Bigotry in Bronxville. 1946.

     My area of expertise is: some knowledge of the region Leadbelly inhabited in his younger days, along with some people that Marsha and I have personally met and interviewed. Relatives and friends of Huddie Ledbetter who give a different perspective on his life. For instance, the idea that he was some sort of itinerant bluesman, a homeless wandering minstrel with a beaten-up old guitar [ghee-tar] is countered by local impressions that he was much more of a family man, a homebody and a community member.

     

     His community was the environs of Caddo Lake spanning the Louisiana-Texas state line. His family included Ledbetters, Pughs, Promises, and members of the Shiloh (La.) Baptist Church. His closest "village" was Leigh, Texas, which hardly exists any more, since the emigration of cotton farmers to the North, or to cities like Houston and Shreveport around the time of World War II. There was once a vibrant community covering parts of Caddo Parish [around Mooringsport] and Harrison County [Marshall.]

     But for much of my information I have to rely on written sources; like most historians I scour the sources, hoping to find interesting information that ties in with my own view of the subject. For the last few years of his life, Sean Killeen gathered lots of first hand knowledge and, apart from collecting it in his Lead Belly Letter, I'm not sure what he did with it. Here is the story of Leadbelly's visit to Sarah Lawrence College.

Part 1.

     Forty minutes by train from Manhattan's Penn Station is Bronxville and Sarah Lawrence College. In the summer of 1946 Lead Belly was invited to perform there in a special summer session program. He had been living and playing in New York City for about a decade with travels to Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Louisiana and  California. In fact he had recently returned from an extended stay on the West Coast. 

     In Washington he had run up against racial discrimination and immortalized the experiences in his song "Bourgeois Blues" with the lyric "Home of the Brave, Land of the Free/I don't want to be mistreated by no bourgeoisie." In Bronxville in 1946 Lead Belly ran into the same old thing. With WWII victoriously decided by the defeat of the fascists, Bronxville was still a bourgeois town.

     Lead Belly sang and played for a small group of students attending the summer session. Harold Solomon, director of Field Work at Sarah Lawrence and a native of Georgia introduced Lead Belly who performed in front of the Karl Roesch murals on the walls of the faculty dining room and lounge in Bates Hall. Joe Papaleo, a returning veteran, was a student in the audience and remembers that he had never "heard such a pure performance as if the music he sang was being created out of the person that he was." Lead Belly's music for Papaleo was a "creative construction of the man."

     "In his performance, Lead Belly's expression was both calm and alive. His face in repose seemed heavy like a statue, more stoneish than boneish. But as soon as he started talking to us, Lead Belly lit up, counting on his words and melody to do the major defining." For Papaleo at that summer concert in Bronxville, Lead Belly was most eloquent when speaking about his 12-string guitar and recalling before each of his tunes historical legends of bygone times.

     After the concert, Harold Solomon and a group of students took Lead Belly to a popular Bronxville gathering place called The Tap. The management refused to seat Lead Belly because he was black; another public place was tried but again the same refusal of service. The group walked to the Bronx River, and under the bridge on that hot summer night in 1946, Lead Belly sang a few more songs.

     In the early fall of 1946, Harold Taylor, President of Sarah Lawrence College (1945-59) was approached by the Student Council to take steps to redress the matter of racism and discrimination in Bronxville. A Committee was established which included campus and community representatives. Local ministers were invited to join the Committee's effort; both declined.

     The students on the Committee visited every food and drink place in Bronxville explaining why the College had created the Committee. Furthermore Bronxville hospitality proprietors were advised that New York State legislation forbade refusal of service.

Part 2.

     On February 4, 1947, a few months after the summer experience, Lead Belly again played at Sarah Lawrence at a Tuesday evening College Assembly. His fee was $33. As Arthur Edelman noted in his Feb. 12th, 1947 review in the student paper, The Campus, Lead Belly's "program was very well appreciated." The people who heard him realized that "his was the kind of music you don't always hear." Edie Boorstein and Lenore Fuerst applauded Lead Belly in a letter to the editor, saying he "has a richly varied stock of material" which he uses "freely and with originality." The "splendor" of Lead Belly's guitar tone was admired as well as his exciting "expedition into the origin of the blues." Most importantly Boorstein and Fuerst recognized that by bringing Lead Belly to campus "new areas of cultural understanding" had been opened, and more remained to be done.

     After the performance, two faculty members and a few student members of the Committee, entertained Lead Belly at a Bronxville restaurant. They were all seated, and served. Lead Belly took the forty minute train trip back to New York City. 

     As Arthur Edelman had said in his concert review: "Here was authenticity backed by a driving force so imbedded with song that people couldn't help moving along with him when he sang." Edelman continued, "We also felt that here is a Negro who tries to speak for his people, too; prefacing the 'Bourgeois Blues,' Lead Belly said, 'This is a request, and a request is best' . . . and then the song spoke for itself."

     Lead Belly was like an oral history; almost everything he said and sang was a tale of his journey, remembered Joe Papaleo. The way he talked "showed he had a strong awareness of his important place in music (sometimes referring to himself in the third person, a mark of people who see themselves in history already.)"

     For Lead Belly at Sarah Lawrence College, many, many years ago, he sang his song, which continues today, without end. He was consistent in his principles; committed to his craft; and unswerving in his opposition to unfair practices. Lead Belly demonstrated in Bronxville that belief in oneself and in the continuing betterment of the human condition was the message he brought to Sarah Lawrence, and the mission of his life.

      Written by Sean Killeen after speaking with WWII veteran Joe Papaleo in 1992. Bronxville remains one of the wealthiest enclaves in the USA. I guess you might expect some bigotry. These people have a lot to lose. 

     

       

Leadbelly's Horse

Huddie’s "Booker"

"Did I know Huddie Leadbetter? He was my next door neighbor."








[This article, written in 1992 by Marsha Brown, was originally published in the Leadbelly Letter, Sean Killeen's wonderful publication which ran from 1990 to 1996.]

I love horses. I have always loved horses and my strongest memory of growing up in upstate New York was wanting to have my very own horse, but that didn’t happen until years later, after moving to Shreveport, Louisiana. “Mack’s Pride” was his name, and he was big and beautiful: all black, except for a white blaze face and four white stockinged feet. I fondly recalled Mack when I heard a description of Huddie Ledbetter’s favorite horse, “Booker.”
We heard about Booker, my husband and I, from one of the Ledbetters’ Texas neighbors. We were driving down a dirt road looking for Swanson’s Landing, the supposed site of an East Texas riverboat disaster in the late 1800’s when we stopped by a small wooden house to ask directions. Preston Brown, a sprightly 93-year-old with a twinkling eye and a friendly manner, told us which way to go. For some reason it popped into my mind to ask him if he knew of Huddie Ledbetter.
“Knew him? He was my next door neighbor!” said Preston. “We used to draw water out of the same spring.”
Needless to say, we were thrilled at this chance meeting with someone who actually knew Huddie and we stayed for a long chat. We have been invited back several times and this has led to a warm acquaintanceship with Preston and his wife Mary Jenkins Brown. She is in her eighties but prefers to be thought of as a spring chicken of perhaps seventy. That’s the way she looks and acts, and she has a delightful sense of humor.
Preston was the baby of the Brown family. He was born in 1897, eight years after Huddie, and he had several older sisters including Matilda, Clara and Cora Brown.
“Huddie went with Cora,” says Preston, thinking of a simpler, more innocent time. “He courted her. He used to come up here in the summertime, sat there and played guitar, and us kids, we’d sit out there on the front porch.” His face breaks into a smile here. We weren’t allowed into the room, you know, we’d be outdoors, dancing, and they’d be in the house.” He and Mary both laugh and we laugh with them.
But the horse? Huddie’s horse?
“He was black as a crow,” Preston recalls. “He had a blaze and four white feet and his name was ol’ Booker. I used to ride behind Huddie, you know, on him. Used to go down to help him wash in that spring down there that runs right through their place. Used to take rags, take ol’ Booker down there, lather him all over, wash him, you know, and we’d have brushes. He’d look so pretty. He had a curly mane, curly tail. He was pretty.”
We all compared Huddie’s grooming and pride in Booker at that time to a teenager today, polishing the chrome on his first Ford.
Preston helped with Booker in other ways, too. When Huddie had a trip to take on the train, to play a house dance or just visit Dallas, Jefferson or Shreveport, he’d come and ask Preston’s father if he could take the youngster along to the depot. Many times they rode together to the station in Leigh, Texas, about two miles away. Huddie caught the train and Preston brought back the horse. He took care of Booker until Huddie returned and then he’d ride to Leigh to meet the train.
“He’d be gone two or three days, “ said Preston. “That was fun for me ‘cause I liked that horse. Liked to ride that horse.”
Preston and Mary still have horses today, two of them grazing next to their small house. They are among the few remaining inhabitants of what was once a thriving African-American farming community on Caddo Lake. They continued farming until retirement and witnessed the many changes in the area. In the 1920’s, people started working in the nearby oilfields, or going off to Dallas and Houston. In the early ‘40’s an ammunition plant was built in nearby Karnack, luring more workers from the land. Huddie Ledbetter left the farm in 1915, and he left the area in 1930 and eventually moved to New York. But he’s still remembered fondly in the beautiful countryside of North Louisiana and East Texas as the favorite local musician. And ol’ Booker is still remembered, too.

Leadbelly & Babyface & Little David Alexander

Lead Belly and Baby Face 

Lead Belly: King of the Twelve String Guitar Players of the World

[This article, written by me (Monty Brown), was originally published in the Fall 1996 issue of Sean Killeen’s Lead Belly Letter. It was also published on this blog on 14th October, 2007. Sean Kileen was an ardent fan of Lead Belly and his magazine, (which also can be seen elsewhere on this blog) lived from 1990 to 1996, and reflected his passion. Sean, who hailed from Ithaca, New York, eventually gave up publishing the Letter, partly because there was not a large circulation, but mostly because he was battling for his life. He eventually lost that battle, but his legacy lives on with the back issues of his publication.]

The death of Jesse “Baby Face” Thomas (1911-1995) was reported in the Lead Belly Letter (5,3:2), appropriately, I thought, because of the shared musical heritage of the two men. Lead Belly and Baby Face were two very different characters whose lives, like their nicknames, were often poles apart. The last time their names appeared in such close proximity was in the pages of England’s Melody Maker (12/31/49). There it was reported that Jesse had been “assistant vocalist” to Troy Ferguson in Atlanta in 1929. The death of Lead Belly — Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) — was reported in the adjacent column.
I was a friend and a fan of Jesse’s and we spoke many times during the last decade of his very productive life. He was a small, almost frail man, the twelfth of thirteen children born to a sharecropper family in Logansport, Louisiana, thirty miles south of Shreveport. In contrast, Huddie Ledbetter was hefty and muscular, the only child of Wes and Sallie Ledbetter of Mooringsport, Louisiana, twenty miles north of Shreveport.
Huddie played the raucous music of the country house dances, pounding out basic, compelling rhythms, singing, dancing and generally overwhelming his audiences with the power of a one-man minstrel show. He charmed Governor Neff of Texas into a pardon in 1925. He could always charm a gang of children with whimsical words and rhymes recalled from his own childhood. Several people remembered him as being at least six feet tall, though he was only five-seven. Neff was alone in remembering him as a banjo picker; others recalled his ability on the mandolin and church organ. There are recordings of him playing the piano and Cajun accordion in addition to his trademark twelve-string guitar. It’s easy to see how he became a legend in his own time.
Jesse’s instrument was the six-string guitar. He was constantly refining his technique, striving to play in the more sophisticated style of the jazz-oriented musicians of his prime. Though he usually recorded solo, in live performance he was comfortable in the confines of a well-tempered combo. He was an early exponent of the electric guitar and later in life played a double-neck guitar/bass. During his lifetime, Jesse never ceased to be a student of music and the craft of song writing.

Baby Face at 80

Jesse Thomas was a naive fifteen-year-old when, in 1926, he arrived in Shreveport to stay with relatives. He was straight off the family farm. At the same time, Huddie was a bruised and battered thirty-seven, recently released — pardoned — after eight hard years on a Texas prison farm. Like Huddie, Jesse was raised with the guitar. Unlike Huddie, he was surrounded by older siblings who played. His father, Joel, played the fiddle at local house dances. One brother, Willard, was about to land a recording contract with Paramount records under the name Ramblin’ Thomas.
But at fifteen, Jesse became fascinated with the piano, and this is where his life brushed up against the life of Lead Belly. At the time of his arrival in Shreveport, he couldn’t get enough of the piano. He went to movies at the palatial Strand and the other big downtown theaters primarily to hear the players who accompanied the silent pictures.
Did he have any favorite piano players?
“Yeah, there was a guy here named Dave Alexander,” said Jesse in a 1991 interview at his Abbie Street house in Shreveport. “He was good and I wanted to play like him. But I never did play piano like I would’ve like to played, ‘cause I didn’t have a piano to practice on.”
The name of this almost-forgotten piano man reverberated in my mind. Was this “Little” David Alexander who turned up in some lists of old blues recordings? Maybe. It certainly wasn’t the Dave Alexander who recorded for Arhoolie — too young. But there, in an old interview, was Huddie Ledbetter telling about the influence of a piano player named Dave Alexander. Huddie was sure he had incorporated some of Dave’s bass runs into his guitar style, but he couldn’t remember was it Houston or Shreveport? 1906 or 1926?
“I would see (Dave) playing all the time,” said Jessie, who also imitated those piano sounds on his guitar. “He would play in homes where people had pianos. He would visit different places where a piano was. That’s where I heard him playing. Mostly in homes.”
So, he played for house dances — that sort of thing?
“Yeah. And minstrel shows, places like that.”
Did you go to minstrel shows then?
“Oh, yes, it cost ten and fifteen cents and like that to see a good show. The minstrel show would be in a tent going from town to town, traveling. But they’d often pick up a local musician to play piano or maybe some other instruments for them. I played one time in a little minstrel show like that.”
How old was Dave Alexander then?
“Oh, he seemed to be in his twenties. He was a young man in his twenties, I was fifteen.”
This had to be around the same time Huddie had seen him!
Jesse went on, “Dave was pretty popular around here with people at that time. And at that same time those guitar players like Ed Shafers and (Oscar) Woods, they were here but I never did meet them. I’d just hear a lot about them. Never ran across them. And I don’t know where Ledbetter was at that time, either. He probably was in and out of here I guess.”
Jesse never heard Huddie play — he would have remembered — but it’s entirely possible that the two were in the same shotgun house together, enjoying the magic of Dave Alexander. From 1925 to 1930, Huddie was indeed in and out of Shreveport, but not well-known there. He was based some twenty miles north, living in the Caddo Lake area of his youth, working for an oil company and in great demand at Saturday night suppers.
“He was the one they used to follow,” said Liz Choyce, who was in her teens at the time, “Mister Huddie.”
When you say “they used to follow,” you mean his guitar playing?
“People, when they heard tell he was playing somewhere,” she said emphatically, “they would always go.”
“He’d have a crowd. Have a big crowd,” added her husband Leonard. “Awful good music player. When you say you’re going to have a dance there, you’re going to have Ledbetter . . .”
“. . .they’d say ‘Who?’,” Liz cut in, “and you’d say, ‘Huddie.’ Boy! you’d hear them say they were going. Mister Huddie — yes, I knowed him good.”
While Huddie was confining himself to the familiar Texas-Louisiana border country north of Shreveport, young Jesse was striving to get onto record. In Fort Worth he roomed with his big brother Willard. In Dallas he saw successful performers like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson. They taught him you could make money with the guitar, so he dropped his dream of being a pianist. Single-mindedly he hitchhiked from place to place — Shreveport to Fort Worth to Houston to San Antonio to Dallas — in pursuit of the portable recording studios. In small towns along the way he bartered music for lodging and a few dollars. Often he took temporary work in the cotton fields. Eventually, persistence paid off: Victor Records sent him a train ticket and he rode from Oklahoma City to Dallas to record four of his own tunes, including Blue Goose Blues.
“Blue Goose?” Jesse smiled a knowing smile. “Oh that’s a little place here in Shreveport, a little area they used to call the Blue Goose. You remember where the Union railway station used to be? Well that was just the name of that area. Like Mooretown, South Highland, Blue Goose. So I just thought of that ‘cause that’s where I stayed when I first came here, and I just — made up some words, put it on record.”
Blue Goose is like Silver City, I thought, the place that Huddie sang about traveling to with Blind Lemon in Dallas back before the Great War. I wondered why Huddie couldn’t have got himself on record just like Jesse did. Here was this green youngster, fresh off the farm and new to the business, getting onto Victor Records at age eighteen. Why not Huddie? The astonishing success of Blind Lemon during the latter part of the 1920’s had encouraged the record companies to scour the Southland for talent. And Huddie certainly had the talent. Plus, he was an old friend of Blind Lemon’s, wasn’t he? Led him around and played duets with him?
Oscar Woods and Ed Shafers got themselves recorded several times during the late ‘20’s and early ‘30’s. They even broke through the color bar on one occasion by providing backup for the white country-bluesman and future Louisiana governor, Jimmie Davis. Ramblin’ Thomas made quite a hit on Paramount and would probably have done much better had he not been addicted to the bottle. None of these performers was superior to Huddie, yet Huddie remained undocumented during this first Golden Age of blues recording. Why?
It’s true he had himself a steady job and maybe couldn’t get away to Dallas, San Antonio or Memphis for a few days, but there was even one recording session in Shreveport in 1928, and there’s no evidence that Huddie tried out for it.
Could it be that he had no wish to leave his safe and friendly environment? He’d been off in the world before and it had brought him much pain. The eight years in a Texas penitentiary, the subsequent estrangement of his first wife, the heartbreaking death of his father, and his commitment to his aging mother, all of these combined may have led him to re-examine his life. He was approaching middle age, perhaps thinking it was time to settle down. Whatever the reasons, Huddie never recorded during the 1920’s when all around him, artists of lesser talent were busy making names for themselves.
This is not to say that Jesse Thomas was a lesser talent. Listen to any of the spate of sides that he recorded in Los Angeles during the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s and you’ll be delighted with his drive and originality. But Jesse would be the first to admit that he didn’t possess anything like the charisma of Lead Belly. He was Baby Face, a cute little guy who charmed his early audiences with his ingenuousness. He was also known as “Careless Love,” not because of any tendency to womanize, but because he did such an appealing rendition of Lonnie Johnson’s hit recording of that name.
After he told me about Blue Goose, Jesse picked up his guitar and played Blue Goose Blues instrumentally. Even though his hands were often cramped by arthritis in his last five years, he still played with fluidity and distinctness. He finished with a flourish and a laugh.
“Got to get the words down. The music still sounds alright.”
“That’s a good song,” I said.
“Think so?” he laughed. "You know, I didn’t even know what I was talking about at that time. I think I saw some old man and he was real good on the guitar, on the chords. He didn’t sing that good, just play something like that, and I copied some of that and put the words to it. And Blind Blake used to have something kinda in that style. He would play in that style and I thought he was a real good guitar player. Nice chords. Played finger style.”
Jesse picked his guitar a little more and ended by singing the line, “I’m going down to old Blue Goose, got no time to lose.”
That’s it, I thought. Young Baby Face, with the impatience of youth, figured he had no time to lose, so he pursued the recording companies relentlessly. Lead Belly, on the other hand, was patiently biding his time. Which finally arrived.
In 1935, after a further five years of penitentiary time, Lead Belly was given his chance, and his musical career began in earnest. He recorded abundantly through 1948, which was the year Jesse Thomas took up his recording career again, after a nineteen year hiatus. For most of the years Huddie lived in New York, Jesse lived in California. They were both on the West Coast for one of those years, and both of them tried and failed to get into the movies.
Lead Belly returned home to Louisiana in 1949. He was in a coffin. Jesse returned in 1957 and kept on playing for thirty-eight more years. For many of those years he performed with a blind piano player named Peaches, led him around, drove him to and from the gigs. Like Huddie with Blind Lemon. The duo “Jesse and Peaches” was very popular in the Shreveport area. I suspect that Peaches played piano the way Jesse once wished he could.
Lead Belly and Baby Face — poles apart in many ways, yet in some ways quite close. Most of Huddie’s success has been posthumous. Jesse’s success may be bounded by his lifetime. But for those of us who knew him, like for those who knew Huddie, that will be quite sufficient.

Posted 14th October 2007 by Monty Brown

  

Boll Weevil, Boll Weevil

The Boll Weevil in life and song.

All was not totally sunny in the Cotton Kingdom in those days, as the century drew to a close. The dark cloud on the horizon was a little bug called the Mexican boll weevil.

Shortly after the turn of the century, the boll weevil arrived to wreak havoc on the cotton crops. In 1904 the Texas legislature offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could solve the boll weevil problem which was costing cotton farmers $50 million in that year alone. Mexican boll weevils, by far the most destructive insects to attack cotton plants in the United States, were first found north of the Rio Grande around Brownsville, Texas, in 1892. Seemingly unstoppable, they kept inching northwards. They made it as far as Caddo Lake in 1904 and kept spreading north and east. They reached the Atlantic coast (Georgia, the Carolinas) by the 1920s.


Many variations of boll weevil ballads spread throughout the cotton kingdom, but most of them featured the farmer being tormented by a cartoonish weevil. In legend and song, the farmer was entirely at the mercy of this pest; his frustration comes out in the song of the charming little bug who's "just looking for a home:"     

Some Typical lyrics:

The boll weevil is a little bug, come from Mexico, they say,
He come to try this Texas soil, thought he'd better stay.

Farmer took the boll weevil, he put him in the ice
Weevil said to the farmer "It's mighty cool and nice."

Farmer took the boll weevil, buried him in hot sand -
Weevil said to the farmer, "I'll stand it like a man."

Weevil said to the farmer, "You'd better leave me alone, 
I ate up all your cotton, now I'm starting on your corn."

Chapter 10: California, 1944-1946

"We're in the same boat, brother."

