwest Louisiana from the Atlantic states. Some families traveled overland in wagons, while their slaves were linked together in "coffles," like chain gangs, and made to walk the thousand miles to their new homes. Other families went by ship to New Orleans; there they transferred to riverboats which, after the clearing of the Great Raft, went all the way to Shreveport and beyond, to the town of Jefferson, Texas, on Caddo Lake.
The city of Shreveport, Louisiana, was founded on the Red River; it lies about twenty miles east of the Texas border, and thirty-five miles south of Arkansas. Shreveport calls itself the hub of a region known as the Ark-La-Tex. To the north and west of Shreveport lies Caddo Lake, half of which is in Texas, and half in Louisiana. The Texas half features cypress trees, cypress knees, and Spanish moss, peculiarities more often associated with Louisiana. The northeast part of Louisiana, with its non-Catholic and non-French population, has always felt an affinity for East Texas.
Shreveport is named for Captain Henry Miller Shreve of the U.S. Army engineers. He arrived in 1833 to survey the Red River and see what could be done about the massive logjam which blocked navigation for two hundred miles upstream. He and his men set about clearing the jam, known as the Great Raft, and by the middle 1830's the Red was navigable to the Mississippi. Settlers started to pour in. The Caddo Indians, guardians of the land since time immemorial, were overwhelmed by the flood of immigrants. They "sold out" in 1835 and moved to the temporary safety of Oklahoma.
Among the antebellum white settlers in the region were two Jeter brothers from Virginia, William and James. They came as part of that historical western migration which opened up millions of acres of land to the cultivation of cotton in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and, finally, Texas; they came to help establish the Cotton Kingdom. The Jeters were from an affluent family; they brought money and possessions, including some slaves, and bought land in northwestern Louisiana. Their slaves cleared the land, planted cotton, built a large house for the owners and small houses for themselves.
William Nathaniel Jeter, born in 1824, first purchased property in Caddo Parish in 1849. This was a tract of three hundred and twenty acres of wooded land northeast of Caddo Lake; the seller was Richard T. Noel. During the next three years, William got himself situated and then returned to Virginia in 1852 to marry Lucinda Ford. Later that year, William came back to Louisiana with his new bride and his younger brother, James, who had just turned twenty-one. For the sum of $1,500, James bought four hundred and eighty acres from one Randolph Martin. This land was to the west of the village of Blanchard, which is halfway between Shreveport and Mooringsport. "James Addison Jeter was a surveyor and many maps of this area are based on Jeter's Country Plat." (A. Moore 32)
In May, 1860, William bought 160 acres to the south of Caddo Lake. This appears to be the beginning of what was to become the Jeter Plantation, or the Jeter Place. A near neighbor of the Jeters, at the time, was seventy-five year old John Lowe, also a native Virginian. Lowe possessed fifty slaves and eleven slave dwellings; his real estate was valued at $50,000. By this time, a mere twenty-five years since the clearing of the Red River, Caddo parish was shipping record quantities of cotton to the international market in New Orleans.
When the Civil War began, both Jeter brothers went off to defend the Confederacy. James was Captain of an outfit known as the Caddo Lake Boys, who marched a hundred miles east to Monroe, Louisiana, in 1861. Both brothers were captured and then later sent back home in an exchange of prisoners. (A. Moore 32)
Shreveport had not been ravaged by the Civil War and for that reason, it became the capital of wartime Louisiana. By early 1865, the town was home to a substantial Confederate force and surrounded by forts, barricades, trenchs and earthworks, in readiness for a state of seige. The most famous remaining Civil War landmark is known as Fort Humbug, where, for lack of the real thing, wooden cannons were placed in hope of fooling the Yankees. The Rebel commander at Shreveport was General E. Kirby Smith. He described it as "a miserable place with a miserable population - swarming with refugees, slave coffles, state legislators, and surplus colonels." (Stuck 4)
The southern part of the state, particularly strategic New Orleans with its command of the Mississippi River mouth, was secured by Union forces early in the war. Vicksburg, Mississippi, on Louisiana's eastern border, eventually toppled to General Grant's forces after being under seige for more than a year. Alexandria, in the center of the state, had been torched during a battle with Union forces. The nearest actual battleground to Shreveport was twenty-five miles away. In the spring of 1864, Union forces under the command of General Nathaniel P. Banks forged northward from Alexandria to mount an assault on the city, now a busy depot for men and supplies.
