On this day in 1949: Folk and blues icon Lead Belly died

Music
06 Dec 22

Lead Belly

On the 73rd anniversary of his death, we're revisiting some of our favourite comments on the legendary folk and blues musician – all taken from interviews in the Hot Press Archives...

PETE SEEGER

"Lead Belly was one of the greatest performers I ever knew. He didn't write many songs on his own, but he changed every song he sang, adding to it, using a different harmony, etc. He was ambitious. If he hadn't been a musician, he would have been a great athlete. In his '60s his muscles still bulged like iron bands. But he was hit by a terrible disease called Lou Gehrig's Disease. However, he'll go down in history because of his songs, like 'The Bourgeois Blues' which he wrote in Washington after being kicked out of a number of whites-only venues." (2001)

VAN MORRISON

"The first song I got up and sang would probably be the Lead Belly song ‘Midnight Special’ , when I was at school. We did this school concert at Orangefield, at Christmas, in my last year there. I had a skiffle group, and it went down great." (1999)

“Singing is my profession – there is no plan B. When I heard ‘Goodnight Irene’ by Lead Belly, with Sonny Terry on harmonica, that was it. Everything else went out the window.” (2012)

GEORGE EZRA

"People say I sound like an old man but don’t look like one! My voice is how I sing; it was a conscious thing from when I was about 16. I couldn’t sing very well. I tried to sing like Lead Belly. It’s how I found my voice and I realised I could sing. My voice was very bland and not very tuneful. People now say my voice is a surprise. It’s also a huge surprise to me.” (2014)

RORY GALLAGHER

“I suppose I had the slight benefit of hearing [the blues] before I knew what it was. By the grace of God, because I didn’t have a record player, I heard the primal blues radio recordings of Lead Belly and Big Bill Broonzy. AFN was playing them on jazz programmes and also, BBC.” (1987)

SAM AMIDON

When I was 12, I decided I should try and listen to some cool music that my friends were listening to, in order to be less of a folk music dork. I went to the local cassette/record/CD store and bought Nirvana Unplugged on cassette. I brought it back home and listened to the final track, Kurt Cobain's blistering performance of a Lead Belly song, who he refers to as his 'favourite performer' right beforehand. My mom overheard me listening to it and started singing along, because she knew it from the Lead Belly recordings. (2019)