Ethnomusicologist Clifford Murphy on the music of Lead Belly

Thu, 12 Mar 2015 12:23:35 -0400

Last month, Smithsonian Folkways released Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, a carefully curated collection of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter’s recordings that is – like the singer himself – breathtaking in its muscular artistry. Marketed by the Smithsonian Channel as “one of the most influential musicians you’ve never known,” Lead Belly’s legacy can be heard in the grooves of Led Zeppelin III, seen in Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged performance, or echoed in cavernous ballparks, where Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” plays as a relief pitcher warms up. But beyond his influence on (mainly white) musical artists, the collection is significant because it shows how Lead Belly defied the racial categories of blues and country (as black music and white music, respectively) – stereotypes established by the burgeoning record industry of the Jim Crow era that persist today.