OSCAR BRAND: "In [December] 1945, just when the WNYC show [FolkSong Festival] was inaugurated, Margot Mayo, whose American Square Dance Group was also promulgating the dance-song gospel, decided to have a "home-from-the-war" party. Leadbelly, Seeger, [Richard] Dyer-Bennett, [John-Jacob] Niles, Guthrie, and many others performed. After the program, Pete Seeger came over to see me and asked if I would help him start a folk song magazine. We made immediate plans for a mimeographed publication, using the paraphernalia I had bought in Army days when I was editing a newspaper for psychiatric patients."

Oscar Brand was a Canadian folk singer and storyteller who emceed the Folk Song Festival on WNYC (New York) radio from 1945 until he died in 2016 at 95 years of age. However, and this is the danger of memory, he was wrong about Leadbelly being at the "home-from-the-war party." Huddie was in California.

During much of the war Huddie was busy in New York but he wasn't making much money. He was often employed as a janitor, while Martha worked as a hotel maid. The Upper East Siders who appreciated his playing for their children didn't provide him a living. Moses Asch never did make much money on his record company; his mission was to keep his immense catalog of obscure recordings in print. Huddie's jam sessions with his friends were fun and fulfilling, but not financially rewarding. The municipal radio station WNYC didn't pay performers, and the Village Vanguard was a prestigious gig; but also, low paid. It was no surprise that Huddie decided, in 1944, to try his luck in Hollywood.

Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, the NYU professor, hosted a farewell party for Huddie on May 5th, 1944; he didn't leave New York right away. During the month of June one report puts him playing a high school prom at the fashionable Essex House on Central Park South.

At some point, though, he boarded a train for the Coast; he wrote home from L.A., and in July he had a gig. According to the People's World, "he is in Hollywood, where, appropriately enough, he will spend the summer working in films and singing at People's World parties. . . ." On July 8th, Huddie appeared at a Peoples' World concert at Hollywood's Masonic Temple.

The Masonic Temple (2013), with banners
advertising TV's Jimmy Kimmel Show.

He was to remain in California for a year and a half. By October, '44, he was cutting sides for Capitol records, a small label at the time which soon became an industry giant. Capitol grew by recording artists like Nat "King" Cole who had tremendous commercial success; Ledbetter was not a money-maker, but his Capitol recordings are still available. He did "Irene," "The Rock Island Line," and six other songs, accompanied by a zither player, Paul Mason Howard. Oddly enough, Howard, a white, country-style player, came from Arkansas via Shreveport, but whether this had anything to do with his inclusion in the session is not known.
In a separate recording session for Capitol, Huddie did a couple of piano tunes which reflected his early Fannin Street influences.

Dave Dexter, Capitol Records

    Dave Dexter (C) and some of    
the artists he recorded. 

“When the legendary Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter arrived in Los Angeles under the auspices of a communist-front organization in 1944 — an arrangement about which I remained ignorant until the war's end — it was my pleasure to record a dozen Leadbelly sides. He sang and played his battered 12-string guitar, then demanded that Paul Mason Howard, who accompanied him to the studio, be allowed to accompany him on the zither. I didn't care to argue with Leadbelly. He had been pardoned from the Louisiana state prison after killing a man. Leadbelly also made a couple of rocky, ragtimey piano solos on the session. Capitol still sells his classic performances in the seventies, remastered and packaged for microgroove turntables.” —
                       record producer Dave Dexter, Jr. in his autobiography, “Playback,” which was published in 1976. He was seeking to distance himself from any possible political 'taint' with his remark about People's World. He needn't have worried; the Capitol sessions were remastered yet again for Compact Disc in the 1990's, and they continue to sell.

Jessica Mitford, "A Fine Old Conflict."

Jessica with daughter Constanza (1942)

While he was in Hollywood, Huddie was feted by a left-wing community of writers and directors; he was a star attraction amongst the stars at many parties, but he never managed to break into movies. By mid-February, 1945, Huddie had gone north to the Bay Area, where he performed on a Standard School Broadcast. A recording of part of this broadcast was later released on Moses Asch's Folkways records as "Negro Folk Songs for Young People"
One of Huddie's "left-wing writer" associates was Jessica Mitford, ("The American Way of Death.") of England's famous Mitford sisters. This was not a glamorous Hollywood connection, however. Ms. Mitford lived in San Francisco, later Oakland, and was very much involved politically as a civil rights activist. She came from an unorthodox family, given to extremism. Her father she described as "one of nature's fascists." Her sisters included Nancy Mitford, the novelist who was closest to the political center; another sister, Diana, married the leader of Britain's fascist movement, Sir Oswald Mosley; a third was actually associated with Hitler's inner circle in Germany, while another was confined to a mental institution. Jessica, however, became a communist during the Spanish Civil War. She migrated to the United States and, after her first husband was killed in the War (1941), wed Harvard-educated Bob Truehaft, a lawyer who specialized in defending left-wing unions and cases of Civil Rights abuse.

In her autobiography, “A Fine Old Conflict,” Jessica Mitford writes of the amusing problems often related to the visits of her upwardly mobile mother-in-law Aranka, a milliner from New York:

Somehow the timing of Aranka's visits seemed always to be unfortunate. Once she arrived when Leadbelly, the great blues singer, had come to stay for a fortnight. ‘But, Aranka, we've only got one spare bedroom. I do hope you won't mind sharing?’ Aranka, not amused, elected to sleep on the living room couch.
Leadbelly was already a legend. He had sung his way out of a Louisiana prison, where he was serving a life sentence for murder, by addressing musical pleas for clemency to the governor, whom he charmed into granting a pardon. His real name was Huddie Ledbetter: he had adopted Leadbelly as his ‘nom de theatre’ in nostalgic recollection of the numerous gunfights of his youth.
He was very large and very black. He would come down to breakfast wearing a long stark-white nightshirt, from which protruded his sable limbs and head; the visual effect was spectacular. Soon the house would ring with his wonderful music, daily concerts for the children, for whom he improvised special songs.
He and Aranka were ill-assorted houseguests; they would circle one another warily, with little to say. "Oh, Decca" — Aranka sighed wistfully — "I wish I was black like Leadbelly. Then you would love me." 

Ross Russell, Tempo Music Shop.
Back in Southern California, where he stayed at the home of his cousin George Pugh, he met a music shop owner named Ross Russell. The meeting took place at the home of a Hollywood writer and after that, Huddie took to dropping in at Russell's Tempo Music Shop. Russell entertained the idea of putting together a biography, but before he could get very far with the project, Huddie had returned to the East.
One night, Russell accompanied Ledbetter and some others on a pub crawl in the black section of Los Angeles, and thus discovered how easy it was for the singer to get into trouble. After a few drinks, Ledbetter produced his guitar and virtually took over a tavern with his entertaining. Two young women "almost forty years his junior" took a shine to Huddie, much to the annoyance of their escorts, and it was only with some difficulty that the group managed to pry him loose from the place unscathed.
Paramount Pictures had optioned John Lomax's book, “Adventures of a Ballad Hunter,” and there was some talk of including Huddie in the film version. He did have some film footage taken, but it was not what he'd hoped for. He was filmed singing three songs without sound. Pete Seeger later dubbed in the sound of Huddie's voice, thus creating the only extant visual record of Huddie singing, now available on You Tube.
Huddie was rebuffed by some film studio executive, and later wrote about it in a song, "4, 5, and 9." While he was at a party, Huddie met a movie producer and asked about getting a screen test. "Sure," laughed the exec, "call me up tomorrow at 45 to 9." This was apparently an inside joke which translated as a brush-off, and for Huddie, a humiliation:

What I'm gonna do for you now —
I called my baby between 4, 5 and 9
And meet my baby on Hollywood and Vine.
Ever been to California? In Hollywood, you know, that's the way it is.

