Leadbelly

Leadbelly (born Huddie William Ledbetter, January 23, 1888, Mooringsport, Louisiana, USA; died: December 6, 1949 in New York, NY) was an American folk and blues singer, musician, and songwriter notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "Goodnight, Irene", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil". 
He usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer. In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.
Leadbelly'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, cattle herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes. Leadbelly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
== Links To Peel ==
Leadbelly was the second artist ever played on the radio by John Peel, in 1961 as a guest on the Kat's Karavan show on the station WRR in Dallas, Texas, where he was living at the time, although, as he later admitted to John Walters (see below) the singer was never one of his all-time favourites. 
However, Leadbelly influenced a wide range of artists who Peel admired (see the "Legacy" section of the Wikipedia article on him for a large if incomplete list), and his original songs and adaptions of "traditional" tunes continued to be heard on the DJ's shows until the 21st century, including cover versions by a range of artists, most notably 'Rock Island Line' by Peel favourite Lonnie Donegan and Nirvana's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" which made the 1994 Festive Fifty and introduced Leadbelly's music to a new generation. Leadbelly was also mentioned in song lyrics, from Bob Dylan's "Song To Woody" and Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks" to Half Man Half Biscuit's "Twenty Four Hour Garage People" 
== Shows Played ==
1960s
* Kat's Karavan (1961): Backwater Blues
* 09 March 1969: (JP: “This is a Leadbelly thing – I’m not going to get into arguments about how to pronounce his first name on this programme as well as on "Night Ride")
1980s
* 30 May 1981 (John Walters): (JW: "‘On A Christmas Day’ was a Leadbelly song, and Leadbelly's was a name that cropped up pretty regularly when music critics attempted to come to terms with the skiffle boom. “At least,” they cried with a single voice, “Lonnie Donegan’s feeble parody of American folk blues will alert our gullible teenagers to the really important artists such as Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Cisco Houston." JP: "As an extremely gullible teenager I quickly made my way back to Hessey’s yet again and obtained records by each of these artists. Gravely disappointing. Leadbelly was OK, I suppose, but Woody Guthrie was a bit dull and Cisco Houston was a complete wimp.")
*Peel January 1984: Ella Speed (10" album - Classics In Jazz) Capitol
1990s
* OT Mixtape R: In New Orleans (House Of The Rising Sun)
* 09 July 1998: (JP: "And you’d heard kind of Leadbelly and you’d heard Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Jack Elliot and people like this – and then you heard Lonnie Donegan.)
2000s
* 22 August 2000: Packin' Trunk (LP 'Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music Vol. 4') Revenant
* 24 August 2000 (Radio Eins): Packin' Trunk
* 16 October 2003 (Radio Eins): Jean Harlow (album - Leadbelly Sings Fok Songs)
Post-Peel
* 07 December 2004 (Rob Da Bank): Rock Island Line (LP- Alabama Bound) - (Union Square Music)
== Covered ==
Artist | Song | First known play by Peel
* Back Door: Linin' Track (session) 21 June 1973
* Back Door: Roberta (session) 21 June 1973
* DM Bob: Jean Harlow 30 September 2003
* Lonnie Donegan: Rock Island Line 07 October 1999
* Davey Graham: Good Morning Blues (session) 01 May 1968
* Fall: Bourgeois Town ('Bourgeois Blues') 28 November 2001
* Half Man Half Biscuit: Good Night, Irene (session) 27 June 1992
* Led Zeppelin: Gallows Pole Radio Luxembourg Tracklistings 2
*Manfred Mann: Black Betty (live) 19 October 1971
* Nirvana: Where Did You Sleep Last Night (CD-MTV Unplugged In New York) Geffen FF#40 (JP: "When I was a boy and growing up in Texas, we knew that as 'In The Pines', but everybody else calls it 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night', and so shall we on this occasion.... Our Flossie can play that on the guitar, so I'll dedicate that to her.") 23 December 1994
* Ram Jam: Black Betty 11 August 1977
*Tav Falco's Panther Burns: Bourgeois Blues 18 February 1982
* Taste: Leaving Blues (session) 09 March 1969
== See Also ==
*The Collection (Peel Acres - Tash LC)
== External Links ==
* Wikipedia
* Discogs
Category:Artists
Category:Covered