The Importance of Being Leadbelly

The Importance of Being Leadbelly “Women and Liquor, that was his problem. My father got him to marry his girl, Martha, and that settled him for a while, a week or two. He called himself ‘the twelve-string champion guitar player of the world,’ and I guess he was. I never heard anybody who could play it better. He loved being the best. He wanted to stay the best as long as he was alive.” -Alan …

…a little bit on “The House of the Rising Sun.”  My small collection of albums (A little more than 250 albums), including Nirvana’s Unplugged In New York, Clapton’s Unplugged, Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” single, some Leadbelly, and a lot of Hen-drix. I looked and looked, but didn’t find much Leadbelly in Hendrix, but I will say that they both seemed to be more profoundly effective on white people than black in their day.