Leadbelly

The books Blues: A Regional Experience by Eagle and LeBlanc and Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians by Tomko give January 23, 1888, while the Encyclopedia of the Blues gives January 20, 1888.

His parents had cohabited for several years.

They officially married on February 26, 1888, perhaps after his birth that year.

When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, Texas.

The Lead Belly Foundation gives his birth date as January 20, 1889, his grave marker gives the year 1889, and his 1942 draft registration card states January 23, 1889.

These records were made by census takers, and ages and dates were defined in terms of the census date.

The 1900 United States Census lists "Hudy Ledbetter" as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the 1910 and 1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888.

By 1903, Huddie was already a "musicianer", a singer and guitarist of some note.

He performed to Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, a notorious red-light district.

He began to develop his own style of music after exposure to the various musical influences on Shreveport's Fannin Street, a row of saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the Bottoms.

This area is now referred to as Ledbetter Heights.

Others say she was 15 when they married in 1908.

Ledbetter received his first instrument in Texas, an accordion, from his uncle Terrell.

By his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter left home to make his living as a guitarist and occasional laborer.

By the 1910 census of Harrison County, Texas, "Hudy Ledbetter" was living next door to his parents in a separate household with his first wife, Aletha "Lethe" Henderson.

Aletha is recorded as age 19 and married one year.

Between 1915 and 1939, Ledbetter served several prison and jail terms in Louisiana for a variety of criminal charges.

Notably, in 1918 under the name of Walter Boyd, he was convicted of murder in Texas and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

After writing a song pleading for clemency Ledbetter was pardoned by Governor Pat Morris Neff in 1925.

Thirty years after starting his music career, he was "discovered" in Angola Penitentiary during a 1933 visit by folklorists John Lomax and his son Alan Lomax.

They were recording varieties of local music in the South as a project to preserve traditional music for the Library of Congress.

This was one of numerous cultural projects during the Great Depression.

Deeply impressed by Ledbetter's vibrant tenor and extensive repertoire, the Lomaxes recorded him in 1933 on portable aluminum disc recording equipment in a project for the Library of Congress.

They returned with new and better equipment in July 1934, recording hundreds of his songs.

While in prison, Lead Belly may have first heard the traditional prison song "Midnight Special"; his versions became famous.

On August 1, Ledbetter was released after having served nearly all of his minimum sentence.

The Lomaxes had taken a record and a petition seeking his release to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at his urgent request.

It included his signature song, "Goodnight Irene".

The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with information supplied by wife Martha.

On his World War II draft registration card in 1942, he gave his birthplace as Freeport, Louisiana ("Shreveport").

There is uncertainty over his precise date and year of birth.

Huddie William Ledbetter (January 1888 or 1889 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "In the Pines", "Goodnight, Irene", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil".

Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer.

In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.

Lead Belly's songs covered a wide range of genres, including gospel music, blues, and folk music, as well as a number of topics, including women, liquor, prison life, racism, cowboys, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing.

He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes.

Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

Though many releases credit him as "Leadbelly", he wrote his name as "Lead Belly".

This is the spelling on his tombstone and is used by the Lead Belly Foundation.

The younger of two children, Lead Belly was born Huddie William Ledbetter to Sallie Brown and Wesley Ledbetter on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana.