Lead Belly - The Smithsonian Folkways Collection [5 CD, 2015/FLAC]

 

Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, the first career-spanning box set dedicated to the American music icon, is a 5 CD, 140-page, large-format book featuring 5 hours of music with 16 unreleased tracks.

A companion to 2012 s GRAMMY-winning Woody at 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection, Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection chronicles the recordings of Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter (c. 1888¬ 1949) in 108 tracks over five discs, including Lead Belly s beloved classics "The Midnight Special, " "Goodnight Irene, " and "Black Girl (Where Did You Sleep Last Night) " among many others. The collection also boasts 16 previously unreleased recordings, including four never-before-available original songs, and radio programs Lead Belly made for WNYC which can be heard for the first time since airing in 1941.

The set also features many rare photos, among them an intimate portrait taken shortly before his untimely death from ALS (Lou Gehrig s Disease) in 1949. It is one of the few known color photographs of the legend.

 

Leadbelly - Leadbelly's Last Sessions (4 CD, 1994/FLAC)

 Recorded between September and November, 1948. Originally released on Folkways (241/2941, 242/2942). Includes liner notes by Frederic Ramsey, Jr. Moses Asch, Sean Killeen, Anthony Seeger, Jeff Place and Matt Walters.

Legend has it that when Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter was shown one of the first commercially available tape recorders--as opposed to the then-standard disc-cutting machines--in the fall of 1948, he immediately sat down in front of it for a marathon impromptu recording session. This fact comes across on the first of these discs taken from those tapes: most of its 35 tracks are traditional blues hollers without even his trademark 12-string guitar for accompaniment.

The other three discs are jam-packed with songs, fragments, and often fascinating conversations. Rather than edit the material--which the listener can do quite nicely with a programmable CD player and blank cassettes--the archivists at Smithsonian/Folkways wisely chose to release these four hours of material exactly as it was recorded. As a result, the sound quality is occasionally a bit dodgy, but the historical import and musical quality of these recordings are undeniable. 

 

Leadbelly - The Remaining Library Of Congress Recordings (5 CD, 1997/FLAC)

 

The recordings on this Leadbelly CD were originally made for the Library of Congress from July 1934 to March 1935, under the supervision of John and Alan Lomax. These sessions took place at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola while Leadbelly was still a prisoner, and also at Little Rock, Pine Bluff State Farm, Gould, Shreveport, Bellwood Prison Camp, Wilton and New York City.

The tracks that Leadbelly recorded in these sessions include many songs that he would play throughout his career. They include 2 versions of Irene and the cocaine peddler song Take A Whiff On Me. The track Boll Weavil documents the story of the insect which ravaged cotton crops in the southern states at the start of the 1900’s. Although it affected the black sharecroppers, it had an even greater impact on the prosperity of the white plantation owners. As Paul Oliver points out in “Songsters and Saints” (pp 250-251), it’s subversive nature (small, brown and inconspicuous, attacking the crop from within and virtually indestructible) gave it symbolic significance with Southern blacks (a compilation CD of including several recordings of Boll Weavil songs can be found on Document Records DOCD-5675). This Leadbelly CD also includes the track Matchbox Blues a song that Blind Lemon Jefferson, who Leadbelly dueted with on the streets of Dallas earlier on in his career, recorded for both Paramount and Okeh Records in 1927 (Documents DOCD-5017, DOCD-5018, DOCD-5019,  DOCD-5020).

The sound reproduction is, by today’s high fidelity-stereophonic standards, rather dim. A great many of these recordings were made in field settings on early, primitive portable disc-cutting equipment. This equipment along with various aluminium and acetate discs, though not of the highest quality in so far as sound is concerned, has served to preserve the many brilliant performances of Leadbelly. It is felt that Leadbelly never sounded as well anywhere else as he did when he was recording for the Library. He appears relaxed, strong, crisp and creative.

 

Leadbelly - The Library Of Congress Recordings (6 CD, 1991-1994/FLAC)

 These powerful performances date from 1939-43 when Ledbetter had moved to New York City after his years in prison. He was a fluid performer and his command of his trademark 12-string guitar is evident. Recorded by John and Alan Lomax, these sessions include "BollWeevil," "The Titanic," "Tight like That" and "Henry Ford Blues." 

 

Lead Belly - Lead Belly Legacy Vol. 1-3 (3 CD, 1996-1998/FLAC)

 

The bulk of the best performances by Leadbelly -- whose influence on the folk revival of the 1950s and '60s cannot be overstated -- were recorded during the '40s for Folkways Records founder Moses Asch. Inferior copies and re-recordings of these tunes have appeared over the years, but the original masters have sat in the vaults of Folkways. The three-volume Where Did You Sleep Last Night: Lead Belly Legacy collection shows what we've been missing: the compilers dug out the best available versions of Leadbelly's finest songs and carefully transferred them from the original acetate masters. As the liner notes promise, "these recordings can again be heard the way they sounded in the early 1940s, for in the original masters you can still hear the ringing of the guitar and thumping of the bass." This 34-song first volume is a must for anyone interested in the roots of American folk. It opens with "Irene," which (as "Goodnight Irene") became a national hit for the Weavers less than a year after Leadbelly died on welfare; it includes many more of his most-famous tunes, among them "Rock Island Line," "Cotton Fields," and "Good Morning Blues."

 

 

Lead Belly - Complete Recorded Works 1939-1949 (7 CD, 1994-1999/FLAC)

 Lead Belly, also spelled Leadbelly, byname of Huddie William Ledbetter, (born January 21, 1885?, Jeter Plantation, near Mooringsport, Louisiana, U.S.—died December 6, 1949, New York, New York), American folk-blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose ability to perform a vast repertoire of songs in a variety of styles, in conjunction with his notoriously violent life, made him a legend.