Banks was a former governor of Massachussetts, a Republican political appointee who was not highly rated as a military commander. In retrospect, his Red River Campaign might have been more successful had it been waged by a soldier, but in fact it made little difference to the eventual outcome of the Civil War, and Banks's technique may have spared a few lives.
The Union forces were met and driven back by a smaller, more mobile Rebel force at the Battle of Mansfield under the command of General Richard Taylor, son of Zachary Taylor. At the Battle of Pleasant Hill, a day or two later, the Union forces staged a comeback, but General Banks failed to follow up his advantage. He retreated to the south and Shreveport was left unscathed.
During the postwar Reconstruction era, racial tensions were extremely high. Black troops were included in the garrison of Federal troops which arrived in Shreveport, in 1865, to begin a ten-and-a-half year occupation. When the troops first arrived they restored order where there had been anarchy, looting, and random violence; they were welcomed by law abiding citizens. But once order was restored, stories of black demons lording it over white men and raping and insulting white women became part of the popular mythology. There is little evidence of such behaviour in reality. In fact, blacks seem to have behaved with restraint; they had, after all, been subjected to considerable violence and humiliation during slavery.
Most of the documented postwar violence continued to be commited by whites against blacks. John Johnson, the son of a white plantation owner, apparently murdered a black woman in August, 1865. He escaped arrest and was never brought to trial. Two white men in Shreveport were found guilty of the murder of a freedman and sentenced to ninety-nine years each. However, after sentencing the two simply rose from the prisoners' dock and strolled out of the courtroom unhindered. They were simply allowed to go free. In October, 1868, two whites were killed in a dispute with freedmen, which is what former slaves were called, and Shreveport's white citizenry retaliated by going on a rampage, killing nineteen blacks.
Blacks were not only saddled with the reputation of being violent and insolent; they were also thought of as too ignorant to vote intelligently. And as for taking over the reigns of government? To a loyal white Southerner, nothing could be more ludicrous!
As members of Republican administrations, blacks generally attempted to enact progressive legislation such as unsegregated public education, and distribution of land to former slaves. The Republican party in Louisiana, the party of Lincoln, was a coalition of blacks, a handful of white progressives, and white Northerners who came to carry out the policies of the Federal government. Supporters of the Confederacy referred to this latter group as "carpetbaggers." The name derived from their luggage, a large bag made from carpet material. The white progressives were called "scalawags." The blacks were simply "niggers." In fact, most Louisiana black legislators, men like Caesar C. Antoine, were from an educated class of free men or creoles of color. Antoine, a Shreveporter, was elected lieutenant governor in 1872.
The newly enfranchised black male population was large, and this caused the whites to resort to violence and intimidation to maintain the pre-war power structure. Any white male citizen of Louisiana could regain the right to vote by recanting his support for the Confederate cause, but those who did so were socially ostracized and classified as scalawags, no better than niggers and carpetbaggers. Racist organizations such as the Knights of the White Camellias and the Ku Klux Klan broke up mass political meetings of blacks and used intimidation at polling booths (McLure & Howe 60).

The Cotton Exchange in New Orleans, 1874. By Edgar Degas.

The Camellias were formed in New Orleans in the 1860's. They were avowedly white supremacist but not as openly violent as the Klan. The Camellias were opposed to the aims of Reconstruction, and they represented the views of the majority of white Louisianians. They obstructed all attempts to accomodate the blacks as full and equal citizens of the state, and thus laid the groundwork for the racial disharmony and bitterness which continues to the end of the Twentieth Century. There was no acceptance of defeat by the whites of Louisiana, and the only way for Northern liberals to impose their progressive views was by continued use of force. Time was on the side of the whites in Louisiana, and the rest of the South.
