FREETHE LIFE AND LEGEND OF LEADBELLY EBOOK Charles K. Wolfe,Kip Lornell | 360 pages | 06 May 1999 | The Perseus Books Group | 9780306808968 | English | Cambridge, MA, United States The Life And Legend Of Leadbelly - Charles Wolfe, Kip Lornell - Google книги Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the pianomandolinharmonicaviolinand windjammer. Lead Belly's songs covered a wide range of genres and topics including gospel music ; blues about women, liquor, prison life, and racism; and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Though many releases credit him as "Leadbelly", he himself wrote it as "Lead Belly", which is also the spelling on his tombstone [3] [4] and the spelling used by the Lead Belly Foundation. There is uncertainty over his precise date and year of birth. The Lead Belly Foundation gives January 20,[9] and his grave marker gives the year His draft registration card states January 23, However, the United States Census lists "Hudy Ledbetter" as 12 years old, born Januaryand the and censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in The census lists his age as 51, with information supplied by wife Martha. His parents had cohabited for several years, but they legally married on February 26, When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, Texas. Aletha is registered as age 19 and married one year. Others say she was 15 when they married in It was in Texas that Ledbetter received his first instrument, an accordionfrom his uncle Terrell. By his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter left home to make his living as a guitarist and occasional laborer. Between andLedbetter served several prison and jail terms for a variety of criminal charges. Inwhen Lead Belly was released from one of his last incarcerations, the The Life and Legend of Leadbelly States was deep in the Great Depressionand jobs were very scarce. In September of that year, in need of regular work in order to avoid cancellation of his release from prison, Lead Belly asked John Lomax to take him on as a driver. For three months, he assisted the year-old in his folk song collecting The Life and Legend of Leadbelly the South. Alan Lomaxhis son, was ill and did not accompany The Life and Legend of Leadbelly on this trip. ByHuddie was already a "musicianer", [12] a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed for nearby Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, a notorious red-light district there. He began to develop his own style of music after exposure to various musical influences on Shreveport's Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms, now referred to as Ledbetter Heights. While in prison, Lead Belly may have first heard the traditional prison song " Midnight Special ". Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him in on portable aluminum disc recording equipment for the Library of Congress. They returned with new and better equipment in Julyrecording hundreds of his songs. On August 1, Ledbetter was released after having again served nearly all of his minimum sentence, following a petition the Lomaxes had taken to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at his urgent request. It was on the other side of a recording of his signature The Life and Legend of Leadbelly, " Goodnight Irene ". A prison official later wrote to John Lomax denying that Ledbetter's singing had anything to do with his release from Angola state prison records confirm he was eligible for early release due to good behavior. However, both Ledbetter and the Lomaxes believed that the record they had taken to the governor had hastened his release from prison. In DecemberLead Belly participated in a "smoker" group sing at a Modern Language Association meeting at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvaniawhere the senior Lomax had a prior The Life and Legend of Leadbelly engagement. He was written up in the press as a convict who had sung his way out of prison. On New Year's Day,the pair arrived in New York Citywhere Lomax was scheduled to meet with his publisher, Macmillanabout a new collection of folk songs. The Life and Legend of Leadbelly newspapers were eager to write about the "singing convict," and Time magazine made one of its first March of Time newsreels about him. The following week, he began recording for the American Record Corporationbut these recordings achieved little commercial success. He recorded over 40 sides for ARC intended to be released on their Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, and Romeo labels and their short-lived Paramount seriesThe Life and Legend of Leadbelly only five sides were actually issued. Part of the reason for the poor sales may have been that ARC released only his blues songs rather than the folk songs for which he would later become better known. Lead Belly continued to struggle financially. Like many performers, what income he made during his career would come from touring, not from record The Life and Legend of Leadbelly. In Februaryhe married his girlfriend, Martha Promise, who came North from Louisiana to join him. Concert appearances were slow to materialize. In MarchLead Belly accompanied John Lomax on a previously scheduled two-week lecture tour of colleges and universities in the Northeast, culminating at Harvard. At The Life and Legend of Leadbelly end of the month, John Lomax decided he could no longer work with Lead Belly and gave him and Martha money to go back to Louisiana by bus. He gave Martha the money her husband had earned during three months of performing, but in installments, on the pretext Lead Belly would spend it all on drinking if given a lump sum. From Louisiana, Lead Belly successfully sued Lomax for both the full amount The Life and Legend of Leadbelly release from his management contract. The quarrel was bitter, with hard feelings on both sides. Curiously, in the midst of the legal wrangling, Lead Belly wrote to Lomax proposing they team up again, but it was not to be. Further, the book about Lead Belly published by the Lomaxes in the fall of the following year proved a commercial failure. He performed twice a day at Harlem's Apollo Theater during the Easter season in a live dramatic recreation of the March of Time newsreel itself a recreation about his prison encounter with John Lomax, where he had worn stripes, though by this time he was no longer associated with Lomax. It included a full-page, color rare in those days picture of him sitting on grain sacks playing his guitar and singing. Neff ; and the "ramshackle" Texas State Penitentiary. The article attributes both of his pardons to his singing of his petitions to the governors, who were so moved that they pardoned him. The text of the article ends with "he Lead Belly failed to stir the enthusiasm of Harlem audiences. Instead, he attained success playing at concerts and benefits for an audience of leftist folk music aficionados. He developed his own style of singing and explaining his repertoire in the context of Southern black culture having learned from his participation in Lomax's college lectures. He was especially successful with his repertoire of children's game songs as a younger man in Louisiana he had sung regularly at children's birthday parties in the black community. He was written about as a heroic figure by the black novelist Richard Wrightthen a member of the Communist Partyin the columns of the Daily Workerof which Wright was the Harlem editor. The two men became personal friends, though some say Lead Belly himself was apolitical and, if anything, was a supporter of Wendell Willkiethe centrist Republican candidate for President, for whom he wrote a campaign song. However, he also wrote the song "Bourgeois The Life and Legend of Leadbelly, which has radical or left-wing lyrics. InLead Belly returned to prison. Alan Lomax, then 24, took him under his wing and helped raise money for his legal expenses, dropping out of graduate school to do so. During the first half of the decade, he recorded for RCAthe Library of Congressand Moe Asch future founder of Folkways Records and in went to Californiawhere he recorded strong sessions for Capitol Records. He lodged The Life and Legend of Leadbelly a studio guitar player on Merrywood Drive in Laurel Canyon. Lead Belly was the first American country blues musician to achieve success in Europe. Later in the year he began his first European tour with a trip to Francebut fell ill before its completion and was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ALSor Lou Gehrig 's disease a motor neuron disease. Martha also performed at that concert, singing spirituals with her husband. Lead Belly was imprisoned multiple times beginning in when he was convicted of carrying a pistol and sentenced to time on the Harrison County chain gang. He later escaped and found work in nearby Bowie County under the assumed name of Walter Boyd. During his second prison term, another inmate stabbed him in the neck leaving him with a fearsome scar he subsequently covered with a bandana ; Ledbetter nearly killed his attacker with his own knife. In he was pardoned and released after writing a song to Governor Pat Morris Neff seeking his freedom, having served the minimum seven years of a 7-toyear sentence. Combined with his good behavior, which included entertaining the guards and fellow prisoners, his appeal to Neff's strong religious beliefs The Life and Legend of Leadbelly sufficient.