Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Collection is a print/audio recording documentary of the life and music of a musician who has been an inspiration both to folk singers and folklorists. Lead Belly was a performer who picked up songs seemingly everywhere he went. He sang songs that kids in his home state of Louisiana would sing at play. He learned songs from workers picking cotton, and from prison work gangs during the stretches he served in prison. He sang blues, and undoubtedly learned them from Blind Lemon Jefferson, for whom Lead Belly served as a lead man for a time. He played for dancing, sang pop songs, and he composed songs, sometimes referencing the struggles against Jim Crow and Adolph Hitler.
Those who knew Lead Belly were awed by his abilities singing and playing, and also by his physical strength. They were also struck by his commitment to playing and singing his songs before varied types of audiences. There is a section on pages 118-119 written by a living relative, Queen “Tiny” Robinson, that tells about Lead Belly’s deep feelings for the songs he performed.
To his contemporaries, Lead Belly represented an elevated artistic stature. Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection follows through with a final product that matches Lead Belly’s stature. It contains 108 songs on five CDs that slip into sturdy pages. The accompanying essays are printed on glossy paper and bound with the pages that hold the CDs in hardcover. The entire collection is obviously made to last, sitting on a shelf as a handy reference and keepsake.
To the folklorist, the accompanying essays that place the music in context in large part account for the importance of Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection. The article, “Lead Belly: A Man of Contradictions and Complexity,” is presented as an introduction, but it seems more like an essay in its own right. In it, producer Robert Santelli reminisces about discovering Lead Belly as a teenager, and recounts being scared to bring home the collection of 78 rpm records called Negro Sinful Songs because his policeman father might not like it. Santelli obviously thought that Lead Belly demanded attention and documents how over the years since Lead Belly’s death in 1948, many performers in many fields of music have recorded his songs, demonstrating that they thought so too. Santelli also recounts the irony of Lead Belly's importance to folklorists and other folk music supporters, and to artists such as Woody Guthrie, while African American people often did not care about Lead Belly’s repertoire because it seemed to represent the South they detested.
The second essay, “The Life and Legacy of Lead Belly,” is contributed by the “writer” of the project, Jeff Place of the Ralph Rinzler folklife archives of the Smithsonian Institution. In the 30+ pages of the essay, Place tells how Lead Belly was influenced by family members to take up music. When he was old enough to make his own way, after days spent in sharecropping, Lead Belly played for dances, and in bars, gambling places, and whore houses. Fannin Street in Shreveport, Louisiana, was a source of endless fascination for Lead Belly. Sitting close to pianists in Fannin Street places, Lead Belly learned to love the parts played by pianists’ left hands. Later, he adopted the 12-string guitar, an instrument which Lead Belly used to produce rich-sounding bass lines.
However, in the post-slavery era of the late-nineteenth into the twentieth century, when blacks were losing gains that had been made in the years following emancipation, it was easy for an African American man to get into trouble. Place tells of Lead Belly’s murder convictions and also about how the legal system might have handled Lead Belly’s cases differently in different eras.
The folk song collector, John Lomax, documented Lead Belly in prison. After Lead Belly was released from prison, Lomax hired Lead Belly as a driver. He also set up Lead Belly performances. The introduction tells how questions over the financial arrangement between the two men eventually led to their separation. Lead Belly also did not care for being promoted as a brute or as a curiosity because of his murder convictions. However, Lomax and Lead Belly were together long enough for Lead Belly to get connected to the folk song establishment on the East Coast. Through this fragile folk infrastructure, Lead Belly secured performances and recording opportunities. While these did not add up to what anyone would consider a decent living, notice by influential members of the folk music infrastructure caused the name Lead Belly to stick in the minds of music listeners, musicians, folklorists, and others who cared about traditional music.
The background to Lead Belly and his music is presented in a style that both scholars and folk music enthusiasts will enjoy. Santelli, when working with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had an opportunity to visit with Queen “Tiny” Robinson, a niece of Lead Belly. Ms. Robinson possessed a collection of “history relics” related to Lead Belly, including his Stella 12-string guitar. It was she who contributed Lead Belly-related items to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and informed Santelli that the family always considered Lead Belly as two words. That is how the name appears throughout the work. Part of the exchange, too, was that Santelli promised to tell Lead Belly’s story at the museum in terms of his music and not his sometimes-troubled personal life. This is a position that the Collection maintains. The section with Ms. Robinson provides a family context for Lead Belly.
The recordings are accompanied by over 130 pages of text and graphics. Among the graphics are many photographic images of Lead Belly and other folk music figures; handwritten and typewritten notes by Lead Belly, other singers and record company figures; pictures of tickets to Lead Belly concerts, concert posters; historic record jackets, and other memorabilia. It is all beautifully laid out.
Some recording and essay products present a curated sequence of songs. That does not appear to be true in the case of Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection. On page 43, Jeff Place tells us that the collection “is an overview of Lead Belly’s all too brief 15-year recording career.” He then tells us that the work surveys 200 years of American popular song, with Lead Belly’s unique spins, and invites those who enjoy the anthology to investigate more of the music. Then come the recordings.
Some documentary recordings are set up so that each piece presented represents an aspect of whatever is being documented. This approach may help you if you are using a collection to help create lesson plans. On the other hand, you can also think that this type of organization might yield a simplistic or even a shallow level of insight into the subject of the project. Regardless of any debate over the best way to connect songs with what they represent, the writing herein contains many references to specific songs, and the notes to the songs contain plenty of information. It will not require a great deal of effort to connect writings with recordings to create narrative presentations.
The first three of the five discs are culled from the many Lead Belly recordings released to the public over time. The majority of the recordings on these discs feature Lead Belly singing and playing the guitar. Other artists, such as Sonny Terry and Cisco Houston, to name a few, accompany Lead Belly on some tracks. A few selections feature the Oleander gospel quartet with Lead Belly. There are a few examples of Lead Belly playing the accordion. Selections on the fourth CD were taken from folk music programming originally heard over WNYC in New York City, many of which were created by Henrietta Yurchenco. Henrietta taught about folk music at City College of New York, and served as a link between the New York folk music scene in the era of Lead Belly and the students of the 1960s and beyond. The fifth CD in the collection is devoted to songs originally recorded on Lead Belly’s Last Sessions, originally issued on a series of Folkways LPs. Many Lead Belly connoisseurs regard the Last Sessions recordings as the finest in the entire Lead Belly catalog. The recordings were made on a wire recorder, the invention that predated magnetic tape, about a year before Lead Belly’s death. The sessions took place in a living room with some of Lead Belly’s close friends in attendance. The crowd encourages Lead Belly, and he gives inspired performances. It’s a fitting conclusion to the audio portion of the project.
Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Collection is a well-conceived and needed collection. It brings a group of important recordings together in a convenient package with writings and graphics that tell of the importance of Lead Belly and what he represents. The collection will help carry the word about Lead Belly into the future.
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[Review length: 1486 words • Review posted on January 11, 2017]