In 1873 Caddo, along with the neighboring parishes of Bossier to the east, and DeSoto to the south, and with the approval of the state Democratic convention, applied for annexation to Texas. One Shreveport historian explains the attempt: "Doubtless these parishes sought to alleviate their sufferings under the Republican rule and negro troubles caused by the carpetbaggers in this manner" (O'Pry 145). Which only shows that even in the 1920's, "historians" were following the white racist line. If the whites in these parishes were suffering, it was through their stubborn resistance to Republican rule; and if there were "negro troubles," the whites had themselves to blame. The Republican government of Louisiana naturally rejected the white parishioners' plan to join the state of Texas (McLure & Howe 60).
On 1 May, 1875 the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act which gave equal rights to blacks in public accomodations and extended the right to jury duty. For the time, this was a progressive piece of legislation; too progressive for the U.S. Supreme Court, which invalidated the Act in 1883.
After then election of 1876 a national political compromise led to the selection of a Republican president in return for the installation of a Democratic governor in Louisiana. Samuel Tilden, the Democratic candidate for president, received a majority of the popular vote, but a dispute developed over twenty-two electoral votes, Louisiana's amongst them. After much wrangling in Congress, the election was awarded to Republican Rutherford Hayes when his party agreed to end Reconstruction. Occupation forces were withdrawn, and with their withdrawal came an increase in terrorism against blacks. Louisiana's government, right down to the parish and municipal levels, returned to the control of the tired old racial plutocracy which is still, as of this writing, largely intact. In order to maintain their power, whites created a virtual police state, and any black who wished to remain healthy stayed "in his place." African Americans in Louisiana and the other southern states were effectively barred from holding political office and, as far as possible, denied the right to vote. It wasn't until the late 1890's that laws prohibiting most blacks from voting were actually put on the books in Louisiana, but the terror had been in effect long before that. The country blacks, in particular, generally retreated to a position of passive acceptance of white hegemony.
The Jeters were farmers and businessmen, and they were among the white leaders in their isolated part of the country. They may have been members of the White Camellias. After the defeat in 1865, they returned to raising cotton and dealing land. William and Lucinda Jeter gave birth to nine children, though only four survived to maturity. The eldest was Alice, who was born in 1853; one of her sons, Sam Caldwell, was to serve twelve years as mayor of Shreveport. Virgil Jeter would become a physician and move to Atlanta, Texas, and the second son, Frank, was to take over and operate the Plantation. The youngest of the four Jeter children was Hulda who married locally and stayed in the area all her life.
Like most planters in the region, the Jeter's livliehood had been barely affected by the war. Their slaves were "freed," but most of them "knew their place" and continued to live on the land and work for the Jeter family. Those freedmen who preferred to leave the plantation but couldn't afford to buy land "farmed for halves." Landowners supplied land, seed, and perhaps mules, housing and tools; in return they took half of the crop in lieu of rent. The Jeter holdings grew considerably during the twenty-five years which followed the Civil War. The number of workers increased until the area occupied by blacks on their plantation became known as "the quarter." In the 1880's, the residents of the quarter included Wes and Annie Ledbetter and at least two of their married sons, Wes, Jr., and Bob.
Wes and Annie came to Louisiana as slaves just before the outbreak of the Civil War. The name "Ledbetter" was taken on after emancipation; perhaps it came from a white Ledbetter who had been their owner. They were born and wed in North Carolina and their eldest son, Wes, Jr., was born in 1857, also in North Carolina. Wes and Annie were moved west between 1857 and 1860; from that time on, all their children were born in Louisiana: Robert (Bob) in 1860, William Tell (Terril) in 1864, and Mary in 1869. These four are the only ones recognized by family members. There is also an older child, Julia, who lived to a ripe old age as Julia Miller, but for some reason was never considered one of the Ledbetters.
The 1870 census, the first after the War and the first to include blacks by name as individuals, reports quite a large household for Wes and Annie; it could be that two of the children, Delia and John, simply didn't survive to adulthood. There are two adult black men listed in the household: Frank Kelly, aged 22, and Boston Powell, 20. Powell may have been the "Bud" Powell who figures as a musical influence on Huddie Ledbetter. Oddly, there is also a white family listed in the Ledbetter household, a family consisting of Ann Fly and her three children.
One can only surmise that the turmoil caused by the Civil War may have led to a variety of living arrangements amongst the poorer classes. Also, census takers obviously weren't infallible.
