THE LIFE & LEGEND OF LEADBELLY

by Wolfe, Charles and Lornell, Kip

[30 Day Return Guarantee] Price: $25.00

Ask bookseller a question Review this book E-mail to a friend Shipping rates & speeds

Description

NY: Harper Collins, 1992. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. pp: xv, 333; 8pp illus from photographs. This is the first full-length biography of Huddie Ledbetter, arguably the most famous Black folksinger in American history. 9.25" x 5.75".

Book summary

One of the best-known black singers in folk music, Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly, was discovered in the Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola in 1934 by the musicologists John and Alan Lomax. The singer's outsized voice and persona were to make him one of the pivotal performers in the postwar American folk revival. Though Leadbelly was widely supposed to have obtained his release through the authorities' appreciation of his musical skills, Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell's extensively researched biography of the singer, THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF LEADBELLY, debunks this myth and many others in a fascinating account that blends depictions of early 20th-century social and economic conditions in the American South with vivid portrayals of the man behind the Leadbelly legend. The artist emerges as an essentially human figure, violent, sentimental, proud, and talented, while John Lomax, who employed Leadbelly as a driver and valet while doing his musicological research, is very much a man of his time, at times seeming more manager than musicologist. LEADBELLY is an authoritative study of the singer's career, containing remarkable insights into both his motivations and those of the people instrumental in his discovery and success.