Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
In times of worry or Plague, the indigenous African American musical genre, The Blues, can be a mighty comfort.
Goodnight Irene is a song recorded in 1933 by American blues musician, Huddie (Lead Belly) Ledbetter. I apologize for the quality, but the authenticity is worth it.
From the Financial Times:
It’s impossible to tell the story of “Goodnight, Irene” without telling the tale of Huddie Ledbetter. Born in 1888 (or possibly 1889) in Louisiana, Ledbetter was a man with a temper. He was jailed for murder in Texas in 1918, having killed a man in a fight over a woman. After seven years inside, he used his sweet singing voice and a specially composed ballad to charm the prison governor into granting him early release. In 1934 he was back inside, this time in Angola prison, Louisiana, for his part in a knife fight, when the institution was visited by the folklorists John Lomax and his son, Alan. Struck by Ledbetter’s ringing tenor voice, and by what Alan Lomax later called his “panther-like grace and his extraordinary good looks”, the Lomaxes used their new portable recording equipment to immortalise for the Library of Congress the voice and 12-string guitar-playing of the man known to his fellow inmates — and to subsequent generations of music lovers — as Lead Belly. The first song Lead Belly recorded for them was “Goodnight, Irene”, the waltzing lament of a married man gone astray. He told the Lomaxes he’d heard the song sung by his uncles as a child. They possibly knew it as “Irene, Good Night”, written in 1886 by Gussie Lord Davis, one of Tin Pan Alley’s first black songwriters.
Goodnight Irene is a song recorded in 1933 by American blues musician, Huddie (Lead Belly) Ledbetter. I apologize for the quality, but the authenticity is worth it.
From the Financial Times:
It’s impossible to tell the story of “Goodnight, Irene” without telling the tale of Huddie Ledbetter. Born in 1888 (or possibly 1889) in Louisiana, Ledbetter was a man with a temper. He was jailed for murder in Texas in 1918, having killed a man in a fight over a woman. After seven years inside, he used his sweet singing voice and a specially composed ballad to charm the prison governor into granting him early release. In 1934 he was back inside, this time in Angola prison, Louisiana, for his part in a knife fight, when the institution was visited by the folklorists John Lomax and his son, Alan. Struck by Ledbetter’s ringing tenor voice, and by what Alan Lomax later called his “panther-like grace and his extraordinary good looks”, the Lomaxes used their new portable recording equipment to immortalise for the Library of Congress the voice and 12-string guitar-playing of the man known to his fellow inmates — and to subsequent generations of music lovers — as Lead Belly. The first song Lead Belly recorded for them was “Goodnight, Irene”, the waltzing lament of a married man gone astray. He told the Lomaxes he’d heard the song sung by his uncles as a child. They possibly knew it as “Irene, Good Night”, written in 1886 by Gussie Lord Davis, one of Tin Pan Alley’s first black songwriters.
