Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie are two giants of American music. In 1988, some music stars came together to pay homage to their work and their impact on generations of musicians. Artists such as U2, Bruce Springsteen, Little Richard, Sweet Honey on the Rock, John Mellencamp, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson and Pete Seeger came together to offer their own interpretations of classic songs written or sung by Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.
The recording of their concert, called "Folkways: A Vision Shared" was a magical set of cover songs that won a Grammy Award.
Author photo.
It was not an ordinary gig. It was a benefit to raise money to buy the Folkways Records collection for the Smithsonian Museum. Over the years, Folkways had recorded and released more than 2,000 albums of folk, blues and jazz. It was a chronicle of American musical culture, a collection of roots music that was incomparable in scope.
And in the center of everything were two giants. Guthrie and Lead Belly were composers, collectors of popular songs and poets who stood as heroes of the working class of the Depression era. His work inspired many of the great American composers such as the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt, Muddy Waters, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen.
Lead Belly
Public Domain images.
"No Lead Belly, No Beatles". It's a quote from Beatles guitarist George Harrison. Kurt Cobain later tried to buy Lead Belly 12-strong guitar. Even today, musicians look back in amazement at the impact that this godfather of American music had on the development of folk, gospel, rhythm and blues, jazz and rock and roll music. The so-called British invasion began as British bands such as the Beatles and Rolling Stones covering the first American blues songs of Lead Belly and others.
Lead Belly, whose real name was Huddie Ledbetter (and sometimes written as one word, Leadbelly), had a deep, resonant voice, and was also a talented songwriter and guitarist. Lead Belly's songs included Midnight Special, Goodnight Irene, where you slept last night, Cotton Fields, Bourgeois Blues, Black Betty, Easy Rider and House of the Rising Sun. He wrote many of them, collecting and arranging other traditional folk songs. For example, Goodnight Irene and House of the Rising Sun were old popular songs that he collected and arranged. Lead Belly interpretations of these melodies brought them wider audiences, popularizing them for future generations. The same could be said of hymns and gospel songs that helped keep her alive, including Amazing Grace.
Here are some videos (actually audio recordings) of Lead Belly singing.
Where did you sleep last night? (Later covered by Nirvana)
Gallows Pole (later covered by Led Zeppelin)
Woody Guthrie
Public Domain images.
Guthrie is best known for writing This Land is Your Land, an alternative national anthem that is one of the most famous American songs ever written. In a vote of 2014 to choose the "most emblematic element" of the Smithsonian, Guthrie's work, This Land is Your Land, came in third, ahead of the portrait of George Washington and just behind the original Star Spangled Banner and Bao Bao The Panda. Many of his songs were written during the Dust Bowl, a period of severe drought and dust storms that displaced thousands of farmers. Guthrie traveled with families looking for work, learning their traditional folk music along the way.
Dorothea Lange's famous photograph of an emigrant mother in 1936 goes hand in hand with the ballads of Guthrie's Dust Bowl.
Public Domain
His music gave voice to the oppressed in a moment of rapid industrialization and great human suffering. He later spent time in New York's burgeoning popular scene, collaborating with Jewish musicians, and in the Pacific Northwest, writing songs to promote dams in the rivers there. Later, Guthrie wrote anti-fascist songs during World War II. If you study some of their music up close and listen to later composers and musicians like Bob Dylan and Grateful Dead, you can even hear them copying Guthrie's guitar work; Many have paid tribute to him as a great influence.
The best songs of Guthrie included This Land Is Your Land, The Ludlow Massacre, Pretty Boy Floyd, Hard Travelin, Union Maid, Do-Re-Mi, So Long, and The Ballad of Tom Joad I and II ).
Here are some original recordings of his music.
This Land is Your Land:
Do-Re-Mi:
The Folkways Tribute Concert
At the Lead Belly-Guthrie tribute concert in 1988, a series of stars gave their own renditions of songs from these two legends. Bob Dylan chose Pretty Boy Floyd, giving his own edge to this ballad by a popular Oklahoma hero Robin Hood. U2 gave a powerful and passionate performance of Jesus Christ, continuing the theme of the oppressed and prefiguring the theology of liberation.
There is a particularly powerful stanza at the end of the song, where Guthrie brought the subject back to his current reality:
This song was made in New York City
Of rich men and preachers, and slaves
If Jesus preached as he preached in Galilee
They would put Jesus Christ in His tomb.
U2 in the 1980s. Creative Commons via Wikimedia by Michael Richardson.
Bruce Springsteen confronted Vigilante Man and I Is not Got No Home, which sounds very much like Springsteen's songs in verse and tune. Brian Wilson played a Beach Boys style cover by Goodnight Irene, by Lead Belly. Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson gave a memorable treatment to Hobo's Lullaby and Philadelphia Lawyer. This last song reproduces one of Guthrie's recurring themes, David about Goliath, a West commoner leaning on a privileged East Coast aristocrat.
There were also other great songs, among them the protege of Guthrie Pete Seeger and his son Arlo Guthrie. But many would say that Sweet Honey in the Rock stole the show with their two songs. The quintet of vocals was directed by Sylvie of Lead Belly, while its version inspired by the Gospel of Gray Goose was a outstanding performance also.
Sweet Honey in the Rock ensemble. Pbs.org.
I will include some of the individual melodies below. Near the end of this post, you can also find a link to the full list of concerts on YouTube, as well as a playlist of the same songs as Guthrie and Lead Belly.
Why is my Folkways CD still in shrinkwrap?
Although I enjoy the music of yesteryear, I am not a complete dinosaur. I listen to many of these songs frequently, but I do it with digital copies of them. I rarely play CDs anymore, although I have a whole shelf of them. And this is the third CD of the Folkways concert I've ordered. I often buy CDs of what I consider "real music" to distribute to people who might appreciate them. That way, I'm playing a small role in keeping this music alive.
Author photo.
Gray Goose (played by Sweet Honey on the rock):
Jesus Christ (played by U2):
I Is not Got No Home (played by Bruce Springsteen):
Full set of Folkways tribute songs (YouTube Playlist):
And here are Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie singing these songs (YouTube Playlist):
Original Sources:
From Woody to Leadbelly (Washington Post): https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/from-woody-to-lead-belly-the-master-of-smithsonian-folkways/2015/04/17/0574a67a-e1f7-11e4-81ea-0649268f729e_story.html?utm_term=.e36612b3f7d8
Pop Stars Pay Tribute (N.Y. Times): http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/21/arts/recordings-80-s-pop-stars-pay-tribute-to-30-s-populists.html
This Land is His Land: Roaming Through Woody Guthrie’s New York (N.Y. Times): https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/arts/music/roaming-through-woody-guthries-new-york.html?_r=0
Lead Belly (Telegraph UK): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/worldfolkandjazz/11458930/Lead-Belly-the-musician-who-influenced-a-generation.html
Woody Guthrie (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie
Folkways Vision (from the Smithsonian Museum): http://www.folkways.si.edu/woody-guthrie-and-lead-belly/folkways-the-original-vision/american-folk-popular/music/album/smithsonian
Top Photo: Guthrie and Lead Belly performing together in Chicago. Chicago History Museum.
Thank you for reading.