Podcasts about huddie ledbetter

This is just to let people know that there is a better than usual reason for the longer than normal delay in the next episode. I was about to record it early last week, when checking a minor detail I discovered a book published this year, after I’d bought the books I used for the research, which showed that everything in the first half of the episode — everything that had been published in every book on Huddie Ledbetter, who is the focus of that first half — was badly mistaken. I had to totally scrap a completed script and redo the research from scratch. I start recording tomorrow and it should be up in a few days. I think you’ll agree when you hear it that it’s worth the extra time it ended up taking.

In de vorige en de volgende afleveringen van de podcast vertel ik over het leven en de legende van bluesman Huddie Ledbetter. Bij het grote publiek staat hij gekend als Leadbelly en je kan het al raden: Leadbelly heeft een torenhoge impact gehad op de bluesgeschiedenis. In de jaren dertig belandde Leadbelly meermaals in de gevangenis en het was daar dat hij zijn bijnaam en artiestennaam verwierf: "Lead Belly", de man die geen darmen in zijn lijf had, maar lood in zijn buik. Het leven in de gevangenis was hels, maar Leadbelly was een taaie jongen en hij wist zich te handhaven. Tot hij in 1933 vrij kwam, mede dankzij de hulp van folklorist Alan Lomax en zijn zoon John Lomax. Voor deze aflevering van de podcast heb ik me voornamelijk gebaseerd op het boek “The Life and Legend of Leadbelly”, geschreven door Charles Wolf. Vind je deze podcast inspirerend en leerrijk? Deel hem dan in jouw netwerk en volg de podcast zodat je geen enkele nieuwe aflevering mist. En een review is ook altijd fijn

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-south

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons.  But, as Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies (Cambridge UP, 2024) shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past.

In deze en de volgende afleveringen van de podcast wil ik graag vertellen over het leven en de legende van bluesman Huddie Ledbetter. Bij het grote publiek staat hij gekend als Leadbelly en je kan het al raden: Leadbelly heeft een torenhoge impact gehad op de bluesgeschiedenis. Maar tegelijkertijd was Huddie Ledbetter geen gemakkelijke jongen… Van gestalte was hij niet zo groot, wel stevig gebouwd, kranig ban bouw en atletisch gespierd door het harde werk op de plantage. Op de foto's herken je hem aan zijn altijd netjes gestreken blauwe overall. Onder de rode bandana rond zijn nek tekende in zijn donkere huid een breed litteken, het gevolg van een aanval met een mes. De brede strohoed beschermde hem tegen de ondraaglijk brandende zon. Op de rug droeg hij steeds zijn groene twaaflsnarige Stella-gitaar. Met zijn linker voet tapte hij het ritme, met zijn rechter voet voegde hij er iets polyritmisch aan toe. En in zijn hoge zangstem herken je een Texaans accent. Leadbelly. Voor deze aflevering van de podcast heb ik me voornamelijk gebaseerd op het boek “The Life and Legend of Leadbelly”, geschreven door Charles Wolf. Vind je deze podcast inspirerend en leerrijk? Deel hem dan in jouw netwerk en volg de podcast zodat je geen enkele nieuwe aflevering mist. En een review is ook altijd fijn

To celebrate two years of Minnesota Now, the team picked their favorites from the past year. Cathy's pick: Lead Belly's private Minneapolis show“Minnesota Now and Then” is a recurring segment on Minnesota Now. We shared this unique story on our show on May 31. Folk and blues singer Huddie Ledbetter, known by his stage name Lead Belly, had just finished a tour of Minnesota college towns, when he turned up at a friend's Minneapolis home and gave a short concert.It was a moment that would have been lost to music history, except that somebody decided to record it.“I loved the way the producers wove together the lost to time audio with their distinctive storytelling,” said MPR News host Cathy Wurzer. Aleesa's pick: How does incarceration affect a family?Back in January we spoke to Nakisha Armstrong from Hopkins. She hasn't spent a holiday with her dad for over 30 years. He is incarcerated. The father of her two teenage sons, is also incarcerated for the last 15 years.Her experience is not unique. Nakisha is one of 15,000 Minnesotans who have a parent or close relative incarcerated.”Sometimes the conversations we have on Minnesota Now aren't easy. But we are thankful for the people every day willing to be honest with us and Cathy about the sometimes difficult parts of their lives,” said Minnesota Now senior producer Aleesa Kuznetsov.Alanna's pick: Curbing climate change with non-farming landlordsWe learned this year that land use, including agriculture and forestry, is one of Minnesota's largest sources of greenhouse gases. It's second only to transportation.And there's a group of people with some power to help shrink that pollution. They're people who own farmland, but who don't farm it themselves. They own more than a third of the state's farmland.Back in April, MPR News talked to Meg Nielsen who is part of a group called Climate Land Leaders. They recruit and train landowners to try to store carbon and reduce emissions.“I thought this conversation brings together two things we've been talking about on the show this year: family transitions that everyone goes through in some way or another and people feeling the impact of climate change or trying to adapt to it. I also remembered it because of something that, when it happens, is one of my favorite parts of working on this show — when we hear back from people directly that a conversation is resonating with them,” said Minnesota Now producer Alanna Elder.Gretchen's pick: Joe Rainey's avant-garde powwow We've played the music of Joe Rainey on the show on the Minnesota Music Minute segment. He's from the south side of Minneapolis and a citizen of the Red Lake Nation who fuses powwow with experimental electronic music. “I love that this show gives us opportunities to meet our neighbors, even with they are famous musicians with growing buzz nationally and internationally. Joe Rainey is so talented. But in this interview he seemed so down to earth a like someone I'd want to hang out with,” said Minnesota Now producer Gretchen Brown. Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation. Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.   We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.

This episode focuses on the notion of being "Woke". It might not be what you think. And it certainly has evolved into something that Huddie Ledbetter (the origionater) would be disappointed in. Dr Monica Hall Porter also joins us for this discussion. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bphdwl/message

We've got a story for you from our history series “Minnesota Now and Then.” This time, we're going back to November 1948. Folk and blues singer Huddie Ledbetter, known by his stage name Lead Belly, had just finished a tour of Minnesota college towns, when he turned up at a friend's Minneapolis home and gave a short concert. It was a moment that would have been lost to music history, except that somebody decided to record it. Here are MPR producers Robbie Mitchem and Jamal Allen with a story by Britt Aamodt.

For more than a hundred years, the Deep Ellum section of Dallas has been known for music. Well, that and, in its raucous youth, uh, S-I-N…Today that lively entertainment district also vibrates with street murals, quirky art galleries and long-time concert venues for indie performer.But, like a family's black sheep uncle, Deep Ellum has a sketchy, colorful resume. If you hop in your time machine and zip back to the 1920s, your walk down the streets on Deep Ellum would mean rubbing shoulders with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Huddie Ledbetter, with Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith.You also would see pigeon droppers, reefer men, crap shooters, card sharps and various purveyors of cocaine and bootleg whisky. And then there would be the odd gangster, some (in)famous like Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd.In his 1982 book Dallas, an Illustrated History, author Darwin Payne quoted a 1937 newspaper column describing Deep Ellum as a spot that “needs no daylight saving time, because there is no bedtime.” It went on to say this was “the only place recorded on earth where business, religion, hoodooism, gambling, and stealing go on at the same time without friction.”The RecordingsThose words were published four years after the district was first singled out in song. In 1933, a group called The Lone Star Cowboys (actually, a pseudonym for The Shelton Brothers) recorded “Deep Elm Blues.” (Note the district's name still has various spellings, from “Elm” to “Elem” to “Ellum”).The recording borrowed its melody and derived its lyrics from The Georgia Crackers' 1927 recording called “The Georgia Black Bottom.” While no one does that tune these days, “Deep Elm (Elem/Ellum) Blues” lives on. For instance, long before he became The Guitar God, a young Les Paul (under the pseudonym “Rhubarb Red” with his partner “Sunny Joe”) recorded it in 1936 for Decca.Other versions were made between 1957 and 1958 by Jerry Lee Lewis for Sun Records, Bobby Jackson for Gold Air Records, Mary McCoy & the Cyclones for Jin Records and, later still, by The Grateful Dead, Levon Helm and Rory Gallagher.In 2020, Bob Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" contains a shout-out with the line, "When you're down on Deep Ellum, put your money in your shoe…”See the MovieFinally, if you haven't seen it, by all means check out a wonderful 12-minute 1985 documentary by Alan Govenar about the Deep Ellum district in its prime. Nowadays you can view it for free online through a great film archives called Folkstreams. Click this button to watch it:A must-see/hear in the film is late Texas bluesman Bill Neely's stories. “It was a pretty rough place down on Deep Ellum,” Neely tells Govenar at one point. “It's where all the thugs and thieves, drunks, bums, winos, they all hung out down there. The desperados. Guys like Clyde and Bonnie, Raymond Hamilton, even Pretty Boy Floyd hung out down there sometimes.”It's especially cool that Neely's playing for the camera includes an original verse or two. Our favorite (which we've copped for our own turn with the tune) is:When you go down on Deep EllumKeep your carburetor clean'Cause the women on Deep EllumSell some dirty gasoline.Our Take on the TuneWe always try to come up with a couple of new songs for our monthly gig at Sal's Speakeasy in Ashland. This is the latest, with Randy rock solid on that harmony and he, Sam and Danny just cooking on the solos. Remember, we're at Sal's Italian Eatery & Speakeasy this weekend, 1624 Carter Avenue in downtown Ashland, Ky. We play from 6 to 9 this Saturday night. And best of all, the beautiful Michelle Hoge is driving in from Cincinnati just to sit in with her old band mates. It's going to be an epic evening. Come out and party with us!More Blues?Finally, if all this has you in a bluesy mood, you might want to tune in The Flood's all-you-can-east blues channel on our free Radio Floodango music streaming service.Click here to turn us on! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

5. Leadbelly / Leavin' Blues6. Taj Mahal / Bourgeois Blues 7. Pink Anderson / Boll Weevil8. Nina Simone / House of the Rising Sun 9. Creedence Clearwater Revival / Midnight Special 10. Kentucky Boys / Cotton Fields11. Long John Baldry / Easy Rider12. Dr. John / Goodnight Irene13. Johnny Cash / I Got Stripes14. Chris Thomas Kind / Rock Island Line15. Led Zeppelin / Gallows Pole 16. Aerosmith / Hangman Jury 17. Eric Bibb / On a Monday18. Odetta / Midnight Special 19. Animals / House of the Rising Sun20. Nirvana / Where Did You Sleep Last Night? 21. Rory Gallagher / Western Plain 19. Kentucky Headhunters (Ram Jam) / Black Betty20. Joe Bonamassa / The Ballad of John Henry

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Willem Breuker Kollektief! Creative Opportunity Orchestra! Hostile club owners!Saxophonist and composer, Alex Coke cannot be bound to one location. In this episode, we talk about unique collaborations with hip cinemas, bright moments in the midst of tragedy that remind us that people are good, and a tell-tale sign that the gig might go sideways: when the critiques start before downbeat. FEATURED RELEASE:Alex Coke“Iraqnophobia” (2005) Getting to Know: Alex!Musician/composer Alex Coke is a native of Dallas, Texas, who's interest in music and art led to studying flute and listening to jazz artists throughout his school years. He received his B.A. from The University of Colorado at Boulder in 1976 with an emphasis on flute performance. He went on to play, teach, tour, and record worldwide excelling on flute and saxophones as well as a variety of other woodwind instruments. An improviser at heart, Coke's eclectic perspective has led him to explore music from Be-Bop to Huddie Ledbetter, Ornette Coleman, Derek Bailey, and beyond. His flute studies have ranged from Eric Dolphy to Indian ragas on the bamboo flute as well as the extended techniques such as those researched by Robert Dick, Ann LaBerge and Wil Offermans.As a "tough Texas tenor" and featured flute and saxophone soloist on numerous projects in the USA, Europe, and Africa, Coke has had the honor of working with some of the world's most creative and diverse musicians including Tina Marsh, Steven Feld, The Creative Opportunity Orchestra, Reeds and Deeds, Accra Trane Station, KlezEdge, Gerald Wilson, Charles Tolliver, The Paradise Regained Orchestra, The John Jordan Trio, Arson, and The Mysterious Quartet from Helsinki (featuring Chris Duarte), Greezy Wheels, The Alejandro Escovedo Orchestra, White Denim, and many others. Watch the interview on our YouTube channel here!

