Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 290 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
Dec. 6 marks the passing of the late, great Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter from Lou Gehrig's disease in 1949.
Christopher "Kip" Lornell at 64 Parishes details his beginnings:
Huddie William Ledbetter stands out as one of the most important grassroots musicians of the twentieth century. He was born on Jeter Plantation in Mooringsport, near the Louisiana-Texas border, around January 20, 1885, to farmers Sally and Wes Ledbetter. As a child, Ledbetter learned to play accordion and basic guitar techniques from his uncle Terrell Ledbetter, and he soon began to perform for parties, known locally as “sukey-jumps.” Ledbetter left home around 1903 and supported himself by working in the cotton fields between Dallas, Texas, and Shreveport during the week and at house parties and country dances on weekends. [...]
Beginning around 1913, Ledbetter spent eight months playing with blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who went on to record some of the most legendary down-home, country blues recordings of the mid- to late 1920s. While playing with Jefferson, Ledbetter heard itinerant Mexican musicians, some of whom played a large twelve-string guitar. The loud, resonant instrument impressed him and he purchased one, never to return to the smaller six-string model of his youth. [...]
In 1915 police jailed Ledbetter for assault in Harrison County, Texas, and a judge sentenced him to the chain gang. Within several months, he escaped and relocated to DeKalb County, Texas, living as “Walter Boyd.” For most of the next nineteen years, the state incarcerated Ledbetter for a variety of crimes ranging from simple assault to assault with intent to kill. In 1925, after hearing him perform at the Sugarland Prison near Houston, Texas, Governor Pat Neff granted “Lead Belly” (as he was now known) a full pardon. Ledbetter’s criminal record of rather minor altercations—many almost certainly aggravated by the fact that Ledbetter was Black—furthered his “bad man” image and helped bolster his reputation later, when he moved to New York City.
In the early 1930s, following a racially charged assault incident in Mooringsport, Ledbetter served time in Louisiana’s notorious Angola Penitentiary. His life changed forever in the summer of 1933 when he met John Lomax and his eighteen-year-old son Alan, who were touring southern prisons collecting African American folk songs for the Library of Congress. Angola’s warden recommended Ledbetter, among others, and they held a brief recording session with Lomax. Ledbetter’s music and persona so impressed Lomax that he specifically sought out the musician when he returned the next summer with improved recording equipment. For his second session, Ledbetter reworked his pardon song and addressed it to Louisiana Governor O.K. Allen. At that session, he also recorded the song that would become his trademark, “Goodnight Irene.”
The Smithsonian continues his story:
John and Alan Lomax met Lead Belly during one of their recording trips for the Library of Congress. Lead Belly was then a prison inmate, and the Lomaxes managed to secure his release. Lead Belly traveled with them, eventually settling in New York City.
Lead Belly’s repertoire included diverse African-American styles from work songs, ring chants, cowboy songs, games, and Tin Pan Alley to the Delta blues. His Folkways Records classic, the multi-volume Lead Belly’s Last Sessions, reflects this diversity. Some of his best-known songs are “Midnight Special,” “Rock Island Line,” and “Goodnight Irene.” [...]
Asch was philosophically committed to artistic freedom, something that prompted the independent-minded Lead Belly to record all types of songs in his repertoire. This generated controversy when Asch issued a record of Lead Belly singing children’s songs including “Skip to My Lou” and “Pick a Bale of Cotton.” Famed journalist Walter Winchell railed against the collection in the press, asking, “How could one issue a children’s record by a convicted murderer?” [...]
He recorded songs of social protest, among them “Bourgeois Blues,” a song that he composed after a visit to Washington, D.C., when he had been refused accommodation in a rooming house. While he performed with other social activist Folkways artists Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Pete Seeger. [...]
His influence, however, was felt broadly after his death. The Weavers, with Pete Seeger, covered Lead Belly’s songs and exposed his music to wider audiences. “Goodnight Irene” became the number-one hit in the United States, selling two million records in 1950. Lead Belly’s rhythmic style of twelve-string guitar playing and his songs inspired a whole new generation of performers as diverse as Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beach Boys.
Take a look at this behind the scenes documentary, “The Making of Leadbelly:
Rev. Robert Jones narrates this WRTV Public Television mini-documentary on Ledbetter:
I strongly suggest that if you get a chance, you watch “Lead Belly: The Man Who invented Rock & Roll.” I quibble with the title, but it is an excellent documentary.
Here’s the trailer:
While researching this story on Ledbetter I ran across this piece of information I didn’t know, about a phrase used by the musician in a 1938 recording:
The word "woke" is broadly used to describe a state of being "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues especially of racial and social injustice" according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. While it originated from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the early part of the 20th century, the term has become a common part of American slang.
Its usage has evolved and grown so much that conservatives now use it as a pejorative to refer to progressives or left-leaning liberals.
The phrase "stay woke" has long been used in Black communities to indicate staying alert to others' deception--especially law enforcement--as a survival mechanism, but in 2014 "stay woke" became common usage among Black Lives Matter activists after the police killing of Michael Brown, bringing it into the wider lexicon.
Radio host Lana Quest wrote on Twitter that the first documented usage of the term "stay woke" was by Black folk singer Lead Belly when he was talking about his 1938 song "Scottsboro Boys." According to Quest, the song referred to "nine Black teens falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931, [who] were sentenced to death. NAACP forced repeated retrials. They were finally freed but never recovered."
In an interview about the song, Lead Belly—who was born Huddie Ledbetter—said, "Stay woke, keep your eyes open."
The interview with Ledbetter using stay woke is included in this video:
While I’ve covered songs that were an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement here, there are others that have implored us to “be woke.” Take this R&B title tune from Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ 1975 album “Wake up Everybody,” with Teddy Pendergrass singing the lead, for example:
Neo Soul artists like Erykah Badu have used the term “woke” in their music:
In her now
viral MSNBC interview with host Ari Melber, the legendary Erykah Badu addressed how conservatives
have twisted the term “woke” into something derogatory and weaponized it against people of color. Badu also discussed how she popularized the phrase with her 2008 song “Master Teacher” as well as on social media.
Here’s Badu’s “Master Teacher”:
What songs come to your mind that encourage us all to “stay woke”?
Join me, and post them in the comments section below.
