Tag: Lead Belly

New Alan Lomax Materials Now Available Online

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It’s no secret that Alan Lomax is a hero of ours here at the BGS. We’ve spoken with modern musicians like Sam Lee about the immense influence of the famed folklorist, as well as taken a trip or two through Lomax’s digital archives. That first foray into the digital world of Lomax yielded all kinds of goodies, like a Lead Belly concert poster from 1950 and an interactive map of Louisiana musicians playing and performing in 1934. 

We pulled those materials from a number of sources, including Lomax1934.com and the Association for Cultural Equity. We also spent a great deal of time surfing the Library of Congress’s online archives which, as of last month, just expanded its collection of Lomax-related content.

The new collection, which adds over 300,000 pieces to the Library’s Lomax archives, is culled from the Lomax family’s papers, so you can now feast your eyes on thousands more letters, writings, and research documents. The new material is housed in the same location as the some 25,000 pieces that were made available when we first began digging around in the digital Lomax realm. 

We’ve yet to make it through all 300,000 new additons, but we’ve already found some pretty cool pieces. Here are some of our favorite finds so far. Get to digging!

A transcript of Lomax’s interview with folk singer Vera Hall, conducted for The Rainbow Sign: A Southern Documentary in 1959. See the full transcript here.

John Henry Faulk’s Master’s thesis, “The Negro Sermons,” circa 1940. See the full document here.

A 1945 letter from Woody Guthrie to the Lomax family. See the full letter here.

A birth announcement for Woody Guthrie’s son, Arlo, circa 1947. See the full announcement here.

Transcript of a presentation, “The Homogeneity of African-New World Negro Musical Style,” by Lomax to American Anthropological Association in 1967. Read the full paper here.

Script for Lomax’s 1953 play, The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Read the full script here.

All photos via Library of Congress

Squared Roots: Scott Biram on the Legend of Lead Belly

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Though Lead Belly was merely a man, his story reads like the stuff of legends. He had multiple encounters with the law, was sentenced to a chain gang, escaped, killed a relative, and got thrown back in the hoosegow, earned himself a pardon because the governor was a fan. But then he stabbed someone else and got put back in prison, this time in Angola, where Alan and John Lomax found him. He was released, again, after serving his minimum and pleading with the governor, but committed a second stabbing, in the late ’30s. All the while, he so impressed everyone who heard him that he also landed himself in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Known primarily for playing 12-string guitar, Lead Belly also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and diatonic accordion on the hundreds of songs he recorded over the course of his all-too-brief career.

Texas songwriter Scott Biram grew up on those songs and, later, learned the stories that went with them. In his own bluesy, folky, soulful Americana style, Biram hears the inevitable echoes of Lead Belly coming through, including on his latest release, The Bad Testament. The influence is there in the miscegenation of musical styles, but also in the way Biram approaches his role as raconteur.   

Why Lead Belly?

Well, Doc Watson was taken! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Fair point.

I would definitely say he’s among my biggest influences — Doc and Townes Van Zandt are my other two. Lead Belly has been in my life my whole life. My dad listened to him a lot when I was a kid. I have quite a few songs where I do a little rant in the middle, where it’s not really singing as much as it’s telling a little story or saying something. I think I got that from listening to Lead Belly.

Right. Must be nice to have parents who listened to cool music. I grew up on Barry Manilow and Dionne Warwick.

[Laughs] There was definitely a lot of Eagles and Crosby, Stills, and Nash at my house. But my dad listened to a lot of Doc Watson and Lightnin’ Hopkins and stuff like that.

I can see why he would gravitate toward that stuff. Lead Belly really did have a singular style — this mix of blues, folk, gospel, and country on a 12-string guitar. What was it that spoke to you in that mish-mosh or maybe it was the mish-mosh?

I think a lot of it had to do with just being a part of my life when I was a kid with my dad listening to it so much. We had this vinyl record that was the soundtrack to the film Lead Belly which is a pretty obscure movie, not really easy to find. I think they filmed it in ’76 or something like that. I was a little kid. They filmed it in the little town that I lived in and I was in my dad’s arms on the edge of the set while they were filming the scene where Lead Belly shot his friend and went to prison.

