CoronaVinyl Day 350 (L): The Best of Lead Belly by Lead Belly

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "L."  During my stop at Third Man Records earlier this month, as I was perusing the vinyl, I came to the stark realization that my record collection was lacking blues records.  Sure, I have a ton of blues CDs, but not all that much on vinyl.  So I grabbed a few blues albums, one of which is Third Man's 2017 Best of Lead Belly.

Born in 1888 in rural northwest Louisiana, not to far from Shreveport, Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, was an early blues legend known for playing a twelve-string guitar.  During a stint in prison in the early '30s, renowned folk/blues musicologists John and Alan Lomax discovered and recorded Lead Belly during one of their trips to the deep south to record folk and blues musicians for posterity.

The 14 songs on this album were all recorded between January and March 1935 in New York, where Lead Belly had relocated at that time.  The songs were previously unreleased, from Lead Belly's first professional recording sessions.  It's a master class in early country blues, with just Lead Belly's voice and an acoustic guitar providing the sound.  The restoration that the engineers performed from the original 78 shellac records is pretty remarkable, as the songs sound crisp and without the fuzz or crackle that you might expect from 80-year-old records.

He stayed in New York, performed regularly at the Apollo Theater, and continued to write and record music, both folk and blues.  He died in 1949.  Lead Belly's influence is vast, with the likes of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Van Morrison, George Ezra, and Kurt Cobain citing him as a major influence.  Cobain even sung Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" during Nirvana's legendary MTV Unplugged show.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "You Can't Lose Me, Charlie"
Lead Belly lets loose a few times during this song, really wailing out some vocals.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "Baby Don't You Love Me No More"
When you listen to this song, you can hear how Bob Dylan was influenced by Lead Belly.  There are several faster-paced, almost spoken-word parts that remind me of what Dylan was doing on various songs on his early albums.