Though Wes and Annie never learned to read and write, their children got some kind of rudimentary schooling. Wes, Jr., was an avid reader of newspapers and magazines. According to one of his granddaughters,
“Whenever he'd go into the store in Leigh, they'd have all the papers saved for him to read. Daily or weekly or however it came. They'd have a stack of them when he'd come in and he'd read every one of them. He remembered, too; remembered everything he read. Couldn't read fluently, but what he read, he understood it. Self-educated, that's my grandfather; he didn't have no school. Now if he went to school, I don't remember him saying where. But if he did, it wasn't like it was in our day, when we came along. But he could read.” (Irene)
Wes Ledbetter, Jr., got married in 1880 to Sallie Brown; it was his first marriage and her second. She had given birth to a son, Alonzo Batts, about 1875. After the wedding, Wes and Sallie took up residence in "the quarter" on the Jeter Plantation and they became members of the Shiloh Baptist Church, which was just down the road.
The other three Ledbetter children got married in the later 1880's. Bob, the second son, also settled down near the Shiloh Church with his wife, Ada. By 1900, Terril and his wife Mattie were living near Terrell, Texas, twenty miles east of Dallas. The rest of the family stayed pretty close to home. Mary, the youngest, married a neighbor named Ken Pugh, son of Allen and Barbary Pugh who were also brought from North Carolina. There was a strong North Carolina connection among the ex-slaves of the area, though we have seen that the Jeters, and several other local planters, were from Virginia.
All of the Ledbetters were musically-inclined. Young Wes, Bob and Tell all played the guitar, though it became clear quite early on that Wes was going to channel his music towards the church. Like many church-going blacks, he recognized a spiritual chasm between sacred music and secular music. There was no mixing of the two in his way of thinking. His sister Mary seems to have been of the same mind, while Bob and Tell were more middle of the road; they were able to go out dancing to the devil's music on Saturday night and shouting to the Lord's music on Sunday morning. Both the Lord's music and the devil's music showed the influences of Africa, influences which tended to reassert themselves as blacks and whites increasingly kept out of each others' way.
When blacks were shipped to America as slaves they were stripped of their language and culture. They were mixed in different language groups and crammed into slave ships with little more than some minimal clothing. They had to learn pidgin English just to have a common language, and their music became a hybrid as well, combining bits of the European with elements of various West African cultures.
In their new surroundings there were two possibilities available to the musically-inclined: they could make use of instruments provided by their white masters, or they could construct their own instruments. Of European origin were the band instruments: trumpets, tubas, trombones, clarinets, cymbals, snares and big bass drums; also the strings like violins and cellos, and the piano. Their own instruments were reed flutes, kazoos, gourd banjos and an amazing range of percussive rattles, sticks, drums and tambourines. In antebellum New Orleans, the slave population gathered in Congo Square, on their Sunday afternoons off, and had a good old-fashioned West African hoedown.
“Going up St. Peters Street & approaching the common I heard a most extraordinary noise, which I supposed to proceed from some horse mill, the horses trampling on a wooden floor. I found . . . that it proceeded from a crowd of 5 or 600 persons assembled in an open space or public square. I went to the spot & crowded near enough to see the performance. All those who were engaged in the business seemed to be ‘blacks.’ I did not observe a dozen yellow faces. They were formed into circular groupes . . . the largest not 10 feet in diameter. In the first were two women dancing. They held each a coarse handkerchief extended by the corners in their hands, & set to each other in a miserably dull & slow figure, hardly moving their feet or bodies. The music consisted of two drums and a stringed instrument. An old man sat astride of a cylindrical drum about a foot in diameter, & beat it with incredible quickness with the edge of his hand and fingers. The other drum was an open staved thing held between the knees and beaten in the same manner. The most curious instrument, however, was a stringed instrument which no doubt was imported from Africa. On the top of the fingerboard was the rude figure of a man in a sitting posture, & two pegs behind him to which the strings were fastened. The body was a calabash.” (Latrobe 49)
The above description of an afternoon in Congo Square comes from Benjamin Latrobe of Philadelphia who kept a journal of his travels in the 1820's. He has "no doubt" that the stringed instrument was "imported from Africa," which is to say that it was of African origin. Whether it physically made its way across the ocean is another matter. Latrobe also made not of three other musical instruments, and happily for us, made sketches of all six.