El programa d'aquesta setmana presenta un doble CD del gran, irrepetible i mestre del blues per sempre: Huddie Ledbetter ( Mooringsport / Nova York). Sorprendr

     This week the final feature film from a groundbreaking genius and the directorial debut of an underappreciated talent.     A biopic on one of the most influential voices in American musical history. The debatably true story of Huddie Ledbetter and the events that would make him emerge as Lead Belly. From his early days touring Northern Texas with Blind Lemon Jefferson to his recordings for Lomax. Part legend building in it's own right, part contextualizing the life that gave the world so many enduring works. One of the best but least seen musical biographies ever made- Gordon Parks's Leadbelly.     Two connected and mirroring lives examined through the sport they love in four segments. Approaching the character's lives not just through romance but through one's desire to follow her single dream, the other's struggle to find their own path, and their mutual love for basketball. A film that has fully earned it's cult status and continues to grow it's reputation to this day- Gina Prince-Bythewood's Love & Basketball.     All that and Tyler survives a localized artic gale, Kevin makes good on his monthly delivery of disappointing heartbreak, and Dave dreams of the future onboard a Korean space hauler. Join us, won't you?Episode 192: 12-String & Basketball

Deeper Roots goes deeper this Friday morning. We’ll be sharing the songs of tradition and folk blues from an artist who opened up a world to a generation of followers in the 1940s and 1950s. With the witting arm of Alan Lomax as his promoter and benefactor, Huddie Ledbetter’s music would get wings and find its place in America’s traditional music lexicon. This week’s show, like last week’s Bill Monroe special, revisits the music that he was identified with, much of which he is credited with bringing into this world, or at least opening our eyes to. We’ll hear from Doug Sahm, Red Smiley, Odetta, The Weavers, Bob Dylan, and many others on a show that celebrates a giant of America’s songbook. Tune into KOWS radio every Friday morning at 9 Pacific for a new episode of a show that’s heading into it’s ninth year here on KOWS Community Radio.

Perhaps no man is more qualified to sing a song of impending execution than the "Murderous Minstrel" himself, Huddie Ledbetter.

July, 25, 2020 My guests this month on Live Culture will be Film Director Josephine Decker and Film Editor David Barker to discuss their new film Shirley, which won the 2020 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Auteur Filmmaking. In the Film, renowned horror writer Shirley Jackson is on the precipice of writing her masterpiece when the arrival of newlyweds upends her meticulous routine and heightens tensions in her already tempestuous relationship with her philandering husband. The middle-aged couple, prone to ruthless barbs and copious afternoon cocktails, begins to toy mercilessly with the naïve young couple at their door. Shirley, which Opened Digitally on June 5th, Stars Elizabeth Moss in the title role, and was written by Sarah Gubbins, based on the book of the same name, written by Susan Scarf Merrell. Josephine Decker has said about Shirley Jackson: "I remember reading some critic or biographer noting that Shirley wasn’t a political writer. But I believe that Shirley grounded the political in the personal and that this is why her work continues to resonate today. Her stories are so deeply human that they are also timeless. She battled racism, classism and sexism through the unusual, the psychological, the manipulative rhythms of the subconscious.” Join Josephine, David and I for a conversation about the mechanics behind making the film, with its distinctive coloring, camera style, and wonderfully detailed sets and costumes. As the film came out during the pandemic we discuss the logistics of that, and how Jackson herself is memorialized in this deeply creative blending of her life and her fiction, creating a new reality that very much speaks to the now. A feast for the eyes and ears, the film also has a remarkable soundtrack including original music by Tamar-kali and tracks by Huddie Ledbetter, The Bell Sisters and Clarence Ashley. watch the trailer here for more about the film see here Shirley DIRECTED BY Josephine Decker WRITTEN BY by Sarah Gubbins ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK by Tamar-kali STARRING Elisabeth Moss Odessa Young Michael Stuhlbarg Logan Lerman Distributed by NEON

In Leadbelly Part 2 we continue the story of Huddie Ledbetter, one of the most influential musicians of all time. We cover his early adult life in Dallas, his collaboration with the great Blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson, and hear some of the music that earned him the moniker “King of the Twelve String Guitar.” He was known for his tumultuous life as well as his musical genius. We explore his first arrest, his escape from prison that made him a wanted fugitive, his new life under the alias “Walter Boyd” and the murder that would change the course of his life forever. Join me for Part 2 as we uncover more of the legend behind the man we now know as Leadbelly.

Huddie Ledbetter was easily one of the most influential American musicians of all time, yet today he has become one of the most historically overlooked. Musical artists like Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, the White Stripes, and countless others have been covering Huddie's songs for almost a century, however, most listeners have never heard his name. The life of Ledbetter, more widely known as Leadbelly, was fraught with complications, repressed by a world policed with Jim Crow laws, and often filled with violence. Leadbelly was viewed by audiences as a murderer and criminal, but also as a poet gifted with an incredible musical talent. Separating and understanding the real man from the legend is a difficult task. His life was as epic as his music, and we're going to explore all of it, starting with this first episode on the life of the legendary Leadbelly, King of the Twelve String Guitar.

Dave and Katy met in 2001 at a songwriter’s night in Shreveport, Louisiana—their hometown. Both write songs in the Americana/folk rock/country vein. In 2003, the couple moved to New Orleans, and over the years they’ve continued to perform at coffeeshops and small venues, collaborating in various bands.Dave and Katy are members of Friends of Leadbelly, a group of musicians dedicated to promoting the legacy of North Louisiana songwriter Huddie Ledbetter. And over the last few years, Katy has become known for her work in children’s music with Confetti Park and has performed at numerous festivals New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, French Quarter Fest, the Folk Art Fest, Mid-City Bayou Boogaloo, Beignet Fest, Creole Tomato Fest, and Red River Revel.Katy also sings with Steve Howell & The Mighty Men out of the Ark-La-Tex area, who perform country blues and early jazz standards. This musical friendship was first established in 2002. (Both Dave and Katy sing on their album “Good As I Been to You.”) These are the musicians behind the new release, “I Dream of Water.”

Perhaps no man is more qualified to sing a song of impending execution than the "Murderous Minstrel" himself, Huddie Ledbetter.

In terms of identifying and cultivating a cultural identity here in Shreveport, this is the most important conversation we’ve recorded. Grant Nuckolls, proprietor of Twisted Root and Jacquelyn’s, interviews Winston Hall, a local musician, songwriter, and historian. These two have known each other for a few years and have a passion for our local historical music scene - from Huddie Ledbetter to Van Cliburn to James Burton, the Hayride, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Elvis leaving the building and Stan’s Records selling to Robert Allen Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) in Minnesota . . . “It’s in the dirt” says Winston Hall. Shreveport history, Louisiana history, American history, and world history were made with the music that originated here in Bottoms blues clubs, music that Elvis heard, that the Beatles heard, and sounds that were broadcast around the country on the KWKH Hayride. So listen in and pay close attention to the discussion of a Shreveport Music Museum. We deserve to think better of ourselves and celebrate our history. WHY BUILD IT? The tourists are already coming, WHY NOT build it?

How did Huddie Ledbetter get his famous nickname?

