Two Pals
Billy Bob Hill
There have been several friendships between two notable people who lived in Dallas. City fathers, John Neely Bryan and Alexander Cockrell, come to mind. Maybe Bonnie and Clyde doesn’t belong in this category since they were more than friends. There’s Doak Walker and Bobby Lane, who played football on the same team at Highland Park High. There’s David “Fathead” Newman and Ray Charles (yes, that Ray Charles). Camilla Carr and Morgan Fairchild (nee Patsy McClenny) performed together in Theatre Three plays. And how can one forget those troublemakers, Don Meredith and Pete Gent. However, two friends, Huddie Ledbetter, nicknamed Lead Belly, and Lemon Henry Jefferson, nicknamed Blind Lemon, were the two friends in Dallas who most influenced American music.
Ledbetter was born on a Louisiana plantation 1888, and Jefferson on an East Texas farm in 1893. The two singer-songwriters had begun playing Dallas saloons and brothels by 1912.
I love their voices and guitar work, especially the sound Lead Belly generated from his Stella twelve-string guitar. Today, most people know of Lead Belly and Blind Lemon through musicians who later recorded their songs.
I encountered Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave is Kept Clean” when I listened to Bob Dylan’s version on his first album. Carl Perkins transformed Jefferson’s “Matchbox Blues” into a rockabilly hit. “Matchbox Blues” was also recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, and The Beatles.
On an old Paramount record, Blind Lemon sings, “Standing here wonderin’ will a matchbox hold my clothes…I ain’t got so many matches but I got so far to go.”
Currently, there’s a YouTube posting of Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert King doing a killer “Matchbox Blues.”
Ledbetter’s “Goodnight Irene” was rerecorded by Gene Autry, Red Foley, The Weavers, Willie Nelson, Ry Cooder, and others. In 1950, “Goodnight Irene” by Pete Seeger and the Weavers stayed at Billboard’s Number One for thirteen weeks, introducing folk music to the general public. The Kingston Trio, Johnny Cash, and others have done “Cotton Fields.” Surely, everybody on the planet has heard “The Midnight Special” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. On their MTV Unplugged episode, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana performed “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” Lead Belly’s “On a Monday” is a cut on an Arlo Guthrie record.
Arlo Guthrie tells the story that he once read the liner notes on one of his album. The short bio stated that he had performed with Huddie Ledbetter. In concerts, Arlo tries to correct the misinformation by telling his audiences he can recall being in a room with “this really big black guy” who was singing with his father, but he was a little boy and wasn’t part of the music.
My favorite Lead Belly lyrics come from the local sporting life. These lines are from “Silver City Bound.”
I’m Silver City bound
Gonna tell my baby,
I’m Silver City bound.
Gonna find Blind Lemmon,
And ride on down.
Lead Belly would find Blind Lemon in Deep Ellum, and they would catch an Interurban train. They would get off at Silver City, an African-American community in what is now South Dallas. Its brothels made the town a popular destination. On the ride back, they would play guitars and sing duets while passing around a hat for tips from fellow passengers.
You can watch a YouTube video of Nina Simone singing “Silver City Bound.” Also on YouTube, the New York City band, Silver City Bound, do a nice cover of their namesake tune.
These lyrics from “Take a Whiff on Me” demonstrates Lead Belly’s firsthand knowledge of street life. Maybe these words seem familiar because of Jackson Brown’s “Cocaine.”
Walked up Ellum and I come down Main,
Tryin’ to bum a nickel, just to buy cocaine,
Ho, ho, honey,
Take a whiff on me.
I should clarify that Huddie Ledbetter didn’t serve time for possession of a controlled substance. Unlike David Crosby, he was placed under the supervision of the Texas Department of Corrections because he had killed a man in a fight. Like David Crosby, he gave free concerts for fellow inmates and prison staff. Governor Pat Neff pardoned Lead Belly after he had written a flattering song about the Governor.
You can experience their music on video in ways other than going to YouTube. The 1975 biopic Leadbelly was directed by Gordon Parks of Shaft fame. Huddie Leadbetter is played by Roger E. Mosley and Lemon Henry Jefferson by Art Evans. The movie has an enjoyable soundtrack. By the way, Ledbetter spelled his name as two words, although it’s often spelled as one.
Anyone with an interest in American music should watch the DVD A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. Among the performers are Bruce Springsteen, Little Richard, Sweet Honey and the Rock, Taj Mahal, Bob Dylan, Emmy Lou Harris, and Willie Nelson. In A Vision Shared, Sweet Honey and the Rock sing this incredible acapella arrangement of “Bring Me Little Water Sylvie.”
Blind Lemon was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, and Lead Belly into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, both honors given posthumously.
Sadly, Blind Lemon died alone in 1929 in a Chicago snowstorm after an acquaintance had forgotten to give him a ride home. Lead Belly, after being discovered by folklorist John Lomax, became famous. He toured Europe and performed for college audiences before he died of Lou Gehrigs’s disease in 1949.
If you wish to learn more about these two pals who contributed so much to American music, go to their entries in the Handbook of Texas Online, a website sponsored by the Texas State Historical Association. You’ll find “Huddie Ledbetter” at https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fle10 and “Lemon Henry Jefferson” at https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fje01
Billy Bob Hill, an English teacher, is the editor of the TCU Press anthology, A Student’s Treasury of Texas Verse. Another one of Hill’s anthologies, Texas in Poetry, is mentioned toward the end of Don Graham’s entry “Literature” in Handbook of Texas https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kzl01
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