“One, which from the color of the wood seemed new, consisted of a block cut into something of the form of a cricket bat with a long and deep mortice down the center. This thing made a considerable noise, being beaten lustily on the side by a short stick. In the same orchestra was a square drum, looking like a stool, which made an abominably loud noise; also a calabash with a round hole in it, the hole studded with brass nails, which was beaten by a woman with two short sticks.” (50)
The banjo was a popular instrument in the Nineteenth Century minstrel shows and is often remembered in conjunction with plantation Negroes and Stephen Foster songs. Most literature on the banjo tends to describe a stringed instrument with a gourd resonator, like the one describe by Latrobe. However,
Between 1746 snd 1757 a slave dealer named Nicholas Owen reported an instrument played by the blacks "up Sharbro" in Sierra Leone, and instrument made of wood that sounded to him " like a bad fidle." It was called a Banjelo. (Epstein 213)
An even earlier reference is from Jamaica in 1740 by one Charles Leslie. He mentions a slave instrument called a "bangil" which was "not unlike our Lute in any Thing but the Musick." (Abrahams 282) In other words, the instrument itself was like a lute, but what the musicians were doing with it was something else. In 1793 Bryan Edwards reported from the West Indies, "they have the Banjo or Merriwong . . . [which] is an imperfect kind of violin cello (292), and in 1806 George Pinckard, also from the West Indies, mentioned the "banjar" as being "a coarse and rough kind of guitar." (294) In an article published in 1810, Fr. Richard de Tussac gives a detailed description of the making of a "banza" by French colonial blacks.
“They cut lengthwise through the middle of a calabash. This fruit is sometimes eight inches or more in diameter. They stretch upon it the skin of a goat which they adjust round the edges with little nails; then a piece of lath or flat wood makes the handle of the guitar; then they stretch three cords of pitre (a kind of hemp taken from the agave plant), and the instrument is finished. (Epstein 217)
Clearly, then, while the name "banjo" is of African derivation, Africans seem to have had a wide variety of instuments similar to European guitars, lutes and violins which used gourds or calabashes instead of wooden resonators, and went under a variety of names including banza, banjar, bangil or bonja.

Me envy not dhe white man dhen,
Me poor but me is gay;
Me glad at heart, me happy when
Me on my bonja play. (Abrahams 18)

Though the banjo was clearly an African invention, and through Minstrelsy and the image of the contented plantation Negro used to be associated with African-Americans, the banjo as we now know it is a white man's instrument. The last of the serious black banjo players were in the early Dixieland jazz bands; it was the only stringed instruments that could compete with the sound of the horns in the days before amplification. The only solo blues banjoist of repute was Papa Charlie Jackson in the mid-1920's. The fiddle, and most particularly the guitar, are much closer to the African musical style. As a percussive member of jazz bands,the banjo was four-stringed; now as a bluegrass and olde tyme country music instrument, it has acquired a fifth string.
The accordion, which was developed in Central Europe early in the nineteenth century, was introduced to south Louisiana Cajuns by German immigrants in the 1880's (Ancelet 22) and was simultaneosly brought to north Louisiana and Texas by German settlers. Although the accordion continues to be enormously popular amongst the Cajuns and Mexican Americans, it is now an uncommon instrument in the north of Louisiana. It has become virtually extinct since the early 1950's, when some white country dance bands used piano accordions.
There is a windjammer in the Caddo-Pine Island Museum in Oil City, on Caddo Lake, and there is one at the Pioneer Heritage Center at Louisiana State University in Shreveport. The latter can be traced directly to German origins. A lonely written reference to the accordion in regional black folk traditions occurs in a 1950 article by a local artist named Don Brown. Brown, who taught at Centenary College in Shreveport, and had a camp on Caddo Lake, told of a black "concertina" player named Albert Vaughn. Marshall, Texas, attorney Franklin Jones, Sr., also remembers Vaughn and a group of black musicians who jammed together at his place on Caddo Lake. Don Brown also wrote that guitars and banjos could be found in most (black) homes in the region.