Welcome to episode twenty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at “Rock Island Line” by Lonnie Donegan. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  —-more—-Erratum I say in the episode that rationing in the UK ended the day that Elvis recorded “That’s All Right Mama”. In actual fact, rationing ended on July 4, 1954, while Elvis recorded his track on July 5.   Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The resource I’ve used more than any in this entry is Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg.  I thought when I bought it that given that Bragg is a musician, it would probably not be a particularly good book, and I only picked it up to see if there was anything in it that I should address, given it came out last year and sold quite well, but I was absolutely blown away by how good it actually is, and I can’t imagine anyone who listens to this podcast not enjoying it. This five-CD box set of Lonnie Donegan recordings contains over a hundred tracks for ten pounds, and is quite astonishing value. And this collection of Lead Belly recordings is about as good an overview as you’re likely to get of his work.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? And why not back the Kickstarter for a book based on the first twenty episodes? Transcript In this series, so far we’ve only looked at musicians in the US — other than a brief mention of the Crew-Cuts, who were from Canada. And this makes sense when it comes to rock and roll history, because up until the 1960s rock and roll was primarily a North American genre, and anyone outside the US was an imitator, and would have little or no influence on the people who were making the more important music. But this is the point in which Britain really starts to enter our story. And to explain how Britain’s rock and roll culture developed, I first have to tell you about the trad jazz boom. In the fifties, jazz was taking some very strange turns. There’s a cycle that all popular genres in any art-forms seem to go through – they start off as super-simplistic, discarding all the frippery of whatever previous genre was currently disappearing up itself, and prizing simplicity, self-expression, and the idea that anyone can create art. They then get a second generation who want to do more sophisticated, interesting, things. And then you get a couple of things happening at once — you get a group of people who move even further on from the “sophisticated” work, and who create art that’s even more intellectually complex and which only appeals to people who have a lot of time to study the work intensely (this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing) and another group whose reaction is to say “let’s go back to the simple original style”. We’ll see this playing out in rock music over the course of the seventies, in particular, but in the fifties it was happening in jazz. As artists like John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus were busy pushing the form to its harmonic limits, going for ever-more-complex music, there was a countermovement to create simpler, more blues-based music. In the US, this mostly took the form of rhythm and blues, but there was also a whole movement of youngish men who went looking for the obscure heroes of previous generations of jazz and blues music, and brought them out of obscurity. That movement didn’t get much traction in the jazz scene in America — though it did play into the burgeoning folk scene, which we’ll talk about later. But it made a huge difference in the UK. In the UK, there were a lot of musicians — mostly rich, young, white men, though they came from all social classes and backgrounds, and mostly based in London — who idolised the music made in New Orleans in the 1920s. These people — people like Humphrey Lyttleton, Chris Barber, George Melly, Ken Colyer, and Acker Bilk — thought not only that bebop and modern jazz were too intellectual, but many of them thought that even the Kansas City jazz of the 1930s which had led to swing — the music of people like Count Basie or Jesse Stone — was too far from the true great music, which was the 1920s hot Dixieland jazz of people like King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, and Louis Armstrong. Any jazz since then was suspect, and they set out to recreate that 1920s music as accurately as they could. They were playing traditional jazz – or trad, as it was known. These rather earnest young men were very much the same kind of people as those who would, ten years later, form bands like the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and the Animals, and they saw themselves as scholars as much as those later musicians did. They were looking at the history, and trying to figure out how to recapture the work of other people. They were working for cultural preservation, not to create new music themselves as such — although many of them became important musicians in their own right. Skiffle started out as a way for trad musicians who played brass instruments to save their lips. When the band that at various times was led by Ken Colyer or Chris Barber used to play their sets, they’d take a break in the middle so their lips wouldn’t wear out, and originally this break would be taken up with Colyer’s brother Bill playing his old seventy-eight records and explaining the history of the music to the audience — that was the kind of audience that this kind of music had, the kind that wanted a lecture about the history of the songs. The kind of people who would, in fact, be listening to this podcast if podcasts had been around in the late forties and early fifties. But eventually, the band figured out that you could do something similar while still playing live music. If the horn players either switched to string instruments for a bit, played percussion on things like washboards, or just sat out, they could take a break from their main set of playing Dixieland music and instead play old folk and blues songs. They could explain the stories behind those songs in the same way that Bill Colyer had explained the stories behind his old jazz records, but they could incorporate it into the performance much more naturally. And so in the middle of the Dixieland jazz, you’d get a breakout set, featuring a lineup that varied from week to week but would usually be Chris Barber on double bass instead of his usual trombone, Colyer and Tony Donegan on guitar, Alexis Korner on mandolin, and Bill Colyer on washboard percussion. And when, for an early radio broadcast, Bill Colyer was asked what kind of music this small group were playing, he called it “skiffle”. And so Ken Colyer’s Skiffle Group was born. In its original meaning “skiffle” was one of many slang terms that had been used in the 1920s in the US for a rent party. It was never in hugely wide use, but it was referenced in, for example, the song “Chicago Skiffle” by Jimmy O’Bryant’s Famous Original Washboard Band: [excerpt: “Chicago Skiffle”] We haven’t talked about rent parties before, but they were a common thing in the early part of the twentieth century, especially in black communities, and especially in Harlem in New York. If the rent was due and you didn’t have enough money to pay for it, you’d clear some space in your flat, get in some food and alcohol, find someone you knew who could play the piano, or even a small band, and let everyone know there was a party on. They’d pay at the door, and hopefully you’d get enough money to cover the cost of your food, some money for the piano player, and the rent for the next month. Many musicians could make a decent living playing a different rent party every day, and musicians like Fats Waller and James P. Johnson spent much of their early careers playing rent parties. If a band, rather than a single piano player, played at a rent party, it would not be a big professional band, but it would be more likely to be a jug band or a coffee pot band — people using improvised household equipment for percussion along with string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and similar cheap and portable instruments. This kind of music would have gone unremembered, were it not for Dan Burley. Dan Burley was a pioneering black journalist who worked as an editor for Ebony and Jet magazines, and also edited most of Elijah Mohammed’s writings, as well as writing a bestselling dictionary of Jive slang. He was also, though, a musician — he’d been a classmate of Lionel Hampton, in fact, and co-wrote several songs with him — and in the late 1940s he put together a band which also included Brownie and Sticks McGhee (although Sticks was then performing under the name of “Globe Trotter McGhee”). They called themselves Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys, and it was them that Bill Colyer was remembering when he gave the style its name. [excerpt: Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys: “South Side Shake”]. The trad jazz scene in Britain, like the overlapping traditional folk scene, had a great number of left-wing activists, and so at least some of the bands were organised on left-wing, co-operative, lines. That was certainly the case for Ken Colyer’s band, but then Colyer wanted to sack the bass player and the drummer, because he didn’t think they could play well, and the guitarist, now calling himself Lonnie Donegan after his favourite blues singer, because he hated him as a person. As Chris Barber later said, “Anyone who’s ever dealt with Lonnie hates his guts, but that’s no reason to fire him.” The band weren’t too keen on this “firing half of what was meant to be a workers’ co-operative” idea, took a vote, and kicked Colyer and his brother out instead. Colyer then made several statements about how he’d been going to leave them anyway, because they kept doing things like wanting to play ragtime or Duke Ellington songs or other things that weren’t completely pure New Orleans jazz. The result was two rival bands, one headed by Colyer, and one headed by Chris Barber, which became known unsurprisingly as the Chris Barber band. Barber is one of the most important figures in British jazz, although he entered the world of music almost accidentally. He was in the audience watching a band play when the trombonist leaned over in the middle of the show and asked him if he wanted to buy a trombone. Barber asked how much it was, and the trombonist said “five pounds ten”. As Barber happened to have exactly five pounds and ten shillings in his pocket at the time, and he couldn’t see any good reason *not* to own a trombone, he ended up with it, and then he had to learn how to play it. But he’d learned well enough that by this point he was the obvious choice to lead the band. Both bands were still wanted by the record label, and so at short order the Chris Barber band had to go into the studio to record an album that would compete with the second album by Colyer. But they didn’t have enough material to make an album, or at least not enough material that wasn’t being done by every other trad band in London. So then the idea struck them to record some of the skiffle music they’d been playing in between sets, as a bit of album filler. They weren’t the first band to do this — in fact Colyer’s own band had done the same some months previously. Colyer’s new band featured clarinetist Acker Bilk, who would later become the very first British person ever to have a number one record in the US, and it also featured Alexis Korner in its skiffle group. That skiffle group recorded several songs on the first album by Colyer’s new lineup, including this Lead Belly song: [excerpt: Ken Colyer, “Midnight Special”] That’s Ken Colyer, Bill Colyer, Alexis Korner, and Mickey Ashman. And that gives an idea of the polite form of skiffle that Colyer played. But what the members of the Barber band came up with, more or less accidentally, was something that was a lot closer to the rock and roll that was just starting to be a force in the US than it was to anything else that was being recorded in the UK. In fact there’s a very strong argument to be made that rock music — the music from the sixties onwards, made by guitar bands — as opposed to rock and roll — a music created in the 1950s, originally mostly by black people, and often featuring piano and saxophone — had its origins in these tracks as much as it did in anything created in the USA. The important thing about this — something that is very easy to miss with hindsight, but is absolutely crucial — is that these skiffle groups were the first bands in Britain where the guitar was front and centre. Normally, the guitar would be an instrument at the back, in the rhythm section — Britain didn’t have the same tradition of country and blues singers as the US did, and it was still more or less unknown to have a singer accompanying themselves on a guitar, as opposed to the piano. That changed with skiffle. And in particular, a record that changed the world almost as much as “Rock Around the Clock” had was this band’s version of “Rock Island Line”, featuring Lonnie Donegan on vocals. “Rock Island Line” is a song that’s usually credited to Huddie Ledbetter, who is better known as Lead Belly — but, as with many things, the story is a little more complicated than that. Ledbetter was one of the pioneers of what we now think of as folk music. He had spent multiple terms in prison — for carrying a pistol, for murder, for attempted murder, and for assault — and the legend has it that at least twice he managed to get himself pardoned by singing for the State Governor. The legend here is slightly inaccurate — but not as inaccurate as it may sound. Ledbetter was primarily a blues musician, but he was taken under the wing of John and Alan Lomax, two left-wing collectors of folk songs, who brought him to an audience primarily made up of white urban leftists — a very different audience from that of most black performers of the time. As well as being a performer, Ledbetter would assist the Lomaxes in their work recording folk songs, by going into prisons and talking to the prisoners there, explaining what it was the Lomaxes were doing — a black man who had spent much of his life in prison was far more likely to be able to explain things in a way that prisoners understood than two white academics were going to be able to. Ledbetter was, undoubtedly, a songwriter of real talent, and he came up with songs like “The Bourgeois Blues”: [Excerpt: Lead Belly, “The Bourgeois Blues”] But “Rock Island Line” itself isn’t an original song. It dates back to 1930, only a few years before Lead Belly’s recording, and it was written by Clarence Wilson, an engine-wiper for the Rock Island railway company. Wilson was also part of the Rock Island Colored Quartet, one of several vocal groups who were supported by the railway as a PR move to boost its brand. In that iteration of the song, it was essentially an advertising jingle. But within four years it had been taken up by singers in prisons, and had transmuted into the kind of train song that talks about the train to heaven and redemption from sin: [excerpt Kelly Pace: “Rock Island Line”] In this iteration, it’s closer to another song popularised by Lead Belly, “Midnight Special”, or to Rosetta Tharpe’s “This Train”, than it is to an advertisement for a particularly good train line. Lead Belly took the song for his own, and added verses. He also added spoken introductions, which varied every time, but eventually coalesced into something like this: [excerpt Lead Belly “Rock Island Line”] And it’s that song, an advertising jingle that had become a gospel song that had become a song about a trickster figure of a train driver, that Lonnie Donegan performed, with members of Chris Barber’s Jazz Band. The song had become popular among trad jazzers, and one version of “Rock Island Line” that Donegan would definitely have heard is George Melly’s version from 1951. Unlike Donegan’s version, this was never a hit, and Melly later admitted that this lack of success was one of the reasons he wasn’t a particular fan of Donegan — but Donegan definitely attended a concert where Melly performed the song, several years before recording his own version. Melly’s version was so unsuccessful, in fact, that it seems never to have been reissued in any format that will play on modern equipment — it’s not only never been released as a download or on CD, it’s never even been released on *vinyl* to the best of my knowledge! — and it’s never been digitised by any of the many resources I consult for archival 78s, so for the first time I’m unable to play an excerpt of a track I’m talking about. The only digital copy of it I’ve ever been able to find out about was when an Internet radio show devoted to old 78s played it on one episode nearly six years ago, but the MP3 of that episode is no longer in the station’s archives, and the DJ hasn’t responded to my emails. Sorry about that. So I’ve no idea to what extent George Melly’s version was responsible for Donegan choosing that song to record, but it’s safe to say that Melly’s version didn’t have whatever magic Donegan’s had that made him into arguably the most influential British musician of his generation. Donegan’s version starts similarly to Lead Belly’s, but he tells the story differently: [excerpt: Lonnie Donegan, “Rock Island Line”] In his version, the line runs down to New Orleans, which is not where the real-life Rock Island Line runs — Billy Bragg suggests in his excellent book on skiffle that this was a mishearing by Donegan of “Mule-ine”, from one of Lead Belly’s recordings — and instead of having to wait “in the hole” — wait at the side while another train goes past, the driver lies in order to avoid paying a toll (which wasn’t a feature on American railways). Amazingly, Donegan’s version of the song’s intro became the standard, even for American musicians who presumably had some idea of American geography or the workings of American railways. Here, for example, is the start of Johnny Cash’s version from 1957: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash “Rock Island Line”] But it wasn’t the story that made Donegan’s version successful — rather, it was the way it became a wailing, caterwauling, whirlwind of energy, unlike anything else ever previously recorded by a British musician, and far more visceral even than most American rock and roll records of the period. [excerpt: Lonnie Donegan “Rock Island Line”] “Rock Island Line” was originally put out as an album track on the Chris Barber album, but was released as a single under Donegan’s name a year later, and shot to number one in the UK charts. But while it seemed like it was just a novelty hit at first, it soon became apparent that it was much more than that — and it could be argued that, other than “Rock Around the Clock”, it was the most important single record we’ve covered here. Because “Rock Island Line” created the skiffle craze, and without the skiffle craze everything would be totally different. Soon there were dozens of bands, up and down the country, playing whitebread versions of 1920s and 30s black American folk songs. The thing about the skiffle craze was that, unlike every popular music format before — and most since — skiffle could be emulated by *anyone*. It helped if you had a guitar or a banjo, of course, or maybe a harmonica, but the other instruments that were typically used were made out of household items — a washboard, played with a thimble; a teachest bass, made with a teachest and a broom handle; possibly a jug, or comb and paper. (Of course, ironically, many of these things later became obsolete, and now the only place you’re likely to find a washboard is in a music shop, being sold at an outrageously high price for people who want to play skiffle music). This was in stark contrast to other musical genres. An electric guitar, or a piano, or a saxophone or trumpet or what have you, required a significant investment, money that most people simply didn’t have. Because one thing we’ve not mentioned yet, but which is hugely important here, is *just how poor* Britain was in 1954. The USA was going through a post-war boom, because it was the only major industrialised nation in the world that hadn’t had much of its industrial capacity destroyed in the war, and so it had become the world’s salesman. If you wanted to buy consumer goods of any type, you bought American, because America still had factories, and it had people who could work in them rather than having to rebuild bombed-out cities. Much of the story of rock and roll ties in with this — this is the time when America was in the ascendant as a world power. The UK, on the other hand, had gone through two devastating wars in a forty-year period, and basically had to rebuild all its major cities from scratch. And it wasn’t helped by the US suddenly, in August 1945. withdrawing all its help for Britain in what had been the Lend-Lease programme. 55% of the UK’s GDP in the second world war had been devoted to the war, and it ended up having to take out a massive loan from the US to replace the previous aid it had been given. That loan was agreed in 1946, and the final instalment of it was paid in 2006. The result of this economic hardship was that the post-war years were a time of terrible deprivation in the UK, to the extent that rationing only ended in July 1954 — nine years after World War II ended, and a week before “Rock Island Line” was recorded. (In fact, rationing in the UK ended on the same day that Elvis Presley recorded “That’s All Right Mama”, so if we want to draw a line in the sand and say “this is where the 1950s of the popular imagination, as opposed to the 1950s of the calendar, started”, that would be as good a date as any to set). Bear all this in mind as the story goes forward, and it’ll explain a lot about British attitudes to America, in particular — Britain looked to America with a combination of awe and envy, resentment and star-struck admiration, and a lot of that comes from the way that the two countries were developing economically during this time. So, around the country, teenagers were looking for an outlet for their music, and they could easily see themselves as Lonnie Donegan, the lad from Scotland brought up in London. Half the teenagers in the country bought themselves guitars, or made basses out of teachests. And Lonnie Donegan was even a big star in the US! All the music papers were saying so! Maybe, just maybe, it was possible for you to go and become famous in the US as well! Because, surprisingly, Donegan’s record did make the top ten in the pop charts in the USA, in what became the first example of a long line of white British men with guitars gaining commercial success in the US by selling the music of the US’ own black people back to white teenagers. Donegan wasn’t a big star over there, but he was close enough that the British music papers, buoyed by patriotism, could pretend he was. In fact, Donegan wasn’t quite a one-hit wonder in the USA — he was a two-hit wonder, first with “Rock Island Line”, and a few years later with the novelty song “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?” — but he still made more of an impact there than any other British musician of his generation. [excerpt: Lonnie Donegan “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?”] Any version of “Rock Island Line” recorded by an American after 1955 would be based around Donegan’s version. Bobby Darin’s first single, for example, was a cover version of Donegan’s record, in a reversal of the usual process which would involve British people copying the latest American hit for the domestic market. It was the first time since Ray Noble in the 1930s that a British musician had achieved any kind of level of popular success in the USA at all, and the British music public were proud of Donegan. Except, that is, for the trad jazz fans who were Donegan’s original audience. For a lot of them, Donegan was polluting the purity of the music. The trad jazz *musicians* usually didn’t mind this. But the purists in the music papers really, really, disliked Donegan. Not that credibility mattered — after all, as the session guitarist Bert Weedon said to Donegan, “You’re the first man to have made any money out of the guitar. Bloody well done!” And while Donegan didn’t make any more than his initial sixteen pound session fee — his fee for the entire Chris Barber album from which “Rock Island Line” was taken — from the initial recording, he did indeed become financially very successful from his follow-up hits like “Puttin’ on the Style”: [Excerpt: Lonnie Donegan “Puttin’ on the Style”] That was famously parodied by Peter Sellers: [excerpt: Peter Sellers “Puttin’ on the Smile”] But there’s another recording of that song which probably shows its cultural impact better. This is a very, very, low-fidelity recording of a teenage skiffle group performing the song in 1957. Apologies for the poor quality, but it’s frankly a miracle this survives at all: [excerpt: The Quarrymen, “Puttin’ on the Style”] Later, on the same day that recording was made, the sixteen-year-old boy singing lead there would be introduced properly for the first time to another teenager, who he would invite to join his skiffle group. But it’ll be a while yet before we talk about John Lennon and Paul McCartney properly.

