Such a reason to leave home make me think Lead Belly must have been at least 14 rather than 10 or 11 when he had the lightbulb moment that is the theme of this post. His parents were respectable land owners there and leaving home was the right thing to do – for his parents, that is, if not for the mother(s) of the baby(ies) he fathered. The fledgling Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter, was living the life of an itinerant ‘musicianer’ in Texas at such a tender age because community outrage and seen him hounded out of his Louisiana village of Mooringsport for getting, if not two girls, at least one girl pregnant. Lead Belly wasn’t simply an influence, as Sir Van Morrison once said, he was THE influence. So, anyone into music in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s knew about Lead Belly, as did Americans in the 1930s and 1940s. Lonnie Donegan is even said to have based his skiffle format on the Lead Belly rendition of the old African-American slave song, ‘Ole Riley’. A major influence up all these bands, growing up in 1950s Britain, was Lonnie Donegan and the music genre he popularised: skiffle.ĭonegan had huge hits in the UK and USA covering Lead Belly recordings like ‘Rock Island Line’ and ‘Pick a Bale of Cotton’ and other old blues songs by artists such as Josh White. Bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Who, Led Zeppelin and even the Bee Gees and Queen. This was intrinsically true of most British pop and rock groups who came out of the 1960s. Lead Belly’s influence on blues, folk and pop music was so enormous, the Beatles’ lead guitarist, the late, great George Harrison, once said, “No Lead Belly, no Beatles”. However, in this post we’re talking about one particular black songster, from Louisiana. In 1860, 84 percent of free blacks lived not in the Deep South, however, but in the hilly Upper South: Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Even more were freed former slaves who either elected to remain or were unable to leave. Many free black southerners came from the Caribbean or had lived in France’s La Louisiane, where blacks were free until Louisiana was purchased by the US. The photograph above comes courtesy of AMOEBLOG which writes that while it’s generally assumed free blacks all hightailed it to the North after the Civil War, most actually remained in the South. Black songsters influenced Hillbilly music, too Back around 1899, travelling black songsters were immaculately dressed (like the trio above), and like the blues performers of the first half of the 20th century of which Lead Belly was one. All are given in his various biographies, of which there are many – because the boy in question was Huddie Ledbetter, later world famous as the American folk music and blues hero, Lead Belly. Whether the boy was 10, 11 or 14 depends on which birth date you believe – 1885, 1888 or 1889. 1899. A tender-aged ‘songster’, as roaming black minstrels were known back then, had travelled from his home in Louisiana around 1899 to busk in neighbouring Texas.
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