Well, one of the times he went to prison …

One of the times … yeah. [Laughs] So I heard that soundtrack a lot, which wasn’t actually Lead Belly playing on the soundtrack. It was Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and someone named Hi Tide Harris who I haven’t been able to find too much on, even with the Internet.

Once I got into roots music, when I was a little older and started playing bluegrass and started really playing the guitar a lot and learning blues, Lead Belly was just naturally somebody that I gravitated toward. And his story is so interesting. I read all the biographies. I read a lot of biographies on musicians that influence me so that I don’t just have a shallow knowledge of them. If I’m going to be playing some of their music, I want to definitely know as much about them as possible.

That’s awesome. I had never studied much of his life until prepping for this. But, I mean … the guy recorded hundreds of songs, worked with the Lomaxes, had a radio show on WNYC, went to Europe, and was in and out of prison multiple times — sang his way out of jail a couple times — all before dying at 50 or 51. That’s some hard living. Can you imagine spending even a couple years in his shoes?

No. [Laughs] I mean, I can imagine, but I’m probably not going to do a very good job of imagining what something like that would be like. I’m just a guitar player. [Laughs] Actually, he only sang himself out of prison once. There’s a legend about him that he sang himself out twice, but really, the second time was kind of exaggerated. I think he was in prison in Louisiana, at that time, and he got out on something called “good time” which is, I think, probably good behavior.

Right. He served his minimum and got out. Here was an interesting thing that I learned: He played at the Apollo, but the Harlem audience didn’t really resonate with him as deeply as the folkies did. He had a lot in common with Woody Guthrie, maybe more so than some of the old blues guys, but why do you think the Black audience didn’t connect?

First of all, he was a country guy. And I don’t mean country music; I mean from the rural South. So I’m not sure anyone from New York would really see it as anything but a spectacle, at that time. But, also, I wonder — and I’m just guessing here — I know that John Lomax used to kind of have him dressed up in a prison uniform and stuff like that, kind of clown him around out there and make him seem like he was just straight from the prison. I imagine that might have been a turn-off to some people in Harlem back then. I know Woody Guthrie, when he went to New York and was supposed to be on something and they wanted him to dress, as he described it, “as a clown,” he said he’d be back in a few minutes, went downstairs, and left. Didn’t even come back to the studio. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah. I read that Life magazine did a three-page spread on Lead Belly and the title of the article is not something I’m going to repeat.

Yeah, I get ya.

And it was considered an honor that he was getting this prominent placement. But it makes sense that the minstrel thing wouldn’t fly.

It might’ve been a turn-off to people in Harlem. If there was anyone from the South who lived in Harlem at that time, they probably weren’t impressed by it because, to them, it was just a reminder of what they just left.

The other thing I love about listening to his stuff and pouring over his stories is that he lived through an era of history that was rife with huge moments and he documented history as it happened, writing songs about the Titanic, the Hindenburg, Jim Crow, FDR, Hitler, etc. Pete Seeger carried his style forward. Bob Dylan, to a certain extent. Who else do you hear carrying the Lead Belly torch?

You mean documenting history as it happens?

Yeah. Ani DiFranco does a bit, which she picked up from Pete Seeger.

Honestly, nobody comes to mind that is documenting current events in music so much that it’s actual historical stories in the songs. There are a lot of people saying their thoughts about the current states of everything, but I can’t think of anyone that actually sings a story about a tragedy.

Santiago Jiménez, Jr. — Flaco Jiménez’s brother — has a record called El Corrido de Esequiel Hernandez: Tragedia de Redford. The album is titled after the song about a kid in Redford, Texas, down in the desert on the border, who was walking his goats one day and the guys in the DEA or Border Patrol came and shot him because he had a rifle walking, like he did every day, with his goats. He was basically a shepherd and he got shot. That’s the only one I can think of that pops out and that’s not a popular artist or anything. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Right. I was just thinking Hurray for the Riff Raff does it a little bit. Rhiannon Giddens, a little. But no one to the same extent. I mean, if you read Lead Belly’s song titles, you can trace history.