Welcome to episode twenty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at "Rock Island Line" by Lonnie Donegan. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.  ----more----Erratum I say in the episode that rationing in the UK ended the day that Elvis recorded "That's All Right Mama". In actual fact, rationing ended on July 4, 1954, while Elvis recorded his track on July 5.   Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. The resource I've used more than any in this entry is Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World by Billy Bragg.  I thought when I bought it that given that Bragg is a musician, it would probably not be a particularly good book, and I only picked it up to see if there was anything in it that I should address, given it came out last year and sold quite well, but I was absolutely blown away by how good it actually is, and I can't imagine anyone who listens to this podcast not enjoying it. This five-CD box set of Lonnie Donegan recordings contains over a hundred tracks for ten pounds, and is quite astonishing value. And this collection of Lead Belly recordings is about as good an overview as you're likely to get of his work.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? And why not back the Kickstarter for a book based on the first twenty episodes? Transcript In this series, so far we've only looked at musicians in the US -- other than a brief mention of the Crew-Cuts, who were from Canada. And this makes sense when it comes to rock and roll history, because up until the 1960s rock and roll was primarily a North American genre, and anyone outside the US was an imitator, and would have little or no influence on the people who were making the more important music. But this is the point in which Britain really starts to enter our story. And to explain how Britain's rock and roll culture developed, I first have to tell you about the trad jazz boom. In the fifties, jazz was taking some very strange turns. There's a cycle that all popular genres in any art-forms seem to go through – they start off as super-simplistic, discarding all the frippery of whatever previous genre was currently disappearing up itself, and prizing simplicity, self-expression, and the idea that anyone can create art. They then get a second generation who want to do more sophisticated, interesting, things. And then you get a couple of things happening at once -- you get a group of people who move even further on from the "sophisticated" work, and who create art that's even more intellectually complex and which only appeals to people who have a lot of time to study the work intensely (this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing) and another group whose reaction is to say "let's go back to the simple original style". We'll see this playing out in rock music over the course of the seventies, in particular, but in the fifties it was happening in jazz. As artists like John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus were busy pushing the form to its harmonic limits, going for ever-more-complex music, there was a countermovement to create simpler, more blues-based music. In the US, this mostly took the form of rhythm and blues, but there was also a whole movement of youngish men who went looking for the obscure heroes of previous generations of jazz and blues music, and brought them out of obscurity. That movement didn't get much traction in the jazz scene in America -- though it did play into the burgeoning folk scene, which we'll talk about later. But it made a huge difference in the UK. In the UK, there were a lot of musicians -- mostly rich, young, white men, though they came from all social classes and backgrounds, and mostly based in London -- who idolised the music made in New Orleans in the 1920s. These people -- people like Humphrey Lyttleton, Chris Barber, George Melly, Ken Colyer, and Acker Bilk -- thought not only that bebop and modern jazz were too intellectual, but many of them thought that even the Kansas City jazz of the 1930s which had led to swing -- the music of people like Count Basie or Jesse Stone -- was too far from the true great music, which was the 1920s hot Dixieland jazz of people like King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, and Louis Armstrong. Any jazz since then was suspect, and they set out to recreate that 1920s music as accurately as they could. They were playing traditional jazz – or trad, as it was known. These rather earnest young men were very much the same kind of people as those who would, ten years later, form bands like the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, and the Animals, and they saw themselves as scholars as much as those later musicians did. They were looking at the history, and trying to figure out how to recapture the work of other people. They were working for cultural preservation, not to create new music themselves as such -- although many of them became important musicians in their own right. Skiffle started out as a way for trad musicians who played brass instruments to save their lips. When the band that at various times was led by Ken Colyer or Chris Barber used to play their sets, they'd take a break in the middle so their lips wouldn't wear out, and originally this break would be taken up with Colyer's brother Bill playing his old seventy-eight records and explaining the history of the music to the audience -- that was the kind of audience that this kind of music had, the kind that wanted a lecture about the history of the songs. The kind of people who would, in fact, be listening to this podcast if podcasts had been around in the late forties and early fifties. But eventually, the band figured out that you could do something similar while still playing live music. If the horn players either switched to string instruments for a bit, played percussion on things like washboards, or just sat out, they could take a break from their main set of playing Dixieland music and instead play old folk and blues songs. They could explain the stories behind those songs in the same way that Bill Colyer had explained the stories behind his old jazz records, but they could incorporate it into the performance much more naturally. And so in the middle of the Dixieland jazz, you'd get a breakout set, featuring a lineup that varied from week to week but would usually be Chris Barber on double bass instead of his usual trombone, Colyer and Tony Donegan on guitar, Alexis Korner on mandolin, and Bill Colyer on washboard percussion. And when, for an early radio broadcast, Bill Colyer was asked what kind of music this small group were playing, he called it "skiffle". And so Ken Colyer's Skiffle Group was born. In its original meaning "skiffle" was one of many slang terms that had been used in the 1920s in the US for a rent party. It was never in hugely wide use, but it was referenced in, for example, the song "Chicago Skiffle" by Jimmy O'Bryant's Famous Original Washboard Band: [excerpt: "Chicago Skiffle"] We haven't talked about rent parties before, but they were a common thing in the early part of the twentieth century, especially in black communities, and especially in Harlem in New York. If the rent was due and you didn't have enough money to pay for it, you'd clear some space in your flat, get in some food and alcohol, find someone you knew who could play the piano, or even a small band, and let everyone know there was a party on. They'd pay at the door, and hopefully you'd get enough money to cover the cost of your food, some money for the piano player, and the rent for the next month. Many musicians could make a decent living playing a different rent party every day, and musicians like Fats Waller and James P. Johnson spent much of their early careers playing rent parties. If a band, rather than a single piano player, played at a rent party, it would not be a big professional band, but it would be more likely to be a jug band or a coffee pot band -- people using improvised household equipment for percussion along with string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and similar cheap and portable instruments. This kind of music would have gone unremembered, were it not for Dan Burley. Dan Burley was a pioneering black journalist who worked as an editor for Ebony and Jet magazines, and also edited most of Elijah Mohammed's writings, as well as writing a bestselling dictionary of Jive slang. He was also, though, a musician -- he'd been a classmate of Lionel Hampton, in fact, and co-wrote several songs with him -- and in the late 1940s he put together a band which also included Brownie and Sticks McGhee (although Sticks was then performing under the name of "Globe Trotter McGhee"). They called themselves Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys, and it was them that Bill Colyer was remembering when he gave the style its name. [excerpt: Dan Burley and His Skiffle Boys: "South Side Shake"]. The trad jazz scene in Britain, like the overlapping traditional folk scene, had a great number of left-wing activists, and so at least some of the bands were organised on left-wing, co-operative, lines. That was certainly the case for Ken Colyer's band, but then Colyer wanted to sack the bass player and the drummer, because he didn't think they could play well, and the guitarist, now calling himself Lonnie Donegan after his favourite blues singer, because he hated him as a person. As Chris Barber later said, "Anyone who’s ever dealt with Lonnie hates his guts, but that’s no reason to fire him." The band weren't too keen on this "firing half of what was meant to be a workers' co-operative" idea, took a vote, and kicked Colyer and his brother out instead. Colyer then made several statements about how he'd been going to leave them anyway, because they kept doing things like wanting to play ragtime or Duke Ellington songs or other things that weren't completely pure New Orleans jazz. The result was two rival bands, one headed by Colyer, and one headed by Chris Barber, which became known unsurprisingly as the Chris Barber band. Barber is one of the most important figures in British jazz, although he entered the world of music almost accidentally. He was in the audience watching a band play when the trombonist leaned over in the middle of the show and asked him if he wanted to buy a trombone. Barber asked how much it was, and the trombonist said "five pounds ten". As Barber happened to have exactly five pounds and ten shillings in his pocket at the time, and he couldn't see any good reason *not* to own a trombone, he ended up with it, and then he had to learn how to play it. But he'd learned well enough that by this point he was the obvious choice to lead the band. Both bands were still wanted by the record label, and so at short order the Chris Barber band had to go into the studio to record an album that would compete with the second album by Colyer. But they didn't have enough material to make an album, or at least not enough material that wasn't being done by every other trad band in London. So then the idea struck them to record some of the skiffle music they'd been playing in between sets, as a bit of album filler. They weren't the first band to do this -- in fact Colyer's own band had done the same some months previously. Colyer's new band featured clarinetist Acker Bilk, who would later become the very first British person ever to have a number one record in the US, and it also featured Alexis Korner in its skiffle group. That skiffle group recorded several songs on the first album by Colyer's new lineup, including this Lead Belly song: [excerpt: Ken Colyer, "Midnight Special"] That's Ken Colyer, Bill Colyer, Alexis Korner, and Mickey Ashman. And that gives an idea of the polite form of skiffle that Colyer played. But what the members of the Barber band came up with, more or less accidentally, was something that was a lot closer to the rock and roll that was just starting to be a force in the US than it was to anything else that was being recorded in the UK. In fact there's a very strong argument to be made that rock music -- the music from the sixties onwards, made by guitar bands -- as opposed to rock and roll -- a music created in the 1950s, originally mostly by black people, and often featuring piano and saxophone -- had its origins in these tracks as much as it did in anything created in the USA. The important thing about this -- something that is very easy to miss with hindsight, but is absolutely crucial -- is that these skiffle groups were the first bands in Britain where the guitar was front and centre. Normally, the guitar would be an instrument at the back, in the rhythm section -- Britain didn't have the same tradition of country and blues singers as the US did, and it was still more or less unknown to have a singer accompanying themselves on a guitar, as opposed to the piano. That changed with skiffle. And in particular, a record that changed the world almost as much as "Rock Around the Clock" had was this band's version of "Rock Island Line", featuring Lonnie Donegan on vocals. "Rock Island Line" is a song that's usually credited to Huddie Ledbetter, who is better known as Lead Belly -- but, as with many things, the story is a little more complicated than that. Ledbetter was one of the pioneers of what we now think of as folk music. He had spent multiple terms in prison -- for carrying a pistol, for murder, for attempted murder, and for assault -- and the legend has it that at least twice he managed to get himself pardoned by singing for the State Governor. The legend here is slightly inaccurate -- but not as inaccurate as it may sound. Ledbetter was primarily a blues musician, but he was taken under the wing of John and Alan Lomax, two left-wing collectors of folk songs, who brought him to an audience primarily made up of white urban leftists -- a very different audience from that of most black performers of the time. As well as being a performer, Ledbetter would assist the Lomaxes in their work recording folk songs, by going into prisons and talking to the prisoners there, explaining what it was the Lomaxes were doing -- a black man who had spent much of his life in prison was far more likely to be able to explain things in a way that prisoners understood than two white academics were going to be able to. Ledbetter was, undoubtedly, a songwriter of real talent, and he came up with songs like "The Bourgeois Blues": [Excerpt: Lead Belly, "The Bourgeois Blues"] But "Rock Island Line" itself isn't an original song. It dates back to 1930, only a few years before Lead Belly's recording, and it was written by Clarence Wilson, an engine-wiper for the Rock Island railway company. Wilson was also part of the Rock Island Colored Quartet, one of several vocal groups who were supported by the railway as a PR move to boost its brand. In that iteration of the song, it was essentially an advertising jingle. But within four years it had been taken up by singers in prisons, and had transmuted into the kind of train song that talks about the train to heaven and redemption from sin: [excerpt Kelly Pace: "Rock Island Line"] In this iteration, it's closer to another song popularised by Lead Belly, "Midnight Special", or to Rosetta Tharpe's "This Train", than it is to an advertisement for a particularly good train line. Lead Belly took the song for his own, and added verses. He also added spoken introductions, which varied every time, but eventually coalesced into something like this: [excerpt Lead Belly "Rock Island Line"] And it's that song, an advertising jingle that had become a gospel song that had become a song about a trickster figure of a train driver, that Lonnie Donegan performed, with members of Chris Barber's Jazz Band. The song had become popular among trad jazzers, and one version of "Rock Island Line" that Donegan would definitely have heard is George Melly's version from 1951. Unlike Donegan's version, this was never a hit, and Melly later admitted that this lack of success was one of the reasons he wasn't a particular fan of Donegan -- but Donegan definitely attended a concert where Melly performed the song, several years before recording his own version. Melly's version was so unsuccessful, in fact, that it seems never to have been reissued in any format that will play on modern equipment -- it's not only never been released as a download or on CD, it's never even been released on *vinyl* to the best of my knowledge! -- and it's never been digitised by any of the many resources I consult for archival 78s, so for the first time I'm unable to play an excerpt of a track I'm talking about. The only digital copy of it I've ever been able to find out about was when an Internet radio show devoted to old 78s played it on one episode nearly six years ago, but the MP3 of that episode is no longer in the station's archives, and the DJ hasn't responded to my emails. Sorry about that. So I've no idea to what extent George Melly's version was responsible for Donegan choosing that song to record, but it's safe to say that Melly's version didn't have whatever magic Donegan's had that made him into arguably the most influential British musician of his generation. Donegan's version starts similarly to Lead Belly's, but he tells the story differently: [excerpt: Lonnie Donegan, "Rock Island Line"] In his version, the line runs down to New Orleans, which is not where the real-life Rock Island Line runs -- Billy Bragg suggests in his excellent book on skiffle that this was a mishearing by Donegan of "Mule-ine", from one of Lead Belly's recordings -- and instead of having to wait "in the hole" -- wait at the side while another train goes past, the driver lies in order to avoid paying a toll (which wasn't a feature on American railways). Amazingly, Donegan's version of the song's intro became the standard, even for American musicians who presumably had some idea of American geography or the workings of American railways. Here, for example, is the start of Johnny Cash's version from 1957: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash "Rock Island Line"] But it wasn't the story that made Donegan's version successful -- rather, it was the way it became a wailing, caterwauling, whirlwind of energy, unlike anything else ever previously recorded by a British musician, and far more visceral even than most American rock and roll records of the period. [excerpt: Lonnie Donegan "Rock Island Line"] "Rock Island Line" was originally put out as an album track on the Chris Barber album, but was released as a single under Donegan's name a year later, and shot to number one in the UK charts. But while it seemed like it was just a novelty hit at first, it soon became apparent that it was much more than that -- and it could be argued that, other than "Rock Around the Clock", it was the most important single record we've covered here. Because "Rock Island Line" created the skiffle craze, and without the skiffle craze everything would be totally different. Soon there were dozens of bands, up and down the country, playing whitebread versions of 1920s and 30s black American folk songs. The thing about the skiffle craze was that, unlike every popular music format before -- and most since -- skiffle could be emulated by *anyone*. It helped if you had a guitar or a banjo, of course, or maybe a harmonica, but the other instruments that were typically used were made out of household items -- a washboard, played with a thimble; a teachest bass, made with a teachest and a broom handle; possibly a jug, or comb and paper. (Of course, ironically, many of these things later became obsolete, and now the only place you're likely to find a washboard is in a music shop, being sold at an outrageously high price for people who want to play skiffle music). This was in stark contrast to other musical genres. An electric guitar, or a piano, or a saxophone or trumpet or what have you, required a significant investment, money that most people simply didn't have. Because one thing we've not mentioned yet, but which is hugely important here, is *just how poor* Britain was in 1954. The USA was going through a post-war boom, because it was the only major industrialised nation in the world that hadn't had much of its industrial capacity destroyed in the war, and so it had become the world's salesman. If you wanted to buy consumer goods of any type, you bought American, because America still had factories, and it had people who could work in them rather than having to rebuild bombed-out cities. Much of the story of rock and roll ties in with this -- this is the time when America was in the ascendant as a world power. The UK, on the other hand, had gone through two devastating wars in a forty-year period, and basically had to rebuild all its major cities from scratch. And it wasn't helped by the US suddenly, in August 1945. withdrawing all its help for Britain in what had been the Lend-Lease programme. 55% of the UK's GDP in the second world war had been devoted to the war, and it ended up having to take out a massive loan from the US to replace the previous aid it had been given. That loan was agreed in 1946, and the final instalment of it was paid in 2006. The result of this economic hardship was that the post-war years were a time of terrible deprivation in the UK, to the extent that rationing only ended in July 1954 -- nine years after World War II ended, and a week before "Rock Island Line" was recorded. (In fact, rationing in the UK ended on the same day that Elvis Presley recorded "That's All Right Mama", so if we want to draw a line in the sand and say "this is where the 1950s of the popular imagination, as opposed to the 1950s of the calendar, started", that would be as good a date as any to set). Bear all this in mind as the story goes forward, and it'll explain a lot about British attitudes to America, in particular -- Britain looked to America with a combination of awe and envy, resentment and star-struck admiration, and a lot of that comes from the way that the two countries were developing economically during this time. So, around the country, teenagers were looking for an outlet for their music, and they could easily see themselves as Lonnie Donegan, the lad from Scotland brought up in London. Half the teenagers in the country bought themselves guitars, or made basses out of teachests. And Lonnie Donegan was even a big star in the US! All the music papers were saying so! Maybe, just maybe, it was possible for you to go and become famous in the US as well! Because, surprisingly, Donegan's record did make the top ten in the pop charts in the USA, in what became the first example of a long line of white British men with guitars gaining commercial success in the US by selling the music of the US' own black people back to white teenagers. Donegan wasn't a big star over there, but he was close enough that the British music papers, buoyed by patriotism, could pretend he was. In fact, Donegan wasn't quite a one-hit wonder in the USA -- he was a two-hit wonder, first with "Rock Island Line", and a few years later with the novelty song "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?" -- but he still made more of an impact there than any other British musician of his generation. [excerpt: Lonnie Donegan “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?”] Any version of "Rock Island Line" recorded by an American after 1955 would be based around Donegan's version. Bobby Darin's first single, for example, was a cover version of Donegan's record, in a reversal of the usual process which would involve British people copying the latest American hit for the domestic market. It was the first time since Ray Noble in the 1930s that a British musician had achieved any kind of level of popular success in the USA at all, and the British music public were proud of Donegan. Except, that is, for the trad jazz fans who were Donegan's original audience. For a lot of them, Donegan was polluting the purity of the music. The trad jazz *musicians* usually didn't mind this. But the purists in the music papers really, really, disliked Donegan. Not that credibility mattered -- after all, as the session guitarist Bert Weedon said to Donegan, "You’re the first man to have made any money out of the guitar. Bloody well done!" And while Donegan didn't make any more than his initial sixteen pound session fee -- his fee for the entire Chris Barber album from which "Rock Island Line" was taken -- from the initial recording, he did indeed become financially very successful from his follow-up hits like "Puttin' on the Style": [Excerpt: Lonnie Donegan "Puttin' on the Style"] That was famously parodied by Peter Sellers: [excerpt: Peter Sellers "Puttin' on the Smile"] But there's another recording of that song which probably shows its cultural impact better. This is a very, very, low-fidelity recording of a teenage skiffle group performing the song in 1957. Apologies for the poor quality, but it's frankly a miracle this survives at all: [excerpt: The Quarrymen, "Puttin' on the Style"] Later, on the same day that recording was made, the sixteen-year-old boy singing lead there would be introduced properly for the first time to another teenager, who he would invite to join his skiffle group. But it'll be a while yet before we talk about John Lennon and Paul McCartney properly.