The accordion can be a very loud instrument, and in the era before amplification, it was well-suited to playing for dances. There is no doubt that electrification has in some part accounted for the increased popularity of the guitar in dance bands, and the decreased popularity of the banjo, the fiddle and the accordion. In the late nineteenth century, the instruments of choice amongst black musicians in North Louisiana were guitar, piano, harmonica, fiddle, and mandolin, but the latter two instruments have, since the early part of this century, joined the banjo in the domain of white musicians. It still seems odd that the accordion can have disappeared so totally from the traditional music of the area, while it has maintained its popularity and currency in the Cajun culture of South Louisiana and the Norteno culture of South and Central Texas. But that is what has happened.
The Caddo Lake region was slightly isolated from the mainstream; Franklin Jones calls it the outlaw country. Ledbetter's mastery of the accordion, mandolin, guitar, and twelve-string guitar, along with his dexterity on the harmonica, piano, and string-bass, attest to his considerable, though unusual, musical talent. He was quite at home around Caddo Lake, however.
It is worth noting that the twelve-string guitar is an uncommon instrument, so that claiming to be "King" is bravado mixed with a large dash of humor. There is only one other old-time blues player, Blind Willie McTell of Augusta, Georgia, who ever achieved fame on the instrument, which has not taken well to electrification. There are too many harmonic and, thus, discordant possibilities. However, the twelve-string is useful to a street musician because it can be louder than a regular, six-string guitar and can withstand a few broken strings before becoming unplayable.
The twelve-string guitar became established in Spain some time before 1780. It has much in common with the mandolin: in archaic terms, the twelve-string is a "six-course" instrument, really a six-string with two strings for each "course" instead of one (Turnbull 63). The mandolin, similarly, is a four-course instrument. There must have been something about the string arrangement that appealed to Huddie. It seems possible that he actually took up the twelve-string between 1925 and 1930 and not during an earlier sojourn in Dallas. The Stella guitar company produced most of its twelve-string models between the 1920's and the 1940's (Evans 258) and Huddie had one of them - painted green - when the Lomaxes found him in the Angola Prison Farm in 1933. But this idea is contrary to Huddie's own statements.
Guitars and fiddles supplied the music for the house dances, or "sukey jumps," that developed in the black community after the Civil War.
Where German settlers trod, in Louisiana and Texas for instance, accordions and harmonicas were introduced. In the white communities the square dance tunes were "Turkey in the Straw," "Bear Creek," "Nigger in the Woodpile," and "Arkansas Traveler." These same tunes were played in a more percussive style by blacks, though they might have inserted "Rats in the Meal Barrel" for "Nigger in the Woodpile."
While whites were "knocking the back-step," "cutting the pigeon wing," and dancing jigs, reels, hornpipes and Highland flings, blacks were doing the "cakewalk," the "grapevine twist," the "Delphi twirl," the "Eagle rock" and the stomp. These and other distinctive African American dances did not reach the ballrooms of polite white society until well after the turn of the century. Blacks were able to observe the goings-on in white society because they were often employed as musicians or domestics, but whites were generally ignorant of what was going on at the sukey jumps. Thus jazz took whites by surprise, and the blues was a revelation even to W.C. Handy, a black man with a formal musical training.
“Then one night at Tutwiler [Mississippi], as I nodded in the railroad station while waiting for a train that had been delayed nine hours, life suddenly took me by the shoulder and wakened me with a start.
“A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly.

‘Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog.’

“The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard. The tune stayed in my mind.” (Handy 78)
For Handy it was the birth of the blues. He'd spent his young life to that point playing sheet music for society dances, both black and white, and had little contact with the working class blacks. He was able to transfer the blues to sheet music, too, and come up with hit tunes like the "Memphis Blues" and "St. Louis Blues." But Huddie Ledbetter had heard that music all his life.
“We used to do the "St. Louis Blues," and that was before W.C. Handy, when I was just a boy. We used to do the St. Louis song, you know, way down in Louisiana, and that was when I was a boy. And it wasn't written, it was just a real song, just made up. But anyhow, when I come to New York, we find out that W.C. Handy was the man that writ the music, and the words - "made it up." But that was when I was a boy, we used to sing that song.” (Last Sessions)

Posted by Monty and Marsha at 9:25 PM

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