A lot of the time you have to listen to it as “The Hindenburg Disaster, Part I” and “Part II” because they couldn’t fit the whole song on the single. They had to put it on both sides!

Take This Hammer, Blow Your Kazoo: Skiffle in the 1950s and Beyond

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In July, 1954 — the same month that Elvis Presley unleashed his first two world-changing singles — a Scottish-born singer and trad-jazz musician named Lonnie Donegan released a cover of “Rock Island Line” with backing on washboard and bass. Inspired by the African-American singer Lead Belly, Donegan explains the rules of the rails in his spoken-word intro and includes the shouts and cries of the engineers. Though he strums his guitar in a persistent rhythm to evoke the chug and drive of a freight train, the song picks up speed along the way, finally achieving a breakneck momentum as Donegan’s high-pitched vocals grow wilder. It’s a remarkable performance, studious to the point of mimicry, yet reckless like a runaway train.

It took two years, but the single finally caught on and started climbing the British pop charts in 1956. Donegan followed it up with a full-length album, An Englishman Sings American Folk Songs, which became a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic. In its wake, a series of like-minded folk acts starting popping up all over Britain: young men and women well-schooled in American folk music yet too irreverent and too wiley to be classified as traditional. Emphasizing ingenuity and spontaneity, they played rhythm guitar almost exclusively, along with whatever instruments happened to be on hand: usually kazoos, banjos, washboards, tea cabinet bass, and assorted homemade noisemakers. This was closer in spirit, if not in sound, to the rock 'n' roll coming out of the American South.

Thus was born skiffle, a short-lived scene with a lasting influence.

The word itself has a long history that reveals the concerns of its mid-century practitioners. Skiffle originated in the 1920s as a word to describe wild, impromptu jazz that mixed blues, ragtime, and folk. When Donegan and a few other musicians began playing sets of folk tunes during their trad-jazz shows, he called them “skiffle breaks,” borrowing the term from the semi-popular ‘30s jazz act the Dan Burley Skiffle Group. Eventually, the break would become the entire show, with Donegan and his small outfit often improvising their covers.

After the success of “Rock Island Line,” skiffle groups came out of the woodwork, with trad-jazz musicians migrating to this more lucrative market and kids picking up guitars for the first time. The Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group enjoyed a hit with a cover of Elizabeth Cotton’s “Freight Train” featuring Nancy Whiskey on vocals. A London outfit called the Vipers Skiffle Group — later known as simply the Vipers — rivaled Donegan as the trend’s guiding light, thanks to a string of smash singles like “Cumberland Gap” and “Don’t You Rock Me, Daddy-O” (which was produced by George Martin, later known as the Fifth Beatle). America even produced its own skiffle star, Johnny Duncan, who was born in Oliver Springs, Tennessee, but found fame in the clubs and charts of England with his 1957 hit “Last Train to San Fernando.”

As Rob Young writes in his indispensible 2010 guide to British folk music, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music, “Skiffle’s accelerated swing rhythms and domestic equipment — kazoos, harmonicas, comb and paper — placed music-making in the hands of the amateur, as well as opening up a conduit for the dust-bowl and rust-belt blues and folk poetry of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly to be siphoned into British ears.”

Like the trad-jazz scene and like the blues revival of the following decade, skiffle was a result of Britain’s obsession with American traditional music. During the post-war years, even as many musicians strove to define and preserve a specifically English folk tradition in pubs and social clubs, much of the country looked west for musical inspiration, finding it in the music made by poor Americans often in rural settings. Granted, those folk songs could be traced back to European sources, brought over by immigrants generations before and gradually mutated over the years, but by the middle of the 20th century, the music sounded distinctly American.

What distinguishes skiffle from imported jazz or blues is its emphasis on labor and class. Most of the main skiffle hits were about workers’ laments: engineers and linemen, sharecroppers and cotton pickers, migrants and chain gang prisoners. Weirdly, skiffle was viewed as largely apolitical at the time, a harmless fascination with another country’s past. However, the subject matter of these songs reinforces the populism that lies at the heart of all folk music, which likely made it more appealing to everyday Brits, especially teenagers.

