Lead Belly - Lead Belly's Last Sessions Part One (1962) 24-bit 96kHZvinyl rip and redbook

Lead Belly - Leadbelly's Last Sessions Part One

Vinyl rip in 24-bit / 96kHZ and redbook | FLAC | no cue or log (vinyl) | artwork, booklet scans

1.2 GB (24/96) + 282 MB (RB) | HF,RS,FF | Blues | Folkways FA 2941 A/B

These field recordings were done over the course of three evenings in September of 1948, just nine months before he died from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Recorded in he and his wife Martha’s NYC apartment by Fredric Ramsey Jr., they had no idea these would be the last, as he was only 61 at the time. The songs are all one-takes, and appear in the order they were recorded, with only some extraneous dialogue removed to conserve space. Plenty is included however, and contains lively descriptions and personal anecdotes that are (among other things) a rare first-person glimpse into early 20th-century African American experience.

The first two sides are a cappella, with all subsequent sides featuring the trademark 12-string guitar.  Unfortunately, right now I only own Part One and Part Three. The whole set is hard to find, but I will try to up the rest if/when I can.

You may question why I doing a 24/96 of such rough, primitive recordings, I have no answer for you, just hope you like it, and maybe take a moment to say, "thanks"?

They spell his name wrong on this set, as "Leadbelly", not "Lead Belly" as he himself did, and is on his tombstone, so no nits about that!  ;)




From the booklet notes:

“At the time of these recordings, recording tape was in its experimental stage. In 1953 when the tapes were taken out of their original boxes and played, some of the tape was found to be damaged and in a few cases it adhered to the next winding. We proceeded then as follows. Peter Bartok re-dubbed all the tape, and Ramsey edited the dubbed tape for a six-sided long-playing records set. However it was found that by eliminating most of the bands as suggested by Ramsey we could get 30 minutes on one side of a 12″ record to make a four-records set.” - Moses Asch

“Perhaps it would be fairest to Leadbelly to say that when he made the recordings contained in this set of long-playing records, he had no idea they were to be his last. Nor were they recorded under “professional” circumstances; in a big studio with swatches of acoustical dampers, a dozen microphones to choose from, a battery of control consoles, and a staff of prompters and technicians. Had they been made this way, they might have been quite different.

A SHORT TECHNICAL NOTE ABOUT RECORDINGS OF LEADBELLY’S LAST SESSIONS: As stated before, the facilities of larger recording studios were not available for this project. The acoustics of the New York apartment were corrected as much as possible with drapes, and the best equipment available in the early days of tape recording was used. For the first evening, a small voice microphone was employed. For the second and third evenings (with guitar) it was thought that a dynamic microphone of good quality would provide the best pick-up.

It would therefore be misleading to claim that, by todays standards, these are “extended range” recordings, although we do believe that for the most part they are adequately clean and crisp, and represent an advance over all other older, acetate recordings of Leadbelly. Everything has been done to clear the tapes of obvious defects due to faulty tape manufacture; some difficulty was experienced with tape purchased in good faith which began to peel off in spots not long after it had been used for recording. Fortunately, a better tape was made available before we had got too far along, and a majority of performances has been well preserved.”

“In the United States, not so long ago, we had a giant of a man with us, a singer and adventurer whose exploits, if we did not know the actual facts of his existence, might one day have been amplified into a sort of Paul Bunyan legend that could hardly have been more colorful than the truth. Leadbelly, or Huddie Leadbetter was Born in Mooringsport, Louisiana, son of a farmer who worked 68 acres of land in the Caddo Lake district. From the beginning, young Huddie was bewitched by music. One uncle had a guitar; his friends played small accordions, or “windjammers’” as they called them in that part-Cajun, part-Negro country. At twelve or thirteen, Huddie started riding off in the canebrakes and bottomlands to play for sukey jumps and breakdowns - Saturday night get-togethers in cabins and little, low dance halls. He was soon “good as they had on a windjammer,” according to his own testimony.

It was a rough crowd. In the North, social workers would probably have intervened. But late 19th century Negro youngsters in the South were allowed to go their way and settle their problems (no one considered them problems, anyway) amongst themselves. They drank, they made love and they got into fights.

It was one of these fights, a few years later, that started Huddie on the hardest part of his life, and shaped his career for years to come. In a bottomland fracas involving Huddie, a man was killed.

They hung the sentence on Huddie, and sent him to a prison camp, or country farm. He broke out of that, but soon got into other troubles. He was too young, too handsome, too powerful. Women couldn’t let him alone, and he couldn’t let them alone. But through it all - from 1918, when he was sentenced in the Bowie County Courthouse, Texas, to 1935, when he was released from the Angola State Prison Farm, in Louisiana - Huddie kept close to his music. He broke jail, he rambled, he married and remarried, he picked cotton, he worked in a car agency; all this was part of, but strangely incidental to, the main drive of his life - the need to learn more songs, the need to perform them, anywhere.” - Fredric Ramsey

TRACKS:

*Following the layout of the vinyl, the flac’s are presented as bands, and breaks occur between bands not songs.

**Part One - Side One (FP2941A):

01-FA2941A_Band 1.aiff

Band 1

1. Yes, I Was Standing in the Bottom (1′40)

2. Yes, I’m Going Down in Louisiana (0′42)

3. Ain’t Going Down to the Well No More (1′23)

4. Dick Ligger’s Holler (0′43)

5. Liza Jane (2′08)

6. Dog Latin Song (0′52)

7. Leaving Blues (0′31)
02-FA2941A_Band 2.aiff
Band 2

8. Go Down, Old Hannah (4:59)

9. The Blue Tailed Fly (Jimmie Crack Corn) (2′20)

10. Nobody in This World is Better Than Us (1′26)
03-FA2941A_Band 3.aiff
Band 3

11. We’re in the Same Boat, Brother (2′18)

12. Looky Looky Yonder (1′33)

13. Jolly O the Ransom (0′57)
04-FA2941A_Band 4.aiff
Band 4

14. Old Ship of Zion (1′51)

15. Bring Me a Little Water, Silvy (1′27)

16. Mistreatin’ Mama (1′24)

17. Black Betty (1′52)

18. Ain’t Going Down to the Well No More (2′45)
**Part One - Side Two (FP2941B):
05-FA2941B_Band1.aiff
Band 1

19. Yes, I’m Going Down in Louisiana (0′28)

20. I Don’t Know You, What Have I Done? (3′11)

21. Rock Island Line (1′03)

22. Old Man, Will Your Dog Catch a Rabbit? (1′29)

23. Shorty George (0′46)

24. Stewball (2′34)

25. Bottle Up and Go (1′25)

26. You Know I Got to Do It (0′52)

27. Ain’t It a Shame to Go Fishin’ on Sunday (1′21)

28. DeKalb Blues (Ain’t Gonna Drink No More) (2′37)

29. Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues (2′18)
06-FA2941B_Band2.aiff
Band 2

30. My Lindy Lou (1′08)

31. I’m Thinking of a Friend (3′22)
07-FA2941B_Band3.aiff
Band 3

32. He Never Said a Mumbling Word (2′28)

33. Gee, But I Want to Go Home (Army Life) (3′59)

34. In the World (2′01)

35. I Want to Go Home (1′26)