Music

new music: lead belly: the smithsonian folkways collection unveils new, unreleased recordings after 55 years #soundcheck

February 23, 2015

In an appearance on WNYC’s Folks Songs of America program, Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, boast of a 500 song repertoire. “I can sing 500 songs, and never go back to the first one,” he declares. Though Smithsonian Folkways’ stunning new box set doesn’t feature all 500, it collects 5 hours of Leadbelly recordings, including an hour of previously unreleased recordings. Whether a casual fan or a diehard obsessive (me), the Smithsonian’s Lead Belly box set is the definitive Lead Belly collection.

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

Though he’s known in the popular consciousness as a bluesman, what’s astounding about the box set is seeing in one place the sheer breadth of Lead Belly’s versatility. Sure, there’s a lot of blues here, but there’s also country, folk, jazz, boogie woogie, work songs, gospel, protest songs, children’s songs, and even some proto-rock and roll. If it was something that could be played on a twelve string guitar, Lead Belly played it, and imbued it with his own inimitable style.

The collection kicks off with Lead Belly’s signature song, “Goodnight Irene.” It’s a song he recorded dozens of times over the course of his career, and is so indelibly associated with him that it’s used as both the intro and outro to his WNYC sets. The first three discs run through his most well known songs. “The Bourgeois Blues,” “The Midnight Special,” “John Henry,” “Black Girl (Where Did You Sleep Last Night),” “Rock Island Line,” “The Gallis Pole,” “Good Morning Blues,” “Black Betty,” “Jim Crow Blues,” and “We Shall Be Free” are all lovingly packaged and remastered in the collection. But those are to be expected. It wouldn’t be a proper Lead Belly collection without all of those cuts. (Though my one and only criticism of the set is that I wish it featured more alternate takes of some of those classics to get a sense of the way his songs evolved as he performed them. Lead Belly rarely played a song exactly the same way twice.) The set fills in his most famous songs with obscure recordings like “I’m So Glad, I Done Got Over,” and “How Come You Do Me Like You Do?”

What makes the Lead Belly collection truly unique is the presence of previously unreleased original compositions. “Princess Elizabeth,” “Every Time I Go Out,” and “I’m Going to Buy You a Brand New Ford” are late-period Lead Belly songs. Collected from his final recording sessions in the fall of 1948, they’re more rough ideas than the immaculately polished songs he honed over his years of performing, but they provide amazing insight into Lead Belly’s songwriting process. “Princess Elizabeth” solidly predicts the twelve string technique popularized by The Byrds twenty years later. If it weren’t for Lead Belly’s unmistakeable voice, it could easily be mistaken for a demo from 1968.

The unreleased recordings “If It Wasn’t For Dicky” and the unheard song “Been So Long (Bellevue Hospital Blues),” however are the stars of the set. “If It Wasn’t For Dicky” was adapted from an Irish folk song that Lead Belly heard at a party. He asked the performer to write down a translation of the Irish verses, and spun it into its own song with a new melody. His friend and acolyte, the equally venerable Pete Seeger then took Lead Belly’s melody and adapted it into one of his own best-known songs, “Kisses Sweeter than Wine.” For Leadbelly (and Pete Seeger), melodies and lyrics were playthings; raw material to build new songs out of. People who think of sampling as something new have missed out on the great tradition of American folk music and blues. “Been So Long (Bellevue Hospital Blues)” is the greatest of rarities: the unreleased original track that stands up beside their classics. 56 years after his death, and you would think the Lead Belly songbook would have been picked clean, with only scraps and outtakes left to pick over. Though the song is mostly a jokey riff about a hospital stay and the nurses who took care of him, it carries some weight as Lead Belly would die in Bellevue Hospital just a few years after making this recording.

In addition to the music, the box set collects a wealth of historical context, analysis, rare pictures, out of print album art, set lists, concert posters, and recording session notes. The amount of care and detail that’s gone into the package is staggering. The essays by producers Robert Santelli and Jeff Place unpack the myth of Lead Belly in search of the man in the midst of 127 years of mythmaking. They round out the biographies with a list of Lead Belly’s full discography, and suggested further reading. For anyone looking to get into Lead Belly, this set offers a fantastic starting place. For longtime fans looking to dig deeper, their selected readings and source list are an incredible rabbit hole to delve into. While hopefully not the final word in Lead Belly’s legacy, Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection is as exhaustive and definitive as currently exists.

You can stream “Been So Long (Bellevue Hospital Blues)” on Smithsonian Folkways’ website, along with samples from the full collection: http://www.folkways.si.edu/leadbelly

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