>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Pause ]
>> Nancy Groce: Today's program
joins a number of other programs
and events taking place
this weekend in Washington
to celebrate the 125th Anniversary
of the legendary musician, composer,
and performer, Huddie
"Lead Belly" Ledbetter.
Lead Belly, as he was
called professionally,
made enormously important
contributions to American folk
and traditional music, as well
as to America's broader
cultural landscape.
At this event we're going to
highlight these contributions
and especially his relationship
to the Library of Congress.
We're delighted to
welcome two members
of the Ledbetter family
here with us today.
Terika Dean is Lead Belly's great,
great niece and a Board Member
of the Lead Belly Foundation.
She currently works as a Licensing
Manager for the Lead Belly Estate
and she assisted with the recent
opening of the Exhibit Lead Belly,
a Musical Legacy, at the
GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles
and with a beautiful just-released
Smithsonian CD boxette,
Lead Belly Smithsonian
Folkways Collection.
Her cousin, yes, thank you --
our colleague, Jeff
Place at the Smithsonian.
Her cousin, Alvin Singh, is
an author and entrepreneur
who has served as a Consultant
for Fortune 500 organizations,
governments, nonprofit organizations
and technology startups.
As Historical Curator for the Lead
Belly Archives Mr. Singh provided
material for major Lead Belly's
Exhibits at the GRAMMY Museum
and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
He is the Co-Author of the book,
Lead Belly, a Life in Pictures.
And he currently lives
in South Africa.
I'm going to turn over
the proceedings now
to American Folklife Center
Archivist, Todd Harvey,
who will lead today's discussion,
and we hope to have time
for questions at the
end of the presentation.
So thanks so much for
coming and please join me
in welcoming Alvin Singh,
Terika Dean, and Todd Harvey
for this Botkin lecture, A Bourgeois
Town, Lead Belly in Washington, D.C.
[ Applause ]
>> Todd Harvey: Thank
you, thank you very much.
>> Nancy Groce: Thank you.
>> Todd Harvey: Thanks
to everyone for coming.
It's great to see so many friends
of the Folklife Center and Library
of Congress in the audience.
So if I know this crowd
there will be questions
and so we'll certainly leave time.
This is a really interesting
and timely discussion,
and I think that I want
to say a couple of things.
One, a great pleasure of being
at the Library of Congress is
when you work with
materials and then you realize
that there are people
attached to these materials,
that there are living,
breathing families
and communities attached to them.
And such was my pleasure when I met
Alvin and Terika a few years ago,
and I believe you are
siblings, is that correct?
>> Terika Dean: Yes.
>> Todd Harvey: Not
cousins, for the record.
And I have found you to be warm
and generous and deeply engaged
in the material, in
Lead Belly's material,
and it's a really wonderful
relationship and I want
to explore that a little bit today.
But I think Alvin promised a
short PowerPoint presentation
that will give the true
history of the Bourgeois Blues,
one of Lead Belly's great songs, and
so I'll let him do the presentation
and then I'll have a
few questions for them
and then we'll turn it
over to the audience.
>> Alvin Singh: Thank
you very much, Todd.
Thank you, everyone, for coming.
It's a great opportunity
to come back into the city.
I actually used to
live in Washington,
D.C. so it's a great
time to come back.
This, what I'm going to discuss is
a very kind of a personal discussion
about the history of
Lead Belly and my family.
And for me it starts with
this woman, Tiny Robinson,
who was my grandmother, who actually
lived with Lead Belly as a teenager.
She's from Shreveport, Louisiana,
and just like Lead Belly is
from Louisiana, and her Aunt
Martha, who was Lead Belly's wife,
called her back in those days
would say come to the North
and New York City,
come and stay with us.
And so my grandmother, here
she is in this picture actually
with the late Director, Gordon
Parks, doing the filming
of the movie, Lead Belly, in 1976.
And so my grandmother is the
one that started as the nucleus
of a lot of this discussion.
And as one day in the house as
a young boy, maybe even the age
of my daughter right
here at five years old,
I was walking in the living
room and I saw this on the wall.
And I said, you know, what is that,
grandma, you know, this is very -
sticks out, like a
Mona Lisa in the house?
And so she said, oh, that is a
prison pardon, and I kind of paused
for a second and said when
did grandad go to jail?
And she said, no, he didn't,
that is your Uncle Lead Belly.
And this is actually the 1935 -
actually 1918 pardon, was the pardon
from Governor Pat Neff, who
was the Governor of Texas,
and he actually took office saying
that he would never pardon anybody
because the predecessor before
him had done it a couple of times.
And the story is that
Lead Belly sort
of took this impromptu opportunity
when Governor Pat Neff was doing
tours throughout the prisons
in Texas and Lead Belly took this
sort of chance to write a song
on the spot and convince
Governor Pat Neff to set him free.
And on the last day of his time
in office he actually
pardoned Lead Belly.
And so I see this on the
wall and then I then started
to learn a little bit more of the
history of Lead Belly, himself.
And then I started diving into more
of it throughout the time period
of my life, from high school
to college and to adulthood.
And one of the funny stories that
my grandma always tells is the story
of the friendship that Lead Belly
had with Josh White and Paul Robeson
and Pete Seeger and Woody
Guthrie and all of these people.
