In the turpentine country of East Texas, Boogie-Woogie was known as “Fast Texas Piano.” Lead Belly said he first heard Boogie Woogie in Cottle County, Texas in 1899 and imitated its rhythmic feel and bass line on his guitar. After ten hours on the job, hard-working loggers let off steam drinking beer and dancing to a Boogie Woogie beat. An upright piano was standard equipment in these joints. Lumber camp owners built barrelhouse sheds, serving up cheap booze and hot blues, as a way to keep their workers from running off to the nearest bar for a night on the town. Lead Belly and Blind Lemon Jefferson were the area’s street singers and stars and a young T-Bone Walker learned his stuff hanging out with these masters.īoogie Woogie came up out of the ground in the piney woods of East Texas. In 1920s Dallas, honkytonks in the city’s Deep Ellum neighborhood were a great place to hear the blues. There were singer-songwriters like Ragtime Texas Thomas, who wrote the “Fishin’ Blues,” re-invented by Taj Mahal in the 60s. Fueled by a migrant black population of farm hands and itinerant musicians, Texas blues spread throughout the Southwest, then headed north into the Great Plains states. He sang cowboy songs like, “The Old Chisholm Trail.” Folk songs, like “The Rock Island Line.” Country blues like, “Good Mornin’ Blues.” Lead Belly not only sang these pillars of traditional music, but he owned them he made them his own.īorn in 1890 in Wortham, Texas about 80 miles south of Dallas, Blind Lemon Jefferson won his place in history with a plaintive, moaning vocal style, intricate fingerings on his guitar, and lyrics like “There’s One Kind Favor I Ask of You, See That My Grave’s Kept Clean.” Bob Dylan successfully covered this Blind Lemon Jefferson song in 1966, reviving interest in the bluesman.Įven before World War I, a deep, rich strain of Texas blues-thick as Texas crude-emerged from the farmlands and backwoods cabins of East Texas. Lead Belly sang it all-from field hollers to work songs. In and out of prison, this “bad man minstrel” knew so many songs, they called him a “human jukebox.” It’s said he sang his way out of Angola State Penitentiary by charming the warden with his endless repertoire and driving 12-string guitar playing style.
Lead Belly, the fabled American bluesman and folk musician grew up on a freehold farm in East Texas on the Red River bottomlands, where he was known as Huddie Ledbetter. Riverwalk Jazz celebrates Texas Roots in Jazz and Blues, and pays tribute to native sons- bluesman Lead Belly, ragtime icon Scott Joplin and trombone maestro “Texas Big T” Jack Teagarden. Photo of Huddie 'Lead Belly' Ledbetter courtesy
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