Album Highlight - The Legend of Lead Belly

I was over at our neighbor, New Style Records, flipping through their vinyl the other day during a shift change and came across this Lead Belly album. I asked Jill if we could put it on, and of course it ended up coming home with me.

Lead Belly was a foundational American folks/blues/roots artist, influencing the likes of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and countless others. You should really check out not only his music but also his life story, from being born on a plantation, going in and out of prison, to eventually being discovered by John and Alan Lomax.

My favorite song on the album is the haunting classic, "Where did you Sleep Last Night?" or otherwise known as "In the Pines." It's one of those songs that captivates you immediately, making you stop whatever else you were doing at the moment and simply listen. Many artists have covered this song but here are some of my favorites.

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Lead Belly might not have been the first to record the song, but his version is the one everyone is drafting off of since its release. I'm not sure what artists are doing when they try to do a straight cover. You're not going to do it better than Lead Belly so you might as well take a chance and find a way to make the song your own.

Nirvana did just that, making this hundred years old blues/folk song into their own grunge cult classic. I don't want to get into the mythologizing that happens with this song, the unplugged set, and Cobain's death. Instead, I just appreciate his talent to be able to play a song already rich in authenticity and feeling, and then take it to a whole other level.  

The power of this song usually comes from the heavy blues chords and the pain in the artist's voice, but Bill Monroe's bluegrass version almost makes the song sound chipper. That's until you hear the whistling and yodeling that mimick a cold, lonely wind blowing through the pines. If Lead Belly and Cobain's versions make you feel alone in the dark, Monroe's version puts you there on edge in the middle of the day with a hard, unsettling wind cutting right through.

Now I will grant you that the Grateful Dead's version doesn't belong anywhere close to these other three, but I do appreciate it as an example of how the Dead can turn any song into a jam session. Again, if you're not going to top the original then you have to make it your own.