Twelve Strings and the Truth

“Lead Belly sang the blues wonderfully, but he was much bigger than that. He encompassed the whole black era, from square dance calls to the blues of the 30’s and 40’s” -Alan Lomax


Mozart began playing music at age four. Mozart--at least in prodigy status--has nothing on Huddie Ledbetter.


We get it. You're a kid. Playing the Piano. Real tight.

Huddie Ledbetter was born on January 20, 1889 in Mooringsport Louisiana. You probably don’t know him by that name though. You probably know him as Lead Belly--The King of the Twelve String Guitar.

He began playing music when he was only two years old--making him just slightly more prodigious than our dear Wolfgang.

Lead Belly quit school after the 8th grade and turned instead to the juke joints for his education. There he was a seasoned performer by the ripe old age of 14.

He mastered the guitar first with a little help from his uncle, but he didn’t stop there. He also learned the accordion, mandolin and piano--mastering them each in turn. And then, as if fated, he discovered his true love. Her name was “Stella” and she was a voluptuous twelve-stringed beauty who would stay with him for the rest of his career.

STELLLAAAAAA!


As a young man, Lead Belly traveled around the south picking cotton and playing music as he went. In 1918, he fought and killed a man in Dallas, landing him in prison for a would-be 25 year sentence. In 1925, he wrote a song asking the governor for a pardon. It was a ballsy move and, like most ballsy moves, it worked. Lead Belly was set free.

But before long he was at is again. The next altercation didn’t end with a death, but it did end with a sentence on Angola Farm prison. And it was there that he met the Lomax brothers.

They recognized greatness in him immediately and after his work term he followed them north and onward toward critical acclaim. He relocated to New York and became a regular on the folk circuit--frequently sharing the stage with the great Woody Guthrie--which is perhaps why it’s so easy to hear the folk influence in Lead Belly’s blues.

Lead Belly died in 1949 from Lou Gehrig’s disease but not before cataloguing over 500 songs--a prolific output.

Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain, Keith Richards, Robert Plant--they all looked up to Lead Belly. Van Morrison said, “he wasn’t an influence. He was the influence.” As Odetta put it, “Lead Belly’s music still strikes a chord today, because it addresses our human condition.”

That it does, and as always, he and Stella can prove it better than I can:



And Kurt doesn’t do too bad himself: