Friday, February 13, 2015

The new LEAD BELLY: SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS COLLECTION Box Set

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