It was soooooo long ago! From the 1800's, King of the 12-Strings; Huddie Ledbetter, better know as Leadbelly! Another amazing tale of life on the road. With nothing but a skinny guitar and a blind guy, Huddie heads out on the road to Dallas, Texas, leaving the comfort brothels, saloons & 15 women a night, behind. Yup, 15 a night! From name changes, chain gangs and out running the search dogs, we cover it all in this episode about one of music's most influential folk musicians! We hope you like it, let us know below! Leave us SpeakPipe Voice Msg: www.crimeinmusic.com Twitter: www.twitter.com/crimeinmusic Jam the Gram: www.instagram.com/crimeinusic  BookFace Us: www.facebook.com/crimeinmusic

Today on Independence Day, your independent, community radio station in Bloomington, Indiana presents “Pete Seeger: Plain and Complicated.” It’s hard to know where to begin but let’s start with one of the most popular songs of the mid-20th century, The Weavers rendition of “Goodnight Irene” by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. This is a …

How did Huddie Ledbetter get his famous nickname?

I stumbled coming out of the gate, but recovered to sing what was a prison song made famous by Huddie Ledbetter, a bluesman "discovered" at Louisiana State Penitentiary in July 1933 by folklorist John Lomax. After his release from prison, "Leadbelly" would make music his career until his death in 1949. The song was later popularized by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Played in G on a National Triolian.

I stumbled coming out of the gate, but recovered to sing what was a prison song made famous by Huddie Ledbetter, a bluesman "discovered" at Louisiana State Penitentiary in July 1933 by folklorist John Lomax. After his release from prison, "Leadbelly" would make music his career until his death in 1949. The song was later popularized by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Played in G on a National Triolian.