I called this morning between 4, 5 and 9
I want you to meet me on Hollywood and Vine.

If you get down there before I do
You can tell your friends that I'm coming, too.

I'm gonna sing this verse, ain't a-gonna sing no more
Next time I sing, I'm gonna be in Chicago.

Back to New York.

Just after he was discharged from the army, folksinger Oscar Brand, weighing his career possibilities, decided that most of all he'd like to write for radio or stage. He approached several New York radio stations about doing a program of Christmas music which would be unlike the standard popular fare. He received responses from WEAF, WNEW, and from Herman Neumann at WNYC. Neumann was responsible for programming music which was alternative to the vaudeville and big band sounds on the commercial stations; he also programmed folk music and jazz.

Oscar Brand: 
So he called on me, he said, "I'm very much interested, do you want to do a program?" December the 10th, just before Christmas. I said, "Sure." I came on and did the program and as I was finished doing a bunch of songs and talking about them and their meanings for a half an hour, he said, "What are you doing next week?" I said, "Well, what would you like?" He said, "Well, come back, try another one."
I came back next week which put me right in front of Christmas and did another Christmas program about the kind of songs we do and how they were made up songs for people who couldn't read, and what they got out of the Bible. I did some gospel songs, old Appalachain songs, Canadian songs, and when I finished I walked by the office and waved at Herman Neumann, waved expectantly and hopefully, and he said, "Listen, if you're not doing anything next week, come on back," and that's the way I've been working for WNYC now since 1945.

[1992 Interview. In 2016, Oscar Brand's program, "Folk Song Festival," was finally off the air. According to the Guinness Book of Records it is the all-time longest-running radio program with the same host. In the mid-90's it received a Peabody Award.]

Later, Brand was asked to coordinate folk music programs for WNYC radio. He found Huddie already broadcasting for the station and since he was an old friend, "coordinating" consisted mainly of walking down the hall on the twenty-fifth floor of the Municipal Building, which housed the WNYC studios, and waving to Huddie during his broadcasts on "Folk Song Festival." He also did a half-hour program called "The Brandwagon" for which he wrote scripts and got together actors. During the week he sometimes traveled to Johnson City, N.Y., or Detroit, Michigan, to sing for striking workers under the banner of Peoples Songs.

Discussions between many of the leading folksingers resulted in the formation of People's Songs, Inc., a politically active group which not only put out a magazine but also organized "Hootenannies" and gave concerts in support of striking workers in Pittsburg, Schenectady, and New York City.

The hootenannies were mainly to support the publication which, by 1948, also included a booking agency known as "People's Artists," as well as chapters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston.

Oscar Brand and me, New York, 1992.

Interview with Oscar Brand who hosted the world's longest- running folk music program (Folk Song Festival, 1945 to 2016) on WNYC, New York, now the Public Radio flagship radio station.

Me: Was it the People's Songs organization that brought these people (the folksingers) together?

Oscar:

Pete Seeger, whose ideas are often far-fetched, ridiculous, but who always manages to bring them about, came to me. He wanted to start a magazine. You have to know that in those days, there were very few books about folk music, and when they were they were bowdlerized and changed and certainly no political material. The only one who really was doing anything in that area was Ben Botkin. Ben was the curator of the Archives of American Folk Music. As had been Alan Lomax, Ben followed him and Alan followed his father and his father followed a gentleman whose name I keep forgetting but who was the first. And they had really set up this whole archive, at the Library of Congress. 

Alan and Pete always had these marvelous ideas and Pete came over to me and he said, "I'd like to start a magazine, or newsletter, with all the new songs and send them round the country, so that we'd know what we're writing, or what they're writing, and they'll send to us. 

And that was really a remarkable idea because except for Ben Botkin's books which came out later, I believe, there was nothing contemporary. People didn't think of contemporary music as folk music, everybody was busy catching the dying trade, the last folksinger who when he died would take with him all his songs and so on. I mean, that's the way it was. You just couldn't do anything contemporary. There was no more creation, the rural atmosphere was going, there were factories, you see, instead of handwork, ships no longer had sailors singing, supposedly which was a lot of baloney. People always sing whether the Knights of Columbus, the Boy Scouts, they're always making up new songs and new parodies of material. 

So Pete's idea was really revolutionary. We started working on it. It was a mimeograph situation with materials I had left over from my army days and then the newspaper came out, the newsletter came out and it did very well. It didn't make a lot of money, but nobody was paid so that didn't cost much. People were donating their services and paper and, we sent it out all around and then it became a little more formalized and I was leaving about then because I discovered it was being run by what was basically a communist cell. 

Although a lot of the people involved were not, still I felt the people running it were doctrinaire, except for Pete. I know there was a meeting, in fact, was I at this meeting, it wasn't the Party, it was just the general board of directors meeting, there was a complaint from a group which was meeting in Yale or Harvard, I forget, that the songs were all political, didn't they know any other songs, or weren't there any new songs being written that were not leftwing political? Question was whether to stop sending it to them, and to blacklist them and so on, Pete said, "No, you can't do that!" which means he was standing up continually against the dictates of the Party. 

I didn't know he was a member of the Party until I read the book about him recently, where they interviewed me, and I said, "No, no, Pete wasn't, couldn't have been a member of the Party," and they said, "He says he was." [laughs]

So that started People's Songs, the publication. In a little while people called in and said, "Who's going to sing these songs, see, Oscar Brand wrote a song here, does he sing it? Can we get him?" So they started a booking agency called People's Songs also. I remember Bina Huston, Cisco Huston's, I don't know whether he was married to her but it was Cisco Huston's wife, in effect, she was the one who was running it, Irwin Silber and others, who were running the agency, and we would get five to ten dollars for going out on a booking, five to ten dollars a lot of money. I think Pete would get 15 sometimes and Leadbelly and Woody would command 25. Once I got $50. I never forget that. You know, you talk about a lot of money, it seems like nothing now. But I remember in those days if you got $50 a week for working a full week's work, that was a lot of money. In fact the first job I had, just before the war, I got $10 a week. I was lucky to have it because I could buy a new coat for that. 

Anyway, that's the way the People's Songs started, and I started moving out of it because I began to feel that I was in a hostile atmosphere. Only because they were part afraid of me. And in fact, in about '50 I think it was, '49 or '50, I was attacked by the Daily Worker for saying that censorship was dangerous and that the Soviet Union, not just the Soviet Union, I mentioned a lot of the places I had been, were so doctrinaire that they would not, their belief was that Art should be at the service of the State. And as a consequence, many good songs were being ignored, or just tossed aside, or censored. Because they did not serve the needs of the state at that time. 

Interviewing Tillman Franks

 Even when he was with the army in the Far East, [Stuff from Tillman Franks re Pete Seeger to go here,] Pete Seeger was dreaming of energizing the world with music. He and Lee Hays, the Alamanac's bass voice, stayed in touch with one another throughout Pete's army days, discussing their postwar plans for a nationwide organization for singers and songwriters. They wanted to use songs to change the world: songs about "truth, justice and freedom," to hammer out a better world. At the end of 1945 twenty-five singer-songwriters gathered at Toshi Seeger's parents' place on Macdougal Street in the Village. It was the 30th of December.
"Went down to a meeting of a new union of progressive songwriters that call themselves "Peoples Songs," found Pete Seeger and his banjo, the president and Lee Hays (Arkansaw Hard Luck Lee), the vice president. I found Betty Sanders, Leadbelly, (Leadbelly was in California – San Francisco, San Diego &  L.A. – until 1946. Oscar was mistaken about that.)  Bernie Asbel, Alan Lomax, Bess Lomax, Tom Glazer, Charlotte Anthony, Lou Kleinman, Mildred Linsley, and Shaemas O'Sheel, Bob Russell, there, almost every songwriter pitching in their efforts to make out of all of their little works one big union called 'Peoples Songs.'"

