h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If that's what happened, then more power to him.

A little more Leadbelly,


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOIr_Yxr6Dc


Describing him as the single most important song writer and performer in 20th century probably wouldn't be overstating the point. There are many alternative candidates who might be proposed, I think though, that most of them would probably side with Leadbelly.

...insert after "20th century" .

"I think though, that most of them would probably side with Leadbelly" [ITIWBS]

Bob Dylan, Tom Lehrer, and Cole Porter have proposed as greatest popular songwriter of the 20th century. Then you have some teams, especially in the theatrical wing of pop music -- Rodgers/Hammerstein, lerner/Loewe, etc. Leadbelly had a serious disadvantage in that he could hardly have had an active career touring the country while he was in jail.

Those are just the American ones. In the U.K., you had Noel Coward, Lennon/McCartney. In France, Jacques Brel.

I personally refuse to select a "greatest" songwriter because I haven't heard all the ones that are worthy. Asia, South America, North America outside of the U.S., Australia, and Africa are completely unrepresented. India's Bollywood film industry is huge, and probably has produced some wonderful songs....

...restricting that to North American, or at least English speaking folk musicians...

...I still think Leadbelly would poll stunningly well with the top contenders...

I was aware of his prison experience, as a matter of fact spent the greater part of his life in Angola prison in Louisiana State. Thankfully, he had at least a few good years, late in life.

I've been looking for the Joan Rivers TV Bio on him, in which she was making remarks on her own personal acquaintance with him. Haven't found anything yet.

Well, yes, among North American folk musicians he would have been a top contender. It's intriguing that Joan Rivers knew him.

A little more on his music, especial attention to his non-verbal vocalizations from the film material from post 22 above. These are African motifs that occur to this day in native African folk music, something that on the one hand would have endeared him to the blacks, and on the other hand would have put the white minority rulers in a state of alert since there had been a determination to eradicate vestiges of African culture as long as the slave economy was established. Leadbelly was still very close to his African roots, born in 1887 or 1888 during the height of the post-reconstruction era reactionary terror. I'd suggest that at least one of his early mentors in the Black community, tutoring him in music, must have been physically of African origin.

On Angola prison, before the American Civil War it was a plantation, the place where slaves along the entire course of the Mississippi were afraid of being 'sold south' to, knowing that there, they'd be literally worked to death, on 2 year rotations. During the immediate post Civil War era, it was reorganized as a prison, 'prison labor' becoming a fiction for continuation of what amounted to slavery. Especially blacks, but also anyone else who was viewed as a threat to the system ended up there. There were still complaints on the special status and character of this prison as late as the era of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

There was a song "Ain't no more cane on this Brazos, my boys" that came from a prison in Texas. It's haunting. Texas prisons still have a reputation as tough places to be sent to.