I can't imagine life without the iPod.
I listen to music across a variety of genres. I love the
opportunity to summon a song from a wide spectrum of tone, mood, and spirit. To
have that itch scratched at a moment's notice.
But imagine all that within one human being. A single,
solitary man who absorbed music, tradition, and verse from not just old school
blues halls or medicine shows, but chain gangs, cotton fields, gospel houses,
sukey jumps, New York City concert halls, folk music circles, and jook joints,
to name a few. To have captured those spirits and preserved them in amber,
untouched by the influence of radio. And
to be able to pick up a twelve-string guitar and call upon music traditions
stretching back into forever.
That's Lead Belly. You can buy all the Lead Belly albums you
want and still probably never hear all his repertoire. Also, you could start
writing today and ten years later, still never cover every artist influenced by
Lead Belly, whether they know it or not.
However, a good start would be the new Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection box set. While it is a great starting point for folks who are new to Lead Belly, a lifelong fan like myself who perhaps already has a significant collection of Lead Belly music would probably ask if there's a good reason to drop a chunk of change of this box set.
I would tell them no, there isn't one good reason.
There are ten.
TOP TEN REASONS TO DROP A CHUNK OF CHANGE ON THE
10. THE PHOTOGRAPHS
It doesn't matter if your coffee table is mahogany wood or
an upturned cardboard box, the 140-page large format book will look super great
atop it. Girls will want to hang out and flip through the pages and guys will
tell you how cool you are for having it. The last generation of music lovers
probably got their exposure to Lead Belly through Kurt Cobain's mind blowing
performance of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" on MTV: Unplugged. Can you imagine being
the guy to turn on the following generations? These slick photographs should do
the trick.
9. THE ESSAYS
I can nerd out on some liner notes, man. The best ever liner
notes came off the Dylan album, Bringing
It All Back Home. I really love getting four-disc themed box sets that
cover entire sub-genres like rockabilly, western swing, and Detroit blues (all
of which are in Lead Belly's wheelhouse). One of the best parts of the
collections are the liner notes. Glossy booklets written by scholars who also
like to nerd out. The book has two of such essays. One by Robert Santelli, the
Executive Director of the Grammy Museum, and another by Grammy-winning
Smithsonian Folkways archivist Jeff Place. The Place essay is very in-depth and
compelling and well worth multiple readings. Especially enlightening is the
piece "Why He Sang Certain Songs" by his niece Tiny Robinson. I'm
this close to tearing that out of my book so I can hang it on my wall.
8. THEY WNYC FOLK SONGS OF AMERICA RADIO SHOWS
This is where it's at. Lead Belly sits in on two radio shows
featuring his music. Lead Belly spent his later years in New York City in the
nascent stages of the folk scene. He enjoyed a fine bit of notoriety and
appeared on a couple radio programs. These sets on WNYC run six and seven
songs, and the second one features the Oleander Quartet. This is a treat, man.
You can't find that on the internet (yet).
7. LEAD BELLY NARRATION
I'm a sucker for Lead Belly's narration between songs. The
dude's like a walking history book. Not only did he save entire traditions in
music from history's recycle bin, but nobody explains East Texas life better
than Lead Belly. Often, he explains his inspiration for the song, or the source
material. In "Rock Island Line," he explains the song's refrain. His
version of "Boll Weevil" is a new one, according to the engineer, and
it tells the story of one of the South's biggest scourges from the point of
view of a man who picked his share of