"The reason for Peoples Songs is to shoot your union the kind of a song or songs when you want it and fast. To help you make a songbook, a program,a throwaway songsheet, a whole evening. Or maybe your problem is just about how to make a song and get it copyrighted, printed, circulated around, how to set a fee, and what to do with your works after you create them. I am one of fifteen now on the Executive Committee of Peoples Songs, 130 West 42nd Street, New York City, New York." (Woody Guthrie)

The first issue of the Peoples Songs “Bulletin” was printed on Oscar Brand's mimeograph machine. The call went out for people to submit songs about the working man, repressed minorities and about peace. The war against fascism was over; now was the time to build the brotherhood of man. Idealism was at an all-time high and the “Bulletin” was successful in rousing the interest of a nationwide community of songwriters committed to changing the world through song. The second issue was printed with an offset machine, Bernie Asbell was hired as editor, and Bernie's wife, Millie, became manager of the small, crowded offices on 42nd Street. The Peoples Songs offices became a hub of activity, sending out missionaries to sing for union meetings and picket lines.

Oscar Brand recalls being an activist in the days when union people were being beaten over the head by the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus, the police, the National Guard, “and by anybody else who just wanted to beat somebody up, when unions were considered communist organizations, we were out on picket lines. I or Pete, or Cisco Houston, or Woody, or whoever was around, they'd get a phone call, I'd get a phone call, saying, ‘We're having a strike up here, this city or this town.’ And I would figure out, if I take the train it'll take me so long and coming back it'll take me so long, I can just about make it, and away we'd go and do a program. [The union]'d usually pay for the train and sometimes five or ten dollars besides.
I did programs for the Spanish Refugee Appeal, for Russian War Relief, for the American Labor Party; the left wing organizations were extremely eager to have folk music. I made up songs. I remember Elliott Roosevelt was going up to Johnson City, New York, which along with Endicott and Binghampton was owned by Johnson and Johnson at the time, and he said, ‘Would you come up with me. I can speak,’ and he was a lousy speaker but he was the former president's son. We got on the train and we got up there and I'd written a few songs. One of them was to an old tune called "The Johnson Boys:"

The Johnson Boys, they own Tri-City,
They bought it when it first began,
They're so rich it's sure a pity,
They still can't buy a union man.
They can't buy a union man,
They can't buy a union man.

Which made a tremendous hit. And that's the kind of thing we were doing.
Not only old songs: when the Farmers' Union was meeting in New York, I
remember I was working the farms then, I would go up there and sing,

When the banker hangs around
And the butcher cuts the pound,
The farmer is the man who feeds them all.
Oh, the farmer is the man,
The farmer is the man,
He lives on credit til the fall
And they take him by the hand
And they lead him by the hand,
And the mortgage man's the man who gets it all.

Which Coast? Leadbelly cabled Martha from Los Angeles on Feb. 8th, 1946, that he was heading for New York.

Those were good times, [1946] the busy days at People's Songs sometimes running into song-filled nights at the Lower East Side apartment of Martha and Huddie Ledbetter, the black ex-convict folksinger known as Leadbelly, a man all of them Pete, Lee, Woody, Cisco Houston, Alan Lomax, and every folk singer and folk song maven worshiped and learned from.
Lee wished Leadbelly could break the habit of calling them "Mr.Pete" and "Mr.Alan" and "Mr. Lee," but Leadbelly couldn't, or wouldn't. On the other hand, Lee chuckled over the irony (which he pointed out to Pete) that Leadbelly dressed in a dignified shirt-and-tie fashion while Pete, the New England aristocrat, turned up everywhere in farmer's overalls. Pete didn't see the humor at all.
Sometimes Leadbelly would stake Lee to a bottle of bourbon when Lee's always minimal money ran out. Lee swore he sang louder and better with booze lining his vocal chords. Woody and Cisco kept right up with Lee. The nights began to last until the mornings. Pete, never deflected from his work by old-boy carousing, cast a cold eye on theproceedings. Hadn't Lee learned that Pete's patience could give out?
But when Lee stood up and led a hootenanny, Pete had to love him. What could be more effective than this big southern preacher-type calling out, in his marvelous deep bass voice, stingingly funny lines about antediluvian southern congressmen? When you lived in New York City, you couldn't be sure how far protest went in the country. Lee and Woody most especially could make you believe that "the folk" could be pretty durned radical. (Willens 88)
On the liner notes for Cisco [Houston]'s first album, after Cisco's big breakthrough at Gerde's Folk City, Lee wrote, "Cisco fits the scholar's definition of the wandering folk singer as well as anyone except Woody Guthrie, who was a sidekick of Cisco's for a long time. They travelled and sang together, and they both had close personal ties with Martha and Huddie Ledbetter, whose home was, at time, the only one they had. . . ." (Willens 207)
According to banjo-guitarist and New Orleans jazz historian Danny Barker, on 6 January,1946, Huddie recorded an untitled blues with Bunk Johnson and several other players at the Stuyvesant Casino. The Bunk Johnson band recordings were for V-Disc, a U.S. Government-financed project whereby armed forces overseas were provided with free recordings of all types of music. There were several other musicians, including Danny Barker, who recorded that day with Bunk. Bunk's band finished its first gig at the Casino on 12 January.
Danny Barker, Oscar Brand and Woody Guthrie, it must be noted, all placed Huddie in New York around the Christmas holiday season, 1945-46: Barker at the Casino; Brand at WNYC and the "Home-from-the-War" party; and Guthrie at the formative meeting of People's Songs. Huddie was clearly photographed with Bunk Johnson at the Stuyvesant Casino, but that could have been in the Spring of 1946 when Bunk's band returned. It is likely that Barker, Brand and Guthrie were confused about the dates.
On 24th, January, 1946, Leadbelly appeared with the Kid Ory Band on Orson Welles' Standard Oil Broadcast from Los Angeles; on 30 January, he gave an 8 p.m. concert at the YWCA Auditorium, 6th and Pacific in Los Angeles. Ross Russell places his regularly at his Tempo Music Shop on Hollywood Boulevard, and then, on 8 February, he cabled from the Coast: he was about to leave for home. In March he appeared at People's Songs' first public concert at Elizabeth Irwin High School, New York City. Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Woody Guthrie were also on the program. From that time on, though he traveled out of town several times, and one time went to France, Huddie based himself in New York.

Late in the afternoon of 27 April, 1946, a Saturday, Huddie gave a recital at Town Hall in New York City. He was accompanied by Sonny Terry, the harmonica player, and the event was written up in the New York Times. The closing number was an audience singalong, "We're in the Same Boat, Brother."
“The songs were heard without sophistication, with no other art than that with which the singer was born and without the benefit of a beautiful voice like Paul Robeson's or Marian Anderson's. The listener heard, instead, precisely what is to be heard today in the hills of the Carolinas, the swamp lands of Mississippi and Louisiana, the small-town theatres and "hot spots" throughout the South. This is the music of the soil, direct from its source, and as Leadbelly sings it, it is filled with an emotion all its own, and is the outpouring of an art that is the simple and genuine expression of that emotion.” ("Huddie Leadbetter Heard")

On Thursday, May 9th, People's Songs, Inc. put on a "Union Hootenanny" at Town Hall. The show featured Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Huddie missed this hoot, but he performed at the Strathmore Folk Festival the following day. At the second seasonal Hoot, the following Thursday, the 16th, Huddie was also absent. [Was he out of town?]