And I'd look at pictures like this
one, which is from the archives,
where it's in-house, it's
not a stage performance,
it's not in Carnegie Hall or
anyplace that he would perform at,
but it's in an in-house party.
And my grandmother would
tell the story of how her
and Martha would actually, you
know, Woody would stay at the house
and after two a.m. in the morning,
three a.m. in the morning they
would have to kick him out.
And not knowing that years later,
you know, he's one of the pioneers
of American folk music, and
she actually jokes and say
that she wished she'd saved some
of his lyrics that he would write
in the living room and on a piece of
paper and doodling and everything.
And so the story of Woody Guthrie
and the friendship of Woody Guthrie
and Lead Belly is very interesting
being that at the time period
in the 1940s where America
was dealing with a lot
of different racial tension and
throughout the rest of the country,
but yet Woody Guthrie is from
Oklahoma and Lead Belly is
from Louisiana and they're
living in New York City
and they would perform together
at different venues and places.
And so then I started
learning a little bit more
about Lead Belly's music and
what I came to the conclusion is
that Lead Belly is a
human jukebox, you know,
he would have almost I think he had
500 songs in the music catalog here
at the Library of Congress, itself.
And it started with him doing
the recordings for the Lomax's,
when they would travel to
various places in the South
and they would collect all of
these songs that they thought
that was being lost
in American history.
And so Lead Belly had these
songs all in his head.
He didn't write too many songs down
on paper, but he had them memorized
in his head and he made his own
version to a lot of the songs
that he heard over time, throughout
prison, throughout traveling,
when he played with Blind Lemon
Jefferson in his early years.
He would go around the country
and he would pick up all
of these different songs and
different sort of stanzas
and he had his own versions to them.
And Lead Belly, he did
music for everyone.
He did music for children, which
he really preferred to play for,
that was the most popular
artist, I mean audience.
But he did songs, work songs, he
did protest songs, he did blues,
he did folk, he did so many
different types of genre music
in his whole catalog that
you can see why it appealed
to such a wide audience
whenever he would go anywhere.
So if you can go to a local
elementary school the children loved
his songs, and if he was to go
to a workers' party people would
love those songs because they knew
that Lead Belly lived that life,
they knew that he actually sort
of lived the life that he sung.
And the topic today is
called Bourgeois Town,
and one of his most popular
songs is the Bourgeois Blues.
And so one of the type
of genre songs
that some people say is
they say political songs,
but I asked my grandmother,
you know,
what was Lead Belly's
political affiliations
or what do we know about him?
You know, there's always been
the history of Pete Seeger
and Woody Guthrie's affiliations,
but she said he didn't.
She said that he was
not that type of person
to really voice a whole
lot of politics,
but he did read the newspaper and
he would make songs of the times
of what was happening in the news.
And so there's a list of his songs.
So I call them current affairs
songs, so it wasn't so much
of him trying to politicize
anything,
but as much as being a sort of news
broadcaster of what was going on.
So he's got songs, the
Scottsboro Boys, he wrote songs
about Adolph Hitler, he
wrote songs -- Titanic.
We just found inside the boxed
set is an unreleased song
of Queen Elizabeth, Princess
Elizabeth at the time,
her wedding that he had wrote.
Jean Harlow, Howard Hughes,
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
so many different individuals
that he wrote about and he sung
about because it was the
current affairs at the time.
And even here you can see
this is found in the Library
of Congress catalogs, as well, is
a sort of a - I think it's kind
of a play card, I guess,
or documentation
of the Hindenburg disaster.
So this was a song that he had wrote
in 1937 in June, and we're going
to talk about that, actually,
because that's going to be -
it seems like a popular month
for Lead Belly at that time.
So in June 1937 this is showing
that he had recorded a song
for the Library of
Congress with the title
of the song, Hindenburg Disaster.
>> Todd Harvey: Do you see
the location of the recording,
even though it's scratched
out it's accurate,
at the Coolidge Auditorium, which is
right next door and so we're almost
in exactly the same
spot where he recorded.
>> Alvin Singh: Yes, wow.
See, and see that leads into
sort of this relationship
that Lead Belly have with the
Lomax's, the Library of Congress
and Washington, D.C. Here is
a picture of young Alan Lomax,
who would go along with his
father during these recordings
and so his father's protégé,
and when Lead Belly would sing the
songs Alan would type the songs.
And this is the sort of format
that Lomax would use throughout
his recordings across the world,
from Asia to Australia, to India, to
many different, you know, the South
and Canada and the Caribbean,
all of these places he sort
of used the same format
of typing, recording
and documenting different
songs from around the world.
And so Lomax and Lead Belly
one time in 1937 were looking
for accommodations for Lead
Belly here in Washington,
D.C. And while they were here
Lead Belly and his wife, Martha,
were sort of kicked out, they were
kicked out because the Lomax's were
with them as a white couple.
Alan Lomax and his wife
were - they were told
by the landlord they don't
want anybody in here.
And so a friend of
theirs at the time,
Mary Elizabeth Barnacle
[Assumed Spelling],
who was based in Connecticut,
had said, oh,
this is a Bourgeois Town,
actually, before that.