In this episode of Bloody Angola: A Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman, they wrap up season 4 of the podcast and give you an amazing sneak peek into season 5!#thewrap #truecrime #bloodyangolapodcast #podcastBLOODY ANGOLA PODCAST: THE WRAP FULL TRANSCRIPT Jim: Hey everyone and welcome back to another edition of Bloody- Woody: Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton.Jim: And Woody Overton, we've been doing 18 episodes. This is the 19th episode of Season 4.Woody: Wow. Sounds like it's time for a wrap [crosstalk] right? Jim: It must be.Woody: That is a lot.Jim: That is a lot. And, y'all, we have so much fun doing this. We just go and go and go, and before you know it, we've got four seasons and one. But we love it that way. And so, today we thought it was fun to not only kind of wrap up the season and discuss our thoughts on the Episodes that we did drop, but give you a sneak peek into what, Woody Overton, I think is going to be our best season ever.Woody: It's absolutely going to be the best, because we got the best stuff coming up. Jim: Oh, yes.Woody: And you did the best research and we got guests and everything else.Jim: Yeah. We're raising the bar to say the least for Season 5. But let's talk about Season 4, which, y'all, our most successful season to date. We had so many different subjects that we covered and when we envisioned this podcast, that was one of the things that we envisioned was being very broad about how we covered Angola.Woody: Right. We told you every story would be different. We've had some that were uplifting, we had some that were mentally disturbing about crime and we had just everything. We're going to talk about some, but it's all varied and all true.Jim: Oh, yeah. And we started off Season 4 with The Rise & Fall of C-Murder.Woody: That's right. Great one. We got a lot of response from that.Jim: Really kicked off the season.Woody: Really, really excellent. Loved it. I didn't really understand that he was such a legend in Louisiana.Jim: Yeah, he really was. And what a story. A lot of what we covered surrounded the fact that his case, there was never a whole lot of, say, proof. There was a lot of circumstantialstuff. And we covered some of the holes in that case and also covered some of the things that pointed towards C-Murder being involved. But we left it up to the listener to kind of judge for themselves what they thought.Woody: Right. We brought to you a lot of facts on it, researched and watched documentaries and everything else. And then, you got it from our perspective, and you the story and me the detective on it. So very interesting. If y'all hadn't heard it, you need to go listen to it.Jim: That's right. And then went straight from there into When Evil Escapes, which was the story of Casey White and Vicky White.Woody: Yes. That's crazy. And, y'all, it ties back into Bloody Angola because that's unfortunately those relationships develop. That's a very real deal. And here you have this career lady. I mean, her whole life's been about this and then she falls under the spell of this monstrous-Jim: Monster, yeah.Woody: -big dude. And the story that unfolds is just so crazy and how they end up.Jim: The ending on that one was fire. And we want to remind everyone you can go back and listen. If you hear us mention an episode that you haven't listened to yet, you can go back through and you'll find it. Just scroll down through Season 4. In Episode 3, we started our Death Sentence series which covered the death row exonerations with DNA and things like that taking place in Angola specifically.Woody: Yeah. And those cases were phenomenal. And I know a lot of people are against the death penalty and always say, "Well--" You come home and find your kid raped and mutilated, etc. But this shows the other side of it and their valid argument that, "Hey, you know what? Sometimes they get it wrong." So, we gave you the unbiased truth on these people that got out. And what actually ultimately happened to them. Go back and listen to it because you'll find a common thread on every one of them that got released. Didn't do so well.Jim: That's right. And then we felt it only right to cover those that were executed, I guess you could say, for the right reasons. There was preponderance of proof and that was with our Death Chamber Part 1 and just covered those guys that walked down and sat in Gruesome Gertie.Woody: Right. And not we only told about their crimes, we told about some of the [unintelligible 00:06:28] stuff, but then last meals, last words. And again, I think you find in most of those that some of the last words are almost the same and I don't want to ruin it for you, so go listen to it. But I've always been super fascinated by the last meals and last words.Jim: Yeah.Woody: And some great, great two-part series, wasn't it?Jim: Yeah. Well, yeah, two parts.Woody: Because there's that much information and that much fire in it.Jim: After that, we kind of got back to telling you the stories of some people that-- this guy in particular is still sitting in Angola and that is Principal to Murder, Justin Granier who committed some crimes in Gonzales, Louisiana.Woody: That's right, yeah. Very, very interesting to say the least.Jim: I found that as well because Justin is one that gained popularity on TikTok and some other places because he was on a show that featured Louisiana State Penitentiary and his work through several programs that they offer and does appear to be someone that is very resentful of his crime and all those sorts of things. But we're not going to ruin it for you. Go listen to it. Season 4, Episode 6, we covered The Escape From Angola in 1953. That was Ricardo Escobar who's--Woody: That's right.Jim: --a little home invasion.Woody: He did. And my grandfather actually ruled in this case. My namesake, actually, or I guess I'm his namesake and my son has the same name, but it's different time in what happened in this case. I think the first time ever any kind of verdict had come down like that in the state of Louisiana for an escapee.Jim: Yeah, it's a good one. Check it out. Season 4, Episode 7, we finally did it. We brought you becoming the warden. Burl Cain Part 1.Woody: Yes. [crosstalk] -legend- Jim: Wow, that was good.Woody: -and such, an early influence on me in my professional career when I worked for him before he became the Warden of Angola. He was the warden of Dixon Correctional Institute. Y'all, this story is amazing.Jim: It really is. And continues to this day. Woody: And we actually did several episodes.Jim: We sure did. As a matter of fact, Season 4, Episode 8 and 9 are the second and third parts of that series.Woody: Yeah. It covers everything from him coming up as the warden in Angola, to how he turned Angola around. Even to Hurricane Katrina coverage, and the bus station and all. Go listen to it. I get goosebumps. That dude just is amazing.Jim: Oh, yeah.Woody: Sorry, Warden Cain, I said dude. Jim: [laughs]Woody: That gentleman is amazing.Jim: He really is. And if somebody's listening that knows him, we'd love to talk to him. We can do whatever, we can go up there, we can record him remotely, whatever, but I do know that he has paid some attention to our page and we'd love to sit down and talk to such alegend. Season 4, Episode 10, we went back to the death chamber. Had a lot of people wanting us to follow up on that with more execution stories. And we brought you Death Chamber Part 2. And then Episode 11, we wrapped that series up with a Part 3. We actually covered all of them from 1980 on.Woody: That's right. And then all the way up to Gerald Bordelon.Jim: Yes.Woody: Which was the last one put to death and he's right here out of the Livingston Parish.Jim: That's right.Woody: Very, very interesting. And you get to see the true nightmare of evil these people are.Jim: Absolutely. And then, Season 4, Episode 12, we went ahead and did a part 2 to death sentence and talked about more exonerations that have happened due to DNA or other technicalities. It doesn't necessarily mean-- when someone's exonerated, it doesn't necessarily mean they didn't do it. It just means there was-- unless it's a DNA situation, it just typically means that there was a technicality that was discovered later on that may have changed that sentence from death to life in prison.Woody: Right. They may have commuted it or what have you, but it's very interesting on each individual case, no two are the same.Jim: Then, we went and brought you to Season 4, Episode 13, and we started The Angolite Files.Woody: Yeah, that was fascinating. Jim: Those are fun, man.Woody: Where we go back, y'all, to the oldest editions that Jim found and the wording they use in. We read the actual articles and most of them are just really, really short, but it's like they didn't have any entertainment. They didn't have TV or radio station back then, the Angola's radio station. But the wordings are just crazy. And the things they talk about-- I know people, that's one of our most popular series, so y'all got to check it out.Jim: A little plug on Real Life Real Crime here, but it's funny that Woody, okay, so he just wrapped a really, really good series that you got to go here when we were, I guess you can say marketing this, one of the things that I put out there was that this was your seat inside a courtroom during an actual death penalty trial. And Woody really brings you inside of that as he goes over these transcripts that were very important and needed to be included. But you do something unique, which is-- and I end up doing the same thing from time to time, which is your voice almost changes and you go into this role and it's great because--Woody: Because you're in a character.Jim: Oh, yeah. He gets into that character and he's like, "Let me ask you something." Love it, man. So, go listen to that on Real Life Real Crime for sure if you have the opportunity. In Season 4, Episode 14, we brought you the Elite Chase Team.Woody: Ooh, what a great story.Jim: Ah, that was a good one.Woody: The best of the best at what they do, and not only for bloody Angola, they're sofamous, they get calls for assistance everywhere.Jim: Absolutely.Woody: If you going to run, that's one group of men that you don't want coming after you.Jim: Yo, you don't.Woody: And they've got it down to the science.Jim: They really do. So, go listen to that. Learn all about this Chase Team that is probably one of the best, if not the best in the nation.Woody: I'd put them up against anybody.Jim: Season 4, Episode 15, we had so much response on Becoming The Warden that we dropped an episode called Catch Your House, and it was Woody and Unspeakable's Kelly Jennings joining him as a guest on that show. And they discussed their relationship with Burl Cain, having both worked for him.Woody: Right. Very, very interesting. You get to hear from an old correctional officer's point of view and then a classification officer's point of view. And, of course, two totally different jobs. And KJ has awesome stories too. It's a great episode.Jim: Yeah. And then, we just continued on, and something happened in Louisiana that was generating a lot of talk in the news. And because we have a lot of ambiguity with this show, we bring you current stuff too, if it's making these kind of headlines. And we felt like this was something important. And the response we got from people that listened after the fact let us know that it was important. And that was The Louisiana Clemency Debacle Part 1.Woody: And that's actually a worldwide watch situation now because it's the first time it's ever been done in the history of certainly the state of Louisiana, but in the history of the United States and probably the history of the world. And then, you have both sides. Certainly, the people that wanted these things to go through and then I just don't understand it still.Jim: You and me and million other listeners, apparently. We actually, y'all, got some very special messages from families of people who are actually facing this, and they wanted to just thank us for shedding light on that. Of course, no thanks needed. That was our honor to do and all those sorts of things. But it really hit home to both of us the importance of what we're doing as it relates to situations like that.Woody: And we ended up telling, y'all, where they were from, what their crimes are, and it's just-- you got to listen to it.Jim: Yeah. And then, we continued on with Season 4, Episode 17. That was part two of the Clemency Debacle. And then after that, we even dropped a bonus episode called-- just for patrons, called The First 20 that covered the first 20 of these clemency hearings, the first 20 inmates that are coming up for these hearings.Woody: What it covered, y'all, everybody got the base list of the crimes and where they're from, etc. For the patrons, and thank you, patrons, the show wouldn't run without you, andApple subscribers now, we really delved into their crimes. We told exactly what happened and who was murdered and why was aggravating circumstances and the whole nine yards.Jim: Yeah.Woody: I mean, you can't get any deeper than what we gave them.Jim: That's right. And so, that episode just was absolute fire. And then, Season 4, Episode 18, we went back to The Angolite, and we did 1954 Through The Inmates Eyes and covered several Angolites in and around the year 1954. And one thing that's really great about those Angolites is it really does give you the view from that convict's standpoint. [crosstalk]Woody: Right. Again, the language they use, of course, most of those terms wouldn't be not only politically correct today, but just flat out strange to hear some of them. And we didn't read the whole magazine, y'all. We just picked out certain little articles throughout. Everything from dude who stole and got busted stealing peanut butter, which they put it in their all own words to such and such. And they worded a different way, but basically-Jim: Fights.Woody: -who got stabbed. And such stories today, spung a leak, or however they say, but you got to go listen to it. If you love Bloody Angola, and you love the history of the show, I mean, these articles and the wording and all the history, just the day-to-day life on the plantation back then is crazy.Jim: It really is. And the great thing was, back in those days, they didn't censor things that got out of Angola like they do now. Those Angolites, I mean, they really talked about some stuff that would make you raise an eyebrow that no way it would get out now.Woody: Right.Jim: But back then--Woody: And back then, really, though, it was really put on for the convicts and then it became nationally known and everything else and people would get subscription. Hell, I had a subscription to it in the early 90s. But back then, it was more like their newspaper.Jim: Yeah, that's right. And so that was the season that our most fire season so far as Woody would say. And so, when we're looking back at this, we're like, "Man, we just set a real high bar for Season 5," but we're up to the challenge.Woody: That's right.Jim: We're up to the challenge. [crosstalk] We're going to tell you more. That's right. Woody: We'll take it to the next level maybe.Jim: The next level. That's what we do. And so, we're going to give y'all a look right now into Season 5 and some things that are definitely going to take place. And look, anytime you start off a season, you look for that one story, that one character that really grabs an audience because you're constantly gaining listeners. So, that's kind of your goal, is I want to put something out there first that people can really get attracted to and we found that.Woody: We definitely did.Jim: Charlie Frazier--Woody: Probably the most infamous convict ever. Well, I can't say that. Jim: I would say in the South for sure.Woody: Certainly, the Brent Miller killings and stuff like that--[crosstalk] Jim: Yeah.Woody: But this guy overall, what he did, how he lived his life. And what he did to eventually end up in Angola and all the things that happened, holy smokes. Y'all, we're going way back in history here. It's not a stretch to say that-- our episode in whatever season, the Red Hat Cell Block, it's not a stretch to say they built that cell block for Charlie Frazier. He was a bad ass. He could escape from