The previous September (1945), a month after the end of the war with Japan, while Huddie was on the West Coast, an extraordinary old time jazz revival had begun to take place in New York City. William Russell was a jazz historian who loved the original New Orleans sound; he had been to the Crescent City during the war years, and there discovered that trumpeter Bunk Johnson, a kind of missing link between the unrecorded Buddy Bolden, and the meteoric Louis Armstrong, was still alive. Bunk played in the sporting houses on Basin Street, in the saloons above Canal Street, and in the bandwagons that rode around town with the slidehorns hanging out over the tailgate. He went barnstorming for as little as $5 a week and tips. Twelve years ago Bunk lost his teeth and gave up playing. A Pittsburgh jazz fan [Russell] found him, a toothless stooped laborer in the rice fields of New Iberia, La., got him some false teeth and raised money for a horn.
Said the New York Herald Tribune highbrow critic Virgil Thomson: "[Bunk] is the greatest master of blues or off-pitch notes. . . an artist of delicate imagination." ("Jazz?")
Russell got Bunk together with a group of traditional jazzmen, most of whom were holding down day jobs of one sort or another, and painstakingly recorded several tunes. The recordings turned out well, and back in New York, Russell was able to pass on his enthusiasm to a circle of friends. They decided to bring the Bunk Johnson band to New York, to show off real New Orleans jazz. The other members of the band were George Lewis, clarinet; Jim Robinson, trombone; Slow Drag Pavageau, bass; Lawrence Marrero, banjo; Alton Purnell, piano; and Baby Dodds on the drums.
Dodds, who was the brother of famed clarinetist Johnny Dodds, had the most impressive credits up to that time. He had gone to Chicago in the 1920's and played with King Oliver and Louis Armstrong; later he backed up Jelly Roll Morton, and made records with most of the famous New Orleans musicians during the Jazz Age. Though they were relatively unknown at the time, the rest of the band members were some of New Orleans finest who went on to establish fine reputations during the traditional jazz revival which started on that autumn evening — in New York — and continued well into the 1950's.
Four hundred people turned out for the opening night at the Stuyvesant Casino, a large ballroom on Second Avenue near East 9th Street, which had mostly been used for ethnic wedding receptions until that night. The Casino was close to where Huddie lived on East 10th Street, an easy walk, and he hung out at the Casino a lot during the band's second booking between April and May. He sat in with the band on several occasions. Included in the crowd on opening night, and probably on many subsequent nights as well, were names connected to Huddie Ledbetter — Fred Ramsey, Charles Edward Smith, Moses Asch. The night was, by all reports, a great success.

The Casino is decorous — the audience is mostly well-behaved youngsters — and simple, in ornamentation as well as in operation. You pay a dollar at the door, go upstairs, sit at whatever table or bench is vacant, and listen. If music is not sufficient food, there are beer and sandwiches, which you fetch yourself from the bar or buy from the Casino's only waiter, the politest and most thoughtful man of his breed I have encountered in some time.
There are, in fact, only two real drawbacks to the whole thing. The piano on the stand is in such a state of decay that Carmen Cavellero shouldn't even have to play "Til the End of Time" on it, and on some nights there is a gathering of intelligentsia that is so intense and audible about this careful reconstruction of another way of life that it is a considerable handicap to those who would rather just sit and listen to the music. (The New Yorker, 20 Oct 45)
Ralph J. Gleason was a writer on the New York scene in the 1940's. A couple of decades later he established a reputation with the national magazine, Rolling Stone, and various other prestigious musical journals. He was introduced to Ledbetter one night at the Stuyvesant Casino, and had this to say of the meeting:
Bunk and New Orleans jazz were intellectually chic that winter and their nightly sessions at the ancient East Side Hall, once the scene of a famous gangland shooting in the early days of New York Mafia wars, were an essential part of everyone's tour of New York. All the musicians and artists and writers from James Jones to Leadbelly stopped there.
Leadbelly sang a couple of numbers with the band. Art Hodes was on the piano that night and it was impossible for a piano to accompany Leadbelly because he didn't sing standard 12-bar blues, in fact, his blues varied from night to night in bar structure as his whim dictated. But most of the time he stayed at the bar.
The Stuyvesant Casino at that time was an incredible place. Admission was low and it was packed with Greenwich Village types, the kind that were then called Bohemians and later evolved into the Beatniks and, still later, their descendants became hippies. Beer was cheap; there was only one waiter and you could stall there all night without spending any money past the admission charge.
The bar was always packed and Leadbelly was pressed up against it, surrounded by a coterie of fans. He was not a tall man at all, but he was broad and chunky and gave the impression of terrific strength. He didn't smile much and implicit in standing next to him was the fact that you were standing next to a convicted murderer. It gave the crowd an added edge of excitement, like standing next to Little Augie Pisano or Tony Bender.
I was introduced to him by a friend from the Coast, and then he went on with his conversation. Suddenly, Leadbelly said, very loud and clear, "Don't fool with me, boy; I don't play." Everybody stopped talking. The silence was achingly oppressive. People slowly began backing away. Suddenly he was no longer that fascinating blues and folk singer with a prison record, but a murderer. He'd killed and he might kill again. And when he said "I don't play," you believed him. Somebody stuttered an apology and everything quieted down. But they all — myself included — looked at him differently from then on. (Gleason)

On Wednesday, September 4th, 1946, Huddie attended a benefit for the National Negro Congress in New York City. He is pictured in a Daily World photo with his guitar strapped on, posing with Sonny Terry, Cisco Houston, and the activist-singer-actor, Paul Robeson. Robeson has been described by his grand-daughter as a renaissance man. He is the only black face in his graduating class from Harvard Law School in 1923; he was an outstanding athlete in high school and college — he played football at Princeton and was good enough to play professionally when he needed the money; without any particular training, he became a concert artist and a stage and screen actor. His most outstanding roles were in Eugene O'Neill's "Emperor Jones" and "All God's Chillun Got Wings," as well as a Broadway "Othello" with Uta Hagen and Jose Ferrer during the war. He was a linguist, an historian, and an outspoken champion of the rights of African Americans. For this he was labelled a communist; Ledbetter, had he lived a little longer, may have had his moment in front of an Un-American Activities Committee, too, but he was nothing like as outstanding a target as Robeson.

Thursdays that September, at 6 p.m., Huddie was once more singing his songs during a fifteen-minute program on WNYC. On September 29th, a Saturday night, he was concertizing at New York's Town Hall, playing 12-string guitar, accordion, and piano on a variety of folksongs, blues, spirituals and work-songs. He was also aided in the concert by Edith Allaire, "American ballad singer"; Sonny Terry; Cisco Houston, who sang some cowboy songs; guitarist Brownie McGhee who played along on "Irene, Goodnight;" Sue Remos, a dancer from the West Coast; and jazz bassman "Pops" Foster.