So when they were kicked out from
the landlord saying that, oh,
we don't want any blacks here.
They went to another place
to try to find Lead Belly,
which was an all-black hotel,
and the black hotel said we
don't want the Lomax's here.
So they both were kicked out,
and that's when Elizabeth
Barnacle said that, oh, Washington,
D.C. is a Bourgeois Town.
And that, to me, I think it was not
unique that Lead Belly's experience
of racism or Jim Crow or
discrimination, but the word itself,
Bourgeois, he had never -
it kind of stuck to him.
And so on the spot he wrote
a song, The Bourgeois Blues,
and he wrote about that
experience and he wrote
about what it meant to him.
And he wanted to broadcast
and listen
to other people to know about that.
Here's some of the lyrics from that
exact song, "Home of the brave,
land of the free, I don't want to
be mistreated by no Bourgeoise."
And you can see that Lead
Belly, he took something
that he had just learned and then
he put it into a song immediately
because that was the
talent that he had.
And at the end he says, going
to spread the news all around.
So here is a small timeline, if
we look back some of the songs
that I had wrote, what I thought
was unique when I started to put all
of his, some of his songs that I
call those current affairs songs
in a sort of timeline, and
we see The Titanic in 1912,
and then we see the Scottsboro Boys
Trial in 1931, then we see the rise
of Adolph Hitler in Germany in 1934.
Lead Belly was released from
Angola State Prison Farm in 1935.
And then in 1937 we have the writing
of the song, Bourgeois Blues,
and at the same time that was the
Hindenburg disaster, we saw earlier.
In 1941 Lead Belly actually
attended Franklin D. Roosevelt's
inauguration, along with - actually,
Alan Lomax was the Music Director
of that whole inauguration,
and so Lead Belly had a
special invite for that.
And then we saw - we see in
1949 Lead Belly passed ALS,
the Lou Gehrig's Disease, and then
in 1955 we see Rosa Parks' boycott
in Montgomery County, I
mean Montgomery, Alabama.
And that, to me, the reason why I
put that was because that showed
so much of what he had wrote about
years before the sort of spark
of the Civil Rights
movement in 1955.
And where Lead Belly had already -
he wasn't a preacher, he wasn't a,
like we said, a political
organizer, but he was a singer.
And so he took his
experience and wrote
about it many years before the
actual - one of the actual sparks
of the Civil Rights movement that
led on to some of the other things.
And so, in conclusion, this
is something that we have
that my grandmother actually
kept, was the inaugural gala
that Lead Belly was invited to, to
attend, and some of the material
that he had received doing that.
And doing this, we'll talk
more about what we're doing
in the current, but one of the
people that I took an opportunity
to really go and talk to, I had
to, I said, grandma, who can I talk
to to find out more
about Lead Belly?
And she said it's a far trip.
And I said, well, that's no
problem, where do I need to go?
She says all the way
Upstate New York.
And so, well, I called Pete Seeger
and him and his wife was there
and they served us
lunch and everything.
And at the time I felt like a two
year old, in Pete Seeger's house
with the fire burning,
listening to him playing,
talking and playing songs.
And what I learned from Pete
Seeger was that he, himself,
was a storyteller of so many
different genres around the world.
And that is why I'm going to let
play Pete Seeger's sort of version
of Bourgeois Town, Bourgeois Blues.
[ Music ]
>> [Recording] Pete Seeger: In 1937
Huddie Ledbetter was asked to record
for the Library of Congress.
Alan Lomax, the young curator
of the folklore collection
recorded him all day.
Then in the evening they
wanted to have a party.
1937. They were kicked
out -- interracial party.
Went somewhere else -- they
were kicked out there too.
Alan Lomax says, "Huddie,
don't feel to badly,
Washington is a bourgeois town."
[Pete Seeger sings with
unidentified singer --
Arlo Guthrie?] Me and my
wife went all over town,
everywhere we went the
people turned us down.
It's a bourgeois town.
It's a bourgeois town.
I've got the bourgeois blues, I'm
going to spread the news all around.
Me and my wife Martha were standing
upstairs, heard a white man saying,
"we don't want no negros up
there," It's a bourgeois town.
It's a bourgeois town.
I've got the bourgeois blues, I'm
going to spread the news all around.
White men in Washington,
they know how
to chuck a colored man a
nickel just to see him bow.
It's a bourgeois town.
It's a bourgeois town.
I've got the bourgeois blues, I'm
going to spread the news all around.
That's pretty much my presentation.
>> Todd Harvey: That's nice.
[ Applause ]
It sounds like Pete put his
banjo down for a 12-string
in that, but poor Sidney.
Have you ever seen
the film that he made
in 1962 called Two Links of a Chain?
>> Alvin Singh: I have, yes.
>> Todd Harvey: He does, he plays
the 12-string in that, too, I think.
And he had some film footage that
he made at - in Mooringsport.
Do you know where that film
footage was made, he - of the grave,
of Lead Belly's grave, is
that possible, Mooringsport?
>> Alvin Singh: Yes, indeed.
>> Todd Harvey: So
the - that's nice,
I mean Washington is an easy target,
but I found yesterday a bill of sale
for a car, a Studebaker, that
Alan bought in June of 1937
and it has his address here
at 1 2nd Street, Northeast,
which is just around
the corner, you know?
