Personal life The only son of Sallie Brown and Wesley Ledbetter (she had an older son, and the couple adopted a daughter when Huddie was a toddler), Huddie Ledbetter was born on a
plantation near
Mooringsport, Louisiana. On his
World War II draft registration card in 1942, he gave his birthplace as "Freeport" (
Shreveport), Louisiana. There is uncertainty over his precise date and year of birth. The Lead Belly Foundation gives his birth date as January 20, 1889, his grave marker gives the year 1889, and his 1942 draft registration card states January 23, 1889. The
1900 United States census lists "Hudy Ledbetter" as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the
1910 and
1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888. The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with information supplied by wife Martha. These records were made by census takers, and ages and dates were defined in terms of the census date. The books
Blues: A Regional Experience by Eagle and LeBlanc and
Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians by Tomko give January 23, 1888, while the
Encyclopedia of the Blues gives January 20, 1888. His parents had
cohabited for several years. They married on February 26, 1888. When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in
Bowie County, Texas, where they eventually became landowners. By the 1910 census of
Harrison County, Texas, "Hudy Ledbetter" was living next door to his parents in a separate household with his first wife, Aletha "Lethe" Henderson. Aletha is recorded as age 19 and married one year. Others say she was 15 when they married in 1908. Ledbetter received his first instrument in Texas, an
accordion, from his uncle Terrell. Ledbetter and his wife had at least two children when they left for the Dallas/Fort Worth area, working as farm laborers while Ledbetter, in his early twenties, sought opportunities as a musician.
Music career By 1903, Huddie was already a "musicianer", a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed to
Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, a notorious
red-light district. He began to develop his own style of music after exposure to the various musical influences on Shreveport's Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms. This area is now referred to as Ledbetter Heights. In 1915, Ledbetter briefly served on a Texas chain gang, from which he escaped. In 1918, under the name of Walter Boyd, he was convicted of murder in Texas and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After writing a song pleading for clemency, Ledbetter was pardoned by Governor
Pat Morris Neff in 1925. In 1930, he was arrested, convicted of attempted murder, and sentenced to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as the
Angola Penitentiary, where he was "discovered" in a 1933 visit by
folklorists
John Lomax and his teenaged son,
Alan Lomax. They were recording varieties of local music in the South as a project to preserve traditional music for the Library of Congress. This was one of numerous cultural projects during the Great Depression. Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him in 1933 on portable
aluminum disc recording equipment for the
Library of Congress project. They returned with new and better equipment in July 1934, recording numerous songs. While in prison, Ledbetter may have first heard the traditional prison song "
Midnight Special"; his versions became famous. On August 1, Ledbetter was released after having served nearly all of his minimum sentence. The Lomaxes had taken a record and a petition seeking his release to Louisiana Governor
Oscar K. Allen at Ledbetter's request, but there is no evidence that this had any effect on his release. In fact, a prison official later wrote to John Lomax denying that Ledbetter's singing had anything to do with his release from prison. (State prison records confirm he was eligible for this due to good behavior.) But, both Ledbetter and the Lomaxes promoted the idea that Ledbetter had yet again sung his way to freedom. With the
Great Depression ongoing and Alan Lomax ill According to the authors, the work was not an "accurate biography" but a "loosely woven texture of unreconstructed stories." In January 1936, Ledbetter returned to New York on his own, without John Lomax, in an attempted comeback. He performed twice a day at Harlem's
Apollo Theater during the Easter season. He developed a live dramatic recreation of the
March of Time newsreel (itself a recreation), which was about his prison encounter with John Lomax, when he was still wearing uniform stripes. By this time, he was no longer associated with Lomax. in Washington, D.C. between 1938 and 1948
Life magazine ran a three-page article titled "Lead Belly: Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel" in its issue of April 19, 1937. It included a full-page, color (rare in those days) picture of him sitting on grain sacks playing his guitar and singing. Also included was a striking photograph of his wife Martha Promise (identified in the article as his manager). Other photos showed Ledbetter's hands playing the guitar (with the caption "these hands once killed a man"), Texas Governor
Pat M. Neff, and the "ramshackle" Texas State Penitentiary. The article attributes both of his pardons to his singing his petitions to the governors, who were so moved that they pardoned him. The article closed by saying that Lead Belly "may well be on the brink of a new and prosperous period." In 1941, Ledbetter was introduced to
Moses "Moe" Asch by mutual friends. Asch owned a recording studio and small record label, which mainly released folk records for the local New York City market. He later founded
Folkways Records. Between 1941 and 1944, Ledbetter released three albums under the Asch Recordings label. In 1944, he went to California, where he recorded strong sessions for
Capitol Records. He lodged with a studio guitar player on Merrywood Drive in Laurel Canyon. Later he returned to New York City. In 1949, Lead Belly had a regular radio show,
Folk Songs of America, broadcast on station WNYC in New York, on
Henrietta Yurchenco's show on Sunday nights. Later in the year, he began his first European tour with a trip to France, but fell ill before its completion and was diagnosed with
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or
Lou Gehrig's disease (a motor neuron disease). In January 1918, he was imprisoned at the Imperial Farm (
Central Unit) in
Sugar Land, Texas, after being convicted of killing a relative, Will Stafford. In 1925, he was pardoned and released after writing a song to Texas Governor
Pat Morris Neff seeking his freedom, having served the minimum seven years of a 7-to-35-year sentence. He was credited with good behavior, which included entertaining the guards and fellow prisoners. He also appealed for mercy to Neff's known religious beliefs. It was a testament to his persuasive powers, as Neff had run for governor on a pledge not to issue pardons (most Southern judicial systems had no provision for approving parole from prison). After meeting Ledbetter in 1924, Neff returned to the prison several times after he was incarcerated again. He brought guests to the prison on Sunday picnics to hear Ledbetter perform. Another theory is that the name refers to his ability to drink
moonshine, the homemade liquor that Southern farmers, black and white, made to supplement their incomes. Blues singer
Big Bill Broonzy thought it came from a supposed tendency to lie about as if "with a stomach weighted down by lead" in the shade when the chain gang was supposed to be working. == Technique ==