LEAD BELLY OFFERS FOLK-MUSIC OF THE SOUTH
Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), old-time American
folk-singer from the deep South appearing with six guest
artists, gave a concert of folk music last night at Town
Hall. To use Lead Belly's own phrase — he talks only in
verse — it was "fine as wine" throughout and gave a fairly
comprehensive picture of the genre.
Playing his own accompaniments on various
instruments, including the twelve-string guitar, the
accordion and the piano, Lead Belly sang spirituals,
reels, blues and work-songs from the levees, the railroads
and the fields.
The authenticity of his renderings gives the songs he
sings their interest, both historical and musical. (Lead Belly Offers)

Bassist Pops Foster

 In his 1971 autobiography, "Pops" Foster was clear about his dislike for Huddie, even if he got some of the facts wrong. Foster was a bassist from New Orleans who played at the Town Hall concert and with many of the early stars of jazz.
"Leadbelly's wife's name was Irene (sic) and the tune of his 'Irene' got to be a big hit. As soon as it did he died. Leadbelly was a mean and evil guy. He was in the penitentiary three times for killing guys and every time he played his way out." (Foster 153)
"Pops" found Huddie difficult, but not impossible, to accompany. He said that he and pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith were the only two people who could play with him. According to Foster, Ledbetter, and other blues singers like Josh White, had no musical training and therefore had no idea which key they were playing in. And, because they generally played solo, they were incapable of keeping time.
"When Willie and I would play with them kinda guys, he'd come around to say, 'We got a hard date today, Pops. A lot of those guys can't even tune their instruments.' "
He was talking about a different musical genre, of course. Clearly Ledbetter was capable of playing with other musicians; he did it regularly at hoots and get-togethers with the folk song crowd. But jazz was a different thing. Many of the jazz players came out of a brass band tradition in which an ability to read music was taken for granted. Many of the jazz groups depended on strict arrangements where the musicians were taken on as "sidemen" to play a particular part, whereas the folk musicians were, to varying degrees, anarchic. Ledbetter had been brought up playing for dances, but he hadn't done that much since he left his audience in Louisiana and Texas, so his rhythms may have become variable. In fact, playing for dances as a single, his rhythms were probably always variable. Like many successful dance bands — Bob Wills' Texas Playboys for instance — he had a tendency to speed up his tempos for the sake of exciting the dancers.

Willie "The Lion" Smith

In his critique of Ledbetter's music, Pops Foster didn't take all that into account. Somehow, his dislike for the music was mixed up with his dislike for the man. He was at Ledbetter's apartment one day, talking to one of Moses Asch's partners about making some records, when there was a scuffle between two men outside on the landing. One man, whom Foster identified as "Leadbelly's son-in-law," had insulted the other's wife and sought refuge at Ledbetter's door.
At any rate, Huddie commenced beating the man over the head with a poker, while Foster and the man from Asch made their getaway. When Huddie went to court for assaulting the man, Foster had to go and testify. The judge fined the other man and told him he had no business being in Ledbetter's house.
Pops Foster: “When Leadbelly would get mad he'd just sit and grit his teeth. One time I told him he'd have to play a chord on his guitar or we couldn't make no record. He just sat and started gritting his teeth. I told him he could grit his teeth all day, but if he didn't play the chord we couldn't play with him. He finally played it. Leadbelly was just and evil man. I just made records with him and never hung around with him at all.” (Foster 154)
"Pops" Foster, incidentally, also intensely disliked legendary clarinettist Sidney Bechet.

Leadbelly's Nieces: an Interview

Several years ago I went to visit Irene Campbell (aged 86) in Marshall, Texas. She was a retired schoolteacher; she'd attended Bishop College in Marshall and taught at the local schools, starting in the 1930's, before integration, and retired in the 1970's; which would have been about the time that segregation was ending in Texas.
Irene had caused a bit of a storm with the Louisiana relatives of Leadbelly when she'd requested that his grave site be moved over the line to Texas, because she felt that was really his home. So I went to talk to her about her Uncle Huddie. She was related through Huddie's half-brother Alonzo Batts, Irene's father. She surprised me at the interview by introducing me to her elder sister, Viola (aged 89.). This is a segment of an interview with the Batts sisters, Irene Campbell and Viola Daniels on March 14, 1991.

Me: Do you remember the songs that Huddie sang?
Irene: Some of them.
Me: When you were kids.
Irene: "Goodnight Irene," I know that.
Me: (With a laugh) Sounds like he wrote that for you.
Irene: Yes he did, he did. Really, this Mr. Myers, we called him Miles — Sterling Miles, but later I found out his name was Myers, — said he was there when Uncle Huddie wrote the song. They came through, they'd been out, and passed by my mother — he [Huddie] called her "Big Sister". "Big Sister, I'm drunk, and I'm hungry, fix me something to eat." She told him, "Well, you keep the baby while I fix something to eat." He was keeping the baby and wrote this song. "Goodnight Irene." Now that's what Mr. Myers said.
Me: Who's Mr. Myers?
Irene: He was his friend. Sterling Mi - well, we said Miles, but his name was Myers. He hasn't been dead so long either.
Me: Is there anybody else who's still living who was there?
Irene: There's a man, I think his name is Russell, but I don't know him. He says he knows Uncle Huddie. And he can play something, but he doesn't play it with the same tune that Uncle Huddie had. He can't even play "Goodnight Irene" with the same tune. (Irene turns to her sister, Viola.) Do you know anybody living now that knew Uncle Huddie?
Viola: The one I know would be already dead I guess - Roscoe Jamieson ?
Irene: He's dead.
Viola: He would be the one that would come into the house, regularly. See, all these people would meet him 'down yonder' didn't come to the house, you know. Cause what they had going down there, those songs, he didn't play at the house. So we had a wonderful time with our hymns and songs that we sang. . .
Irene: Games - what you call (sings)

I measure my love to show you
I measure my love to show you
We have a game to do. . .

Songs that you can act out. What is this you go in and out the window?

In and out the window, for we have a game today.

Viola: I forgot that one.
Irene: And what were some other play songs that we used to have?
Viola: "Little Sally Walker, sitting in a saucer" - that sort of thing. "Skip to My Lou, my darling." We'd do the skipping.
Irene: "I measure my love to show you" you know, those were the sort of things he would play for us and we would do them out on the lawn, out in the yard. And we'd have, uh, "Goodbye Mary, I hate to leave you,"
Viola: And then I notice in this children's book they've started this "Wild Goose." . . .

Irene: (takes up the recollection) . . . the bird would come from heaven a certain time of the year. He was so large that his wings would cover the sky. It would get dark. And he would say "QUA, QUA" (laughter) and when you see this bird coming over, you tell him what you want him to tell your loved ones in heaven when he gets back, and you give him what you want him to tell, and he'd say "QUA-K-QUA" and he just pass on over and then it get light again. Cause it was black as night while he was passing over. And I can't sing - can you remember some more songs we would sing when this bird was coming over? But the tale is that the group of them went hunting and the big eagle - big bird - came over and they shot him and it took - how long did it take him to fall? -
Viola: I don't remember that.
Irene: So many years, I think it was eight years to fall, and then he fell, and then - eight hours! it took him a long time to fall. And then they decided they would cook him and they put him on to cook and it took that same length of time for him to cook, and they cooked him and they got him boiled, done, and then when they got him ready to eat, he flew away (laughter). That was a tall tale!
Viola: That's what the children -
Irene: That's what Huddie would tell us and we were there spellbound, listening.
Viola: You were listening, I don't know where I was, I didn't hear that one. I'd get part of it, I didn't get the other part of it.
Irene: Boiled him and boiled him and he finally flew away. Now he has that in music. That record would get it straight, because I have it all twisted. I know it was a ridiculously long time. Falling and cooking and finally flew away. That was just a tale to make the kids laugh. He loved children. I think, cause he took so much time with us.

It's always been said that Huddie Ledbetter was a great children's entertainer and these two ancient ladies gave a glimpse into that aspect of Huddie's life.