We can go over there
afterwards if you want,
but that's where evidently
the event took place,
the angry landlord and all that.
It's nice to mix anecdote
and archival materials
because you get a fun and
sometimes combustible mix that way.
And I think in a way the Lead
Belly Foundation has the potential
for that, as well, because you
all have an archive and you have -
it's a business operation
in some ways, is it not?
Do you want to - Terika,
will you talk
about what you do for
the Foundation?
>> Terika Dean: Well,
as Alvin stated,
our grandmother was
an avid collector
of everything that -- closer?
Okay. She kept everything,
when we say everything we've
spent years digging through boxes,
drawers, envelopes just
throughout her house,
and she would keep everything
from letters to the envelopes.
Which I laugh about it now
because when I open my mail
the first thing I do is toss
out the envelope, and she had
envelopes stapled to every letter,
whether it was letters from
Lead Belly to his wife,
letters to Lead Belly
from other people.
We've got I think something from,
was it Paul Robeson, when he died?
>> Alvin Singh: Uh-huh.
>> Terika Dean: To his wife
when Lead Belly passed.
And so we have spent
the last several years,
Alvin started the process
of compiling everything
into one location and we're
still sorting through it.
I think on a regular
basis we go through
and find something very
unique and interesting to us.
And one of the things that we're
trying to do is digitize a lot
of the material for ourselves
and for other people.
We get a lot of requests through
Todd's office, people who come here
to research and they want
some of the materials.
So part of what I do is to
help manage that license
so that we can get the
material out there,
whether it's for research
material, for commercial use.
So we're constantly working on
that and we're constantly finding
and adding to our archives when
we come across new material.
>> Todd Harvey: I wonder if you
could give us a real life example
about that, how that
process would work?
And maybe start with did
you do some licensing
and some work with this boxed set?
>> Terika Dean: Yes, we work closely
with the Smithsonian Folkways
on this boxed set and if you
- I don't know if everyone -
it's a beautiful, beautiful book,
but it's letters, it's photographs
of all kinds of -- this is
one of the color photographs
and it's been used a
lot lately of Lead Belly
that was taken the last year
that he was alive and so you see
in the picture where he is starting
to look a little more frail.
So we work with them on
presenting some of that.
There are letters from Lead
Belly to his wife, Martha.
One of the things when
we were trying
to put things together we ended
up, my grandmother has this binder
of letters from Lead Belly
to his wife, and when he was
in California he wrote to her every
day so the letters go from July 1,
July 2, July 3, July 4, so it's
beautiful to see him communicating
with his wife about what just
happened that day, who he saw,
what was going on in California.
So it's interesting, but,
yes, so we work with this
in the recent documentary that came
out on the Smithsonian channel,
we work with them a lot with
archive materials that we have.
>> Todd Harvey: And so you're
licensing his performances?
>> Terika Dean: Uh-huh.
>> Todd Harvey: And
his image, as well?
If a researcher came to me and
said I want to use this image
of Lead Belly from your
collections you would ...
>> Terika Dean: Correct, we
would handle that, as well.
>> Todd Harvey: you would
handle that as well.
>> Terika Dean: Uh-huh, and some
of the material, the music material
that is here at the
Library of Congress.
Some of the material
that was released
in this most recent boxette
came - were tracks that came
from the archive material here.
>> Todd Harvey: Right, right.
And how many requests do you get
in a week or a month or what's kind
of what's the interest
in those kinds of things?
>> Terika Dean: I think for
years my grandmother handled it
so we didn't know what it was, and I
think for me I didn't think that --
I didn't know the magnitude of it.
In the recent years since
we are more visible,
I would say we launched last year
the official Lead Belly website
and so now people know
where to find us.
And so we are on a regular
basis getting requests,
whether it's for books,
some are personal films,
some are commercial use with his
images, they're wanting to use it
in video footages, even the -
there's a footage that is held here
of Lead Belly actually performing.
There's about three video
clips of Lead Belly and one
of them was featured in the recent
documentary with Harry Belafonte.
>> Alvin Singh: Yes.
>> Terika Dean: Yes, that guy.
>> Alvin Singh: And one of the
things that's interesting is
that Lead Belly, himself, during
his recordings here for the Library
of Congress it wasn't a business
for him, it was just giving back
of what was in his head
for historical purposes,
and then eventually with his
relationship with Moses Asch
and Folkways, which is
now Smithsonian Folkways,
it became a business.
It then became an actual album
to sell to make profit of.
And so the relationship more of
Lead Belly here in the Library
of Congress is what exactly
the mission of what the Library
of Congress is, is to curate
American history, American stories.
And so but one thing that's
interesting is that Lead Belly,
himself, even without a higher
education he was a marketer.
Just to call yourself the King
of the 12-String Guitar, already,
you know, you sort of set the tone
that there's no one else after that.
And so, like Terika
said, with my grandmother
for so long she had this
material that she knew the story,
and then eventually as the requests,
there was a surge in the early 1990s
where Nirvana and The
Grudge and Rock
and Roll musicians were
remaking some of his songs
and so my grandmother - and actually
people were visiting Lead Belly's
gravesite and taking pictures of it.
There's people like Allen Ginsberg
and Robert Plant and so many people,
but the gravesite at the time
was not even a tombstone.
And so with that she set up
the memorial fund, you know,
put the ads in the back of
blues magazines, send $10,
and eventually that's how we have
a tombstone today for Lead Belly
that is proper dedication
towards him.
And so from there that's the
sort of what is next, you know?
And so now we've given him a
proper honor, what is next?
And then that's where
we're at in 2015.
>> Terika Dean: Just
real quick, what --
since he mentioned the
gravesite, every year --
well, for the last four years our
Foundation has been doing a Lead
Belly tribute and parade
that goes from town
into where Shiloh Baptist Church,
which is where he is buried.
And so it's a marker point, and
we get pictures all the time
where people send us and,
or alerts from websites
where it's a stopping
place for people.
People are driving through
Shreveport and the thing to do is
to go see Lead Belly's grave, and
so they actually do this festival
where everyone annually comes by and
sit at his grave and they perform
and it's a great tribute to him
and it's been nice to see that.
And this year we had a great
crowd, it was actually last weekend
in Shreveport, Louisiana.
So it's part of -- our Foundation
mission is to continue the education
of Lead Belly and his music, but
also to provide scholarships.
And so from the estate side, as
well, is just continuing to promote
who Lead Belly is and his legacy
to those who know it and to those
who don't know it, so we'd
have a new generation of people
who are aware of Lead
Belly's music and influence.
>> Todd Harvey: What do you say to
someone who doesn't know Lead Belly?
Who was Lead Belly?
What's the elevator speech?
>> Alvin Singh: Well, I normally say
what George Harrison says, you know,
no Lead Belly, no Beatles, you know?
Yes, he did.
And actually my grandmother said
that a few months before
George Harrison had passed away
that he had requested to play
the guitar at a performance
that he wanted to play, and
she was going to give it
to him but I think he got sick.
But when Kurt Cobain requested,
I don't know if she was
so quick to respond, you know?
>> Todd Harvey: Well,
what is next, what --
I mean without breaking any
confidences about your plans?
It's very interesting,
how do you promote,
in a sense how do you brand,
that's not a bad word,
how do you brand Lead
Belly as we move forward?
>> Terika Dean: You know what's
interesting is one of the taglines
that the Smithsonian channel used
for the documentary was the most
influential musician you'd never
heard of.
Because his music has influenced
a lot of people and the music
that we have today, but a
lot of people don't know
where Goodnight Irene came from or
Midnight Special or Black Betty.
So for us I think we're trying
to continue to develop a brand
that lets people know who
Lead Belly is, let people know
where you can find more about him,
and it's continuing with projects.
Our Foundation is working
on our own documentary
that we're hoping will be
released soon that tells you more
about the man, who Lead Belly
was, how he lived, what he liked
and what he didn't like, and
some of the misconceptions
that are out there about him.
And with the concert that we have
tomorrow it's a great way for people
who probably know the Robert
Plant and the Alison Krauss crowd
to now know who influenced
them and know
where that background came from.
>> Todd Harvey: What
about your archives,
how is the work coming with that?
>> Alvin Singh: Well, I mean
you know the archives is an
ongoing thing.
I mean he just found something
new himself that it is.
With the archives the way that I've
looked at it is there's a period
of when Lead Belly was alive,
which he was born in 1889 and died
in 1949, and then there's
the period from 1949 to all
of the things that's
happened afterwards.
And so there's actually been
more material since he's passed
than there was the
material that he was alive.
And so but then you have to
then break it up from there,
so there's a time period of the
'60s when people like Joan Baez
and Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger were
using this music and then the '70s
when Led Zeppelin and
the rock era was doing.
And so you're constantly collecting
articles and materials and albums
and things like that and so
for us we're always
looking to go to find more.
And so now we're in the digital age
it's taking these sort of letters
and these paper materials and
put them into digital archives,
and actually what we want to do
eventually is do a traveling exhibit
so that more people can
see this in the schools
and in the libraries
across the world.
>> Todd Harvey: And I know
that we would love to be a part
of the documentary
that you are doing.
Anything that we can do to ...
>> Alvin Singh: Really?
To help with that?
>> Todd Harvey: Really, in
a sense what's the Library
of Congress' role, what's the right
relationship so that we continue
to be good stewards of the
material and respectful
of the legacy, what
should we be doing?
>> Terika Dean: Well,
I know one thing that -
what we want to accomplish
with our archives is, again,
create that digital database.
It's nice to have a museum,
and I think long term we would
love something of that magnitude,
whether it's small or big, to have a
place where people can go and touch
and see, but also creating almost
a virtual museum in a sense.
And I know we do want to work
with the Library of Congress
to help us get to that
point, to figure out how -
because you have an extensive
collection here in itself,
so to figure out a way where we
can create that museum sort of say
and for researchers to come and see.
We definitely want to work
with you, so I know you ...
>> Alvin Singh: And I also think
that's what's good with the Library
of Congress is that it's free,
you know, and that people are able
to continuously come and
go through this material.
So I think a few years -
when I did your interview,
who had come in town -
Elton John, I think it was?
Yes, and he had looked through
Lead Belly's material and he said,
wow, he has nice handwriting.
And we both were looking
at each other
like we can't read the handwriting,
but Martha's handwriting.
And so but that's the kind
of, you know, someone like him
to the student who is working on
a thesis paper could come in here
and look through the
material and see
that is the real relationship
that counts to me.
And the 1935 newsreel
video that they did,
at the end of the video it shows
John Lomax putting Lead Belly's
music into the Library of Congress,
and this is while he was still alive
and so it was almost like they
were sort of capsing his music
and his story saying that this
is always still going to be here,
and I think that's the true
essence of what this Library does.
>> Terika Dean: I think the
challenge for us and we've talked
to you about this is for the
family and even in recent years
for us uncovering this treasure
trove of what was in the attic
at my grandmother's house is the
family holds it very close and dear
and so it is hard to let go of it.
We want it to be viewed by the
masses, we want it to be available,
and it's a challenge for us in
trying to figure out that mix
of we want it to be available,
but it's so dear to the family
that it's hard to let go of
certain things and you want to -
you've just got to find
that right balance.
And I think we're still trying
to figure out that balance
because thoughts, I know Alvin and I
have talked many times about visions
of the traveling exhibit, about
a museum in some form or fashion,
and we're still working on that.
Any ideas you guys can
let us know, help us out.
>> Todd Harvey: Well, it seems like
this is a good moment to transition
to the broader conversation.
I think we'd be glad to take
questions from the audience.
Hold on and just wait
until you get a microphone
so you can be properly recorded.
>> Male speaker: Well, thank you.
Are you familiar with
there was like ain 1963
like there was a DVD released it has
him doing a concert in Australia?
>> Alvin Singh: Yes.
>> Male speaker: But, anyway,
a film about Lead Belly
and I think it's been several
years, but I've seen it,
it showed some actual footage and an
array of material, that's something
if it's available that I think you
can buy that DVD so we could see...
It's probably not easy to get,
but it does feature some
actual footage, you know?
>> Todd Harvey: That was a - so
that's a DVD of a performance
of Pete Seeger in Australia.
>> Male speaker: 1963 and
it features and actual film.
>> Todd Harvey: Right, he's talking
about the Links of Two Chains.
They must have shown that film.
>> Alvin Singh: Right.
>> Todd Harvey: And so,
yes, that's a great ...
>> Male speaker: Is it
the Links of Two Chains?
>> Todd Harvey: Yes, that is.
>> Male speaker: Okay, maybe
because it is '63, yes.
>> Todd Harvey: Two
Links of a Chain.
>> Alvin Singh: Right.
>> Male speaker: But
it's in Australia back
when he was black-listed, because
Lead Belly might have been,
considering some Bourgeois Blues
or whatever, but it might be
under scrutiny, his work
might be under scrutiny come
to think of it, you know, so --
>> Todd Harvey: All right, thanks.
The gentleman in the back?
>> Male speaker: What I'd like to
note is there's a street, well,
there's two streets in
Alexandria and it's called -
one is called Herbert and the
other one is called Ledbetter,
and I wanted to know if he had
any connection with Alexandria?
>> Alvin Singh: In Washington, D.C.?
>> Male speaker: Yes, in Alexandria,
Virginia, there are two streets
like in the Commonwealth and
bear his name or similarity.
It may be someone else.
Is there any connection?
>> Alvin Singh: Not that I know of.
>> Male speaker: You go
check it out, it's right -
if you know where the
Birchmere [Music Hall] is?
>> Alvin Singh: Uh-huh.
>> Male speaker: It's down
the street from there.
>> Alvin Singh: In
Northern Virginia, okay.
>> Todd Harvey: We'll put
it on the walking tour.
>> Terika Dean: Yes.
They do have Ledbetter Heights
named for him in Shreveport.
>> Todd Harvey: Any other questions?
Yes?
>> Male speaker: Hi.
I was just wondering if
there's a kind of, I don't know,
divide when it comes
to certain songs?
Like I'm thinking specifically of
Goodnight Irene, that has really,
at least in my view, has become
an American folksong as much
as it is a Lead Belly song?
And that once - I'm wondering how
you feel about once a song gets
to the point where it's really part
of the common consciousness how does
that affect the kind of work that
you do where people know the song,
but don't know where it came from
necessarily, it becomes sort of part
of everyone's inner jukebox and part
of America's thinking
about what a song is?
And then how do you get from that
point where everyone knows the words
to being able to market that
into a Lead Belly brand?
>> Alvin Singh: Yes,
that's a good question.
You know, with public domain, the
term public domain is something
that after a certain period of
time it becomes the public domain.
And then those who owned
it, how do they market it,
how do they receive profit or
revenue or royalties from that.
And there's no clear answer to
that because, just as you said,
the good side is that people
are knowing about something
and then the other side is that how
do they know where it came from.
So, let's say for example, the
song, Black Betty, Ram Jam,
it plays almost in every
stadium and basketball stadium
around the country, you know?
And then I think Volkswagen
even had a Super Bowl commercial
of Black Betty, but it's
not Lead Belly's version.
And so but clearly if you did
this research you would know
that it's a Lead Belly song.
What you want to do sometimes when
those kind of requests come in is
to say, is to convince them to
use the original version first,
but it's really a matter of where
your heart is in the matter.
It's a privilege to have a song
like Goodnight Irene become a -
voted for an NPR as one of the
top 100 songs of the 20th Century.
So if you have that as a musician
what more could you ask for?
I mean to in this age right now
where music is not selling you
don't want to battle so much
to say I want every cent of 1,000
downloads, but if you become one
of the top 100 songs in the
20th Century that's a pretty
big milestone.
>> Terika Dean: I want
to add something to that.
I think it is a challenge, in
that regard, because you do have,
like you said, Goodnight
Irene in the UK.
If you go to a soccer game
that's what they're singing,
and it's great, it's great.
It's a challenge for us
because sometimes Lead Belly
is not associated with it,
but that's the great part about
it is it gives us an opportunity
to talk more about it and
say, okay, here's the history.
Recently on The Voice one
of the singers sung House
of the Rising Sun, and you know
there are various versions.
But it was a great opportunity
for us to post it and say, hey,
check out Lead Belly's version.
So it can be challenging
because sometimes you'll say, oh,
he's not getting the
recognition, that's his song,
but for us it helps us when we're
branding and trying to build
on the brand that we're
working on to link, okay,
you've got this great
song that everyone loves,
now let's educate you
on the history of it.
So that's the good part about it.
It just sometimes doesn't
yield us financially,
but we can expand on it.
>> Female speaker: Hi.
>> Terika Dean: Hello.
>> Female speaker: Hello.
Well, I have two questions really.
One of them was in terms of being
a family in charge of is legacy
in a sense how much do you think
that you need to control the image
of Lead Belly and how much in a
sense do you feel it's important
to kind of to edit or to make sure
that there aren't negative
representations out there?
I'm asking because I
also have a situation
with my grandfather's
legacy, he was a writer,
and the idea of certain
documents getting
out might be interpreted negatively.
How important is it do
you think to control that
and what is the problem
there in terms of bias?
And, also, I wanted to ask
what you felt what kind
of person he was, his character?
And, yes, I was interested
to find out more about that?
>> Alvin Singh: I'll add something
and Terika can say something.
So with the image, that
was one of the things
that was my grandmother's personal
mission because Lead Belly,
he did go to prison twice
and the stories behind Lead
Belly have always projected him
to be a bad guy and this
monster and this untamed guy.
But if you look at many of his
pictures he's wearing his suit,
he's got his bowtie, and he always
projected an image of someone
that took his career
professionally seriously.
And so but it never stopped
the media from writing things,
I mean even Life Magazine
used derogatory terms to talk
about Lead Belly while
he was alive, you know?
But the way -- you
can't really control it,
what you do is just you
provide the counter information.
And from the family our source
is the grandmother, you know,
and Pete Seeger and people who
lived with him and knew him,
and Nora Guthrie and
what did her dad say
and her mom say, and
things like that.
And so in different public mediums,
though, my sort of policy is
to treat it as if you were
in my living room, you know?
If we were to have a discussion,
you can have your opinion,
you can have your perspective, but
just be respectful of each other.
And so him, as a person,
someone is in the room
that actually knew him was my
father, and he was a little boy
at the time and my dad
even tells the stories
of how Lead Belly was
the best babysitter
because he could play the guitar
and he just seemed so lively
to a lot of the children.
And that's one of the
best things that I like is
to see how people treat
children and other children,
you know, people's children.
And so and then, of course,
with other people Lead Belly,
he had a broad spectrum
of friendships.
When he went to France he had,
you know, he enjoyed France.
He went to the North.
You know, he had such a
wide variety of friendships,
and that's what I see
as him as a person.
And so that's what
you can go off of.
>> Terika Dean: The great thing
about people coming to you
for permission is you have
the ability to say no.
So that's the great thing.
And you do want to uphold
the legacy of what he wanted,
and my grandmother
tells us all the time
about what Lead Belly,
what type of man he was.
So we go off of that.
We had an opportunity one time to
license something for a video game,
but due to violence, the
language we chose to say no.
And that is a great option that
you have when you are trying
to control the legacy to
put out the positive message
that you want and not the negative.
It's very exciting
[ Inaudible ]
>> Female speaker:
It's very exciting
that you're doing this great work
to preserve Lead Belly's
legacy, legendary life.
And are you familiar with Sparky
and Rhonda Rucker who tour the world
over telling great stories about
Lead Belly and the creating,
the writing of the
song, Midnight Special,
stories that I had never heard?
>> Alvin and Terika: No.
>> Really?
>> Alvin Singh: No.
>> Female Speaker: Oh, my gosh.
So I will put them
in touch with you.
Yes, they're doing a lot to
preserve Lead Belly's work
and just keeping the
stories and the songs alive.
And they did a concert
with the Folklore Society
of Greater Washington to honor
Martin Luther King's birthday
and a lot of it was
focused on Lead Belly
and they had a whole community sing.
Whenever we do our
community sings it's very rare
that we don't do a
song by Lead Belly
and we always give him full
credit and remind people
that where these songs came
from because you're right,
it doesn't always convey with
the song who wrote the song.
>> Alvin Singh: Right.
>> Female Speaker: So and then there
is a house in Silver Spring here,
and this is something also
many people aren't aware of,
that the Seeger family lived in.
And Peggy Seeger came and did a
house concert there some years ago
and described sitting on the
balcony overlooking the living room,
she and her brother Mike,
Pete's half brother and sister,
and around the fireplace were
gathered Alan Lomax, Lead Belly,
Woody Guthrie, Charles and Pete
Seeger swapping songs and stories.
So that's something that
is local to this D.C. area.
One last thing is that I'm working
on a project and I would love
to have the Lead Belly Foundation
involved in this in whatever way
to just going into prisons
and getting especially youth
and the women writing poetry.
The Free Minds Book Club and
Writing Book Shop is local to D.C.
and we were featured
on the front page
of the Washington Post
in late February.
So the idea is to take those poems
and provide song settings for them,
working with major performing
artists, recording artists
and raise money to bring
more arts into our prisons
and correctional facilities,
detention centers
to support a second chance.
And I think Lead Belly
would certainly ...
>> Alvin Singh: Right.
>> Female speaker: ...
be in favor of that.
>> Alvin Singh: Yes.
>> Female speaker: He was
given that second chance
and we're so glad he was.
>> Alvin Singh: Yes.
>> Terika Dean: We'd love
to talk to you afterward.
>> Alvin Singh: Yes.
>> Nancy Groce: I believe that some
of Lead Belly's songs were
family songs that he learned
in his community or in his family.
Do you have any family stories about
other musicians in your family?
>> Alvin Singh: No,
not that I know of.
>> Terika Dean: Not in the family.
>> Todd Harvey: We have recordings
of Uncle Bob Ledbetter in the ...
>> Terika Dean: We do?
>> Todd Harvey: in the archive, yes.
I think he was a relative.
>> Alvin Singh: Well, Martha,
his wife, she did sing,
she accompanied some
of the songs with him,
one of the last sessions,
I know that.
But, no, there's not a string of
other musicians in the family.
He started it first in the church
that his parents had cofounded
in Mount Shiloh, where
he's buried now,
and he was just playing the organ
and that was sort of
his initial start.
I don't think they, you know,
when you start in the church
as a musician they
don't want you to get
into any other blues
and other songs.
>> Nancy Groce: Well, was there
a history of church singing
or church music in your family?
>> Alvin Singh: In my family?
>> Yes?
>> Alvin Singh: That, it
starts right there, yes.
>> Female speaker: I want
to follow-up a little bit
on what Bizzie [Assumed Spelling]
brought up, Bizzie was saying
that Sparky and Rhonda
Rucker sing a lot
of Lead Belly and talk about him.
Bizzie or rather Sparky and
Rhonda Rucker are stalwarts
of the folk music community.
I also really grew up
musically and have stayed
in that folk community
my whole life,
and Lead Belly is not someone
that's ever been absent
from my thoughts even as a child.
He's been somebody that's really
been sustained by a lot of really,
really great musicians
in folk music.
Oddly enough I'd say
probably the best person
that ever sang Lead Belly was
Michael Cooney, who was very,
very well known in traditional
folk music circles and kind
of a vision of wholesomeness.
So it may be a little odd,
but there in that emotion
that he would be the best
Lead Belly, but he sure was.
There were just tons of people that
have been playing Lead Belly songs
and talking about Lead Belly
from the early '60s on down.
And I have to say I'm a little
disturbed really by this notion,
I did see the Smithsonian
channel film, too,
of jumping from Lead Belly to Kurt
Cobain or Roger - what is his name,
Roger - the guy from The
Birds doing Fannin Street.
And I mean not very well, not very
much like Lead Belly, I thought,
and that odd juxtaposition to
say Lead Belly is significant
because these people
who demonstrably had
very little influence
by Lead Belly really
are talking about him.
And the whole, just the
whole array of people
that have kept Lead Belly's name and
music alive for the last, you know,
50 years are completely absent from
this discussion and from the film.
It bothered me, it
bothered me, you know,
I have to say that it did bother me.
>> Alvin Singh: Well, you know,
the folk community is a very tight
knit community and it's a community
that prides itself
off of what is shared.
And it's sort of black history
where people are very, you know,
they want to sort of keep
a good lock on history.
And with the folk community
what I've seen even when I lived
in Seattle, I mean there
was a lot of musicians
that are not mainstream musicians
and popular musicians that said,
well, you know, this belongs to us.
But, again, we have to look at Lead
Belly did what he wanted to do,
and those who were inspired by it
took it in their own directions.
And so different people have
their own perspective on it.
I mean, like you said, some of these
musicians have done better versions
than the Eric Clapton version or Rod
Kutter [Assumed Spelling] version,
but they're not properly
exposed or talked about.
But it doesn't stop, it doesn't stop
the folk community from doing it,
and that's what's good is that it
doesn't suppress that community
because they still know
where it comes from.
So I understand what you mean.
>> Todd Harvey: I think
it's time for us
to let our colleagues
get back to their desks.
So I want to thank Alvin and Terika
and the whole Lead Belly family ...
>> Terika Dean: Thank you.
>> Todd Harvey: ...
for taking time out of your week.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.