As Alan Lomax noted at the time, “At first, it seemed very strange to me to hear these songs, which I had recorded from convicts in the prisons of the South, coming out of the mouths of young men who had suffered, comparatively speaking, so little. But I soon realized that these young people felt themselves to be in a prison — composed of class-and-caste lines, the shrinking British empire, the dull job, the lack of money … things like these. They were shouting at the prison walls, like so many Joshuas at the walls of Jericho.”

Skiffle left a mark on an entire generation of men and women who picked up guitars and created some of the best music of the 1960s. The list of musicians who started out in skiffle is long and impressive: Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Pete Townshend … even Cliff Richard. Van Morrison was not only a huge fan of the genre, but also recorded an album with Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber in the late 1990s. And one obscure skiffle group from Liverpool eventually changed its name from the Quarrymen to the Beatles.

The craze lasted barely five years, replaced by the screams and shouts of American rock 'n' roll, which offered similar freedoms and pleasure. Skiffle remains a brief chapter in pop history, but its lasting influence belies its short life. Although it remains obscure today — unknown by pop fans and often overlooked by folkies — the genre reinforced the idea that popular music is often best left to the amateur, the unschooled, the self-taught: those artists who innovate intuitively, without anyone telling them what they can’t do.

Dewi Peter's Skiffle Group outside Kayser Bondor, Pentrebach C.1957. Photograph courtesy of Clive Morgan.

To Spend Your Life in Pain and Misery: An Interview with Eric Burdon

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Lead Belly Fest is coming to Carnegie Hall. It is a fitting venue, as Lead Belly’s last performance was at Carnegie Hall in 1949. An all-star lineup is paying tribute on February 4, 2016 with Eric Burdon of the Animals co-headlining the festival. The Animals first rose to fame in 1962 with an electrified version of Lead Belly’s “House of the Rising Sun.” It was an unparalleled success and influenced everyone from Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix, and inspired countless aspiring musicians to pick up the guitar. It was the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” of the 1960s. Now, Burdon circles back around to honor his hero.

Thank you for taking the time to talk before the Lead Belly Fest at Carnegie Hall. They must be very excited to have you headlining. Have you performed at Carnegie Hall before?

No, but it will be an honor to pay homage to Lead Belly in a place like Carnegie Hall, which represents the pinnacle of venues around the world. It will be a thrill to share the stage with blues legend Buddy Guy, so I'm really looking forward to it.

The two most influential versions of “House of the Rising Sun” come from you and Lead Belly. At this point, you must have performed “House of the Rising Sun” more than Lead Belly or anyone else. How do you feel about the song?

I will probably be singing this song as they lower me into my grave. It's a song that is closely associated with me, and I can't tell you how many people have told me it was the first song they learned how to play on guitar or was in the background for their first kiss. I first heard this song in the folk clubs of Newcastle and immediately fell in love with it. It somehow clicked and connected with me. I chose the song because it has a mysterious vibe, a haunting melody, and a good story to it. I stand by it today as one of the best songs I've ever heard and, no matter how much I fight it, I still always enjoy singing it for people.

Has it taken on new meaning for you? What about the song did you relate to as a young man? What do you home in on now?

I related to it then, as now, as the tale of an outsider trying to make it in this cruel world. Nothing in the past 50 years has changed that feeling. It's a universal situation, whether one is young or old, to be faced with one's mortality and desires.

Growing up outside of the U.S., what was the first version of the song that you heard? I know Roy Acuff had a much earlier version and the Lomaxes first released it in the early 1930s, but I don’t imagine the Grand Ole Opry was as popular in England.

Everyone in the world has recorded that song, but if you go back in time, it was based on an English hymn. It probably goes back to the 15th century. In fact, if you listen to “Greensleeves,” which was written by Henry V, there is a great similarity between those two songs, which makes it a pure folk song.

I believe it was Dave Van Ronk who said there are older versions of the song that are about a woman joining a convent. It seems like the “House of the Rising Sun” can represent almost anything. Do you relate it to the more traditional idea of it being a brothel or do you think there’s more to it?

It can represent almost anything — the brothel in New Orleans, the coal mine in Newcastle, the state of mind that you are stuck someplace, a bad marriage or any soul-crushing job. There are hundreds of thousands of people who spend their lives in pain and misery and even people who have the money, the clout, and the lifestyle to escape pain and misery who find themselves in that state. It's not just a story of a woman who works in a whorehouse or a guy visiting one. It's a song of soul-searching. It's a song of redemption. "To spend your life in pain and misery" could be about any place one needs to escape from.

In your book Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, you describe being invited to the actual House of the Rising Sun. It must have been heavy visiting the supposed source material of the song that kick-started your career. Is there any new information about the house since you visited? Has it been authenticated? I would love to visit sometime — is it open to the public or are there any plans for it?

I don't know if it has been authenticated. For sure, there are several places that claim to be the true, one, and only House of the Rising Sun. But this two story building on St. Louis Street in the French Quarter had me convinced that there was some magic there. It was kept in immaculate condition, pretty much the way it had been at the turn of the century. It was owned, at the time, by a madame — Marianne Soleil Levant, which translates to Rising Sun. Today, it belongs to a female lawyer. There were paintings imported from France, and a mural in the courtyard that was painted with colors made from plants. I wanted to photograph it before it disappeared. Unfortunately, when I went back there a year later, the mural was almost gone, but the vibe was still there. Heavy rain had drained away most of the coloring. A totally unique and fascinating place.

The woman who owned it had the New Orleans city records with an entire history of how many times the house had been used as a brothel. That's how she determined it was the House of the Rising Sun. During the Civil War, when the Union Army came to New Orleans, they needed a whorehouse for the officers, so they made it legal. Then, when the union Army left, the house was shut down.

These pleasure houses were not cut and dry houses of sin. The girls who worked in these places were usually chosen by the madams for their light-colored skin, their ability to deliver sexual pleasure, and, more importantly, for their skills in natural medicines. Skills that they inherited from Africa. These girls knew the plants that grew in the jungle regions of New Orleans — how to identify them and use them to heal the elderly bodies of their customers.

For me, the most intriguing part is the music. It's said that that's where jazz got its start. Jelly Roll Morton brought ragtime music to these houses. Ragtime suited the joy, the merriment that was going on there. Later on, Morton claimed to be the inventor of jazz.

When I visited the alleged House of the Rising Sun, there were 12 nuns there, in their habits, and they asked me to sing the song, which I did, a cappella. After that, they said they would pray for my mortal soul — an experience I'll never forget.

It’s been a big year for Lead Belly fans. Smithsonian released an unheard track, “Queen Mary,” and an extensive box set. The Lead Belly Fests have been traveling the world. He seems as important now as when he was still alive. What do you think it is about Lead Belly’s music that still resonates so strongly?

Lead Belly didn't just sing the blues. He wrote and recorded songs that can be heard today in modern popular culture. He was the first Black folk singer who actually turned the essence of blues into commercial songs, which were recorded by other people, such as "Goodnight Irene." Lead Belly was an artist of incredible depth. A totally unique character. He was a convicted murderer. Through his music, he was able to free himself. He did not do only one type of music and, in fact, did not wish to be known as a blues singer. He sang about the hardships of life and he sang songs for children, influencing everybody from Woody Guthrie on. His importance will always be felt and his music will always resonate for anyone who experiences real human emotions.

Lead Belly’s song “Bourgeois Blues” is one of my favorites. It deals heavily with poverty and race, and it seems particularly relevant today in the U.S. with the decline of the middle class and the Black Lives Matter movement. What are your views on “Bourgeois Blues” and Lead Belly’s more topical material? Would you ever perform it? If so, would you keep it in first person or switch it to third?

I have not yet fully absorbed “Bourgeois Blues,” but Lead Belly influenced everybody to sing topical songs. His words are as powerful as ever — and just as relevant. That's because he sang about real life. Songs like that are needed now as much as they ever were. Nearly all of his songs dealt with poverty and race. In London, at Royal Albert Hall, I performed "In the Pines," and it was only after several performances that I began to see the meaning of the song in a different light — with "In the Pines" as a modern tale of love gone wrong, something like a domestic dispute.

Photo credit: Marianna Burdon