anywhere. But we're going to tell you everything about him.Jim: And he did.Woody: And Jim Chapman has outpunted his coverage this time. Jim: Oh, my God, ever, ever.Woody: Wait till you see in Patreon, you'll get to see more than anybody else because all the documents and news stories and photographs and it's going to blow your mind. And as any proper great story that I've learned over the years doing on Real Life Real Crime, it's going to have to be a multi-part series. And you're going to want it to be a multi-part series. The only thing you're going to hate is when that episode ends because you're like, "Argh," till the next one.Jim: There's no doubt about it.Woody: And the patrons, of course, will get it commercial free and early releases.Jim: That's right. Look, with this particular guy, ever since we first started this, Season 1, I have been digging, digging, digging. It is very, very hard to get information on this particular guy, Charlie Frazier, for a multitude of reasons. One, back then, they just didn't keep records like they do now.Woody: No social media.Jim: Yeah, there's things that happen every time things get lost. Woody: There's no cable news, no TV channels or whatever.Jim: No doubt. This guy, I'm telling y'all, I'll make a promise to you. In my opinion, this will be the definitive history of Charlie Frazier. No doubt about it. I have over 100 pages' worth of information. Now, we're going to freeball this thing. Freeball, that's kind of weird-- but we're going to freeball it. We might not wear no underwear in the studio today. [chuckles] But we're going definitely talk off the cuff about this guy.But Patreon members, I want to say this just for you people. Look, everybody that gets this show outside of a Patreon or outside of an Apple Podcast and we're going to talk about that in just a minute. Anybody that gets information outside of that is getting it for free. And we love that. Look, everybody cannot be a subscriber. So, what we ask for those people to do is if you want to pay us back for the hours and hours we spend doing this stuff, all you have todo is share the podcast. And that is all we would ever ask for those that just are not in a position where they can support any other way. We appreciate that, we love it, we get it, and so those people, we thank as well.But our Patreon members, they have a financial investment in our success and that's huge. We love, love all of you, whether you do that or not. But for those folks, we give them something extra for that.Woody: We give them a lot extra- Jim: Yes.Woody: -Patreon members for Bloody Angola. Unless we are doing a little TikTok right now because--Jim: We don't do enough of that, right? [crosstalk]Woody: For the BA, y'all, on TikTok, we're discussing the ending of this season and thebeginning of the next and the fire stories. And we love y'all.Jim: Yes. That's right. We actually just dropped it, so check out that TikTok, by the way, Real Life Real Crime on TikTok. And you'll see all kinds of great stuff. But getting back to that, this particular Charlie Frazier episode, y'all, I have newspaper articles, clippings. I have actual records from where Charlie Frazier checked into hotels and signed his name. I have actual pictures of the places where people were killed. All of that, we're going to put just for patron members.Woody: We really think it's going to be such a success-- somebody's going to want to do a documentary on, and you've already done all the work.Jim: Yeah. If you're not a member yet, join in the next couple of weeks. We're also going to talk about a little guy by the name of Huddie Ledbetter who is otherwise known as Lead Belly. Look, for those of y'all that aren't familiar, he is probably the most popular or one of the most popular convicts ever in Bloody Angola. He was a blues musician that actually got released from prison-Woody: Because he was a blues musician.Woody: -because he was-- some people say he's the best blues musician ever. So, we're going to be covering the story. His story is absolutely unbelievable. Phenomenal story. We're going to be doing that this season. How about-- y'all ready for this? Look, we've been working on getting someone on the show that would-- I've never seen an interview that this guy has done.Woody: Me either.Jim: But he has done something that is worldwide famous, and that is he was the detectivethat actually caught Robert Lee Willie and Joe Vaccaro.Woody: Not only caught them, he's the one that actually got confessions out of. FBI and everybody else also was there, and they flew Mr. Sharp in. They flew him in and he got the confessions.Jim: So, this season, Detective Donald Sharp, for those of y'all, Robert Lee Willie and Joe Vaccaro, well, let me tell you this. Sean Penn played the character in Dead Man Walking that these guys were based after.Woody: I think he won an Academy Award for it.Jim: I believe he did as well. This exclusive interview with Detective Donald Sharp coming atyou this season, get ready for it.Woody: And we would want to thank him ahead of time for coming in and doing this. [crosstalk]Jim: Yeah, he don't have to do it. I want to thank his daughter who reached out to me and kind of got me in contact with Detective Sharp.Woody: Thank you.Jim: Yeah, thank you very much. And a fan of the show, and listens to the show, shoutout toher.Woody: Right. That's amazing.Jim: Also, how about there's something in Angola that we've been requested since Season 1 to talk about, and that is the Rodeo.Woody: Rodeo. And by the time we get to this story, the Rodeo happens four weekends, every weekend in October, every year, and then I think one weekend in April. But anyway, it'll be that time by the time this story comes out. It's just a whole different world.Jim: Yeah. We're going to bring it to you.Woody: We're going to bring it to you and it's so much that goes on and all that.Jim: So, we're going to be bringing you the Angola Rodeo. And how about something that I get a lot of requests for and that-- Actually, a lot of people are shocked, they know that at some point through listening to our show that women were imprisoned at Angola.Woody: My grandmother was actually a correctional officer there for the women part of the prison. When my mama was a baby girl, they lived on the B-Line.Jim: There you go, and I haven't even talked to Woody about this yet, but I actually have been doing an enormous amount of research on women in Angola specifically. I have a heck of a show that we're going to be bringing your way specifically about the women.Woody: Yeah.Jim: So, you're going to love that.Woody: If the master historian researcher says he's got it, then-- [crosstalk]Jim: I got it. I got the juice. [laughs]Woody: He loves to give me the juice for the fourth time, and I'm like, "Oh, wow."Jim: Yeah, man. When I found the juice on Charlie Frazier, it was 11 o'clock at night, I'm texting Woody.Jim: I was like, "Yes, yes."Woody: "You're not going to believe what I got my hands on."Jim: When we finally do get to take the tour of Angola, we're going to be able maybe teach them something.Woody: Oh, yeah. In addition to that, we're going to bring you a couple of single cases that have really made a lot of headlines in Angola. One of them is just a horrible individual. We're going to talk about, not only his time before he was incarcerated in Angola and what he did, but we're going to tell you about what he did when he got there, which includes escape attempts. And it's a guy by the name of Brandon Scott Lavergne. We're going to be bringing you that finally after a lot of research. And we're going to bring you another one that I have my eye on, but we'll leave that one a surprise. We'll let you wait. Now, so that's some upcoming stuff that we have.And we also want to tell you about some new features that we have on Bloody Angola that we've been constantly working towards. When you're running these podcasts and you're doing these things, it's a constant work because you have to stay up with technology. And one of the things that I felt like we, and Woody also felt like we had a gap in, was our Apple Podcast listeners that we have a Patreon and let me tell y'all, the Patreon is where it's at, as far as detailed bonus content. There's no limitations to Patreon. You can have several different tiers and all that, but some people just don't do it. They're just not fans of it, maybe of that website or whatever. We want to make sure we didn't leave them out. So, we partnered with Apple Podcast to where you can get bonus episodes and early releases right from Apple Podcast. You don't have to sign up for another source. I think they just bill your Apple account like they do the App Store and stuff.Jim: The other thing about it is, Jim, is they get to try it.Woody: Yes, it's a seven-day free trial.Jim: Free trial, we're offering a free trial for seven days.Woody: So, go in and listen to content. If you don't like it, great. But I can promise you, you're going to love it.Jim: Yeah, you're going to love it.Woody: Like you said, it's different from Patreon and I get that. But some people just want tobe able to go and punch a button and listen.Jim: Absolutely. And hey, look, were honored to have Apple Podcast approve us for that. That's an approval process. It's not automatic like some things are, so it spoke highly of our show that they would approve us for that, wanted us on board and pushing us and all those sorts of things. Also, another reminder on that front, two quick things. Bloody Angola, follow the Facebook page because we post all kinds of fun stuff on there. Sometimes, it's just updates. Sometimes, it's just what we're doing.Woody: Jim always comes up with the coolest artwork for each episode. [chuckles] [crosstalk]Jim: I love it. I'm so proud of my artwork. That is another thing I text Woody at 11 o'clock, "Check this out."Woody: "Woody, look at this," and I am like waiting outside of my box [unintelligible 00:32:21].Jim: [laughs] Yeah, no doubt about it. So, check that out. And we also have a website where you can purchase Bloody Angola swag. Look, we just added a couple of things. Another thing that our highest tier Patreon members get, they get a quarterly gift. We don't want to send the same t-shirt 10 ten times or a different t-shirt every time. So, every time we send that quarterly gift, it's something different. So, those of you out there that I know are listening right now that got one of those, maybe post a picture of you holding it, maybe a selfie, and send it to me and maybe I'll send you something extra and put it on the page.Woody: Not only is it Bloody Angola related, this latest round, we even signed it. Jim: Oh, yeah, that's right.Woody: Jim and I both signed them.Jim: That's right. And we'll be offering those also for purchase, I just got to get those uploaded to the website and you can buy. We have a few of those left and you can be styling in some Blood Angola swag. But don't forget about the website and the fact you can listen to all the episodes directly from it if you chose to. It has a swag store. We also do some blogging on there. So, I'm sure I'm going to be doing a lot of blogging coming up with these crazy episodes. But you can check those blogs out and those are great things to share on Facebook pages and stuff for people that may be interested.Woody, our growth, which is what you look for is nothing too short of staggering.Woody: Y'all validate us. And it's amazing. I want to say this, I think it's September 30th?Jim: Yeah, for the Podcast Awards? Yeah, September 30th.Woody: I want to remind you all, y'all voted and made us a Top 10 finalists for the History category-Jim: Huge honor.Woody: -in all podcasts in the world, in the History category. And it's a huge honor. Hey, just to make the finals is fire, and the Top 10 in the World in History? We're already winners and I think we got a real legit shot because of you fans.Jim: Yeah. I do too. September 30th, another thing with the Facebook, we're going to post the link where you can go watch it live. They have a little award ceremony online. You can click on that and you can actually watch the whole Podcast Awards online. And they'll announce the winners and play little videos, acceptance videos.Woody: I just want to thank y'all again for getting us there, just under a year old.Jim: And we love it because with this award ceremony in particular, the fans vote on it. It'snot a panel of people that don't know us.Woody: It's people's choice. Y'all did it. The top 10 belongs to y'all, not Jim and I. And if we win it, that'd be another blessing. And the award belongs to y'all.Jim: That's right. Just a last little thing today. This will be a shorter episode than normal because it's a wrap-up show. But we want to let you know that next week, we're going to do a little episode swap, and we're going to have everything. We're going to be prepping for Season 5, but we're going to put a fire episode of Real Life Real Crime on the feed here with Bloody Angola.Woody: Absolutely. It's going to be love, and I love it. We hadn't done one of those in a long time. We're also going to put a Bloody Angola episode on Real Life Real Crime Original.Jim: That's right. Because everybody that listens to one, then listen to the other, our numbers will be exactly the same. [laughs] So hopefully, someone will hear that maybe they'll introduce other people to the family.Woody: And y'all, this is a process, and certainly it is a business. So many podcasts come and go, but we have grown and grown and grown, and we've made it. And yes, Patreons, thank you so much, now our Apple subscribers. And thank you to our advertisers.Jim: Oh, yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that. HelloFresh, which is advertising on this episode.Woody: Look, I'm a foodie, and I'm not just giving a senseless plug. They've been sponsoring me through Real Life Real Crime since like 2019. And the food is phenomenal.Jim: It is.Woody: I guess I get stuck in my old Cajun cooking ways or whatever. They send me this box of stuff and I'm like, "Oh," but all the sauces and the fresh meats and everything are in there, and I've never been disappointed. Sometimes, I tell my wife, like, "I'll reorder that right now." And it's a great deal.Jim: It really is. And in the show notes of this episode, you can get that, and I believe it's 50BLOODYANGOLA.Woody: That's the code.Jim: And you get all kinds of perks. It's like 50% off 15 meals or something like that. Woody: It's way cheaper than going out to eat or having something delivered.Jim: Especially with that code but make sure you use that code, y'all, and we'll link it. We're going to talk about it in the description of this podcast. Just scroll down and you'll get all the information you need on that deal. And it helps support the show. It helps keep your grocery bill down.Woody: And it helps filling your stomach with some great food.Jim: That's right.Woody: You'll be looking like a crackhead like me for that box to be delivered. Jim: [laughs] That's it. And it makes you look like a heck of a cook.Woody: Oh, yeah. If you want to impress somebody, oh, yeah, it's--Jim: Yeah. So, check them out, HelloFresh. We're very thankful for them. And look, on another note on that, and the last thing we'll bring up on sponsors, I've had a few local folks to Louisiana ask about sponsoring Bloody Angola. If you want information on that, just shoot me an email, jim@localleadersthepodcast.com or bloodyangola@gmail.com. I check the first one quicker than the second one. So, that one I check every five minutes, so the Local Leaders is the best one to use. But I can give you some information on how you can be a local sponsor for the show.Woody: Yeah. And a lot of different options on that. And we have a huge listener base, especially here in Louisiana.Jim: Absolutely. And we give you guys a special deal because you're local folks and we want to help you out. So, until next time, I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton. I'm blessed and love all y'all. Jim: Yes, your hosts of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim and Woody: Peace.[Bloody Angola theme][Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]Our Sponsors:* Check out Factor and use my code bloodyangola50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy