Leadbelly (1976) opens with Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter (Roger E. Mosley) as an old man in prison. By “old” I mean they dyed Mosley’s hair and eyebrows gray, and even “dyed” might be an overstatement. Ledbetter is shirtless when we first meet him, so we can see he’s actually a strapping middle-age man. Perhaps that stuff on his hair is just dust from breaking rocks all day.
Ethnomusicologists John and Alan Lomax come to record Ledbetter playing guitar and singing for the Library of Congress. Ledbetter proceeds to narrate the film in a long flashback. Dude, they asked you for a song, not your lifestory. Also, it may not be a good idea to go on literal record about all the times you broke the law and got away with it. Maybe he figured, “What the hell? I’m already in prison.” What he should have thought was what he himself brings up in the end: “I only have six more months to go.”
When Ledbetter is, according to his mother, “just a child” — although still played by a 38-year-old man — assaults a man over a girl Ledbelly has impregnated. He makes a beeline for Shreveport to avoid taking responsibility for his actions. Before he leaves, his father says he will help the girl when the baby comes, and tells Ledbetter, “You best keep your mind on helping her, too.” Ledbetter nods in agreement, but I don’t think he ever gets around to that.
Ledbetter’s first stop in Shreveport is a brothel. It’s pretty obvious what kind of establishment this is; just in case, some of the women are shown eating bananas and smoking cigars. Phallic imagery and oral fixation? This truly is a den of iniquity.
The madam, Miss Eula (Madge Sinclair), takes an instant liking to Ledbetter, giving him his famous nickname upon meeting him. There are diverse accounts of how the name “Lead Belly” came about; none of them seem to involve a procuress.
Ledbetter claims Miss Eula “even taught me how to sing the blues.” Lesson #1: “You got to feel the blues.” Lesson #2: “It’s gonna cost you dear to learn the blues.” Five seconds later, Ledbetter is strumming on his guitar and going, “That’s it! That’s it!”
Similarly, Ledbetter picks up the 12-string guitar from an old rummy. That is, he literally gets the physical instrument from this man. I guess the only difference between a 6-string guitar and a 12-string guitar is six strings.
Ledbetter may have been a quick musical study, but his moral character develops little or nothing. He goes through life playing, drinking, fighting, and whoring. He spends a lot of time on the run and in prison. He’s not exactly a victim of circumstance. It’s never a good idea to smash a guitar on the back of a man’s head, especially if you’re a black man in the early-to-mid-20th-century American South and you’re surrounded by white people in a house decorated with a Confederate Flag. Live to fight another day.
From the very beginning, the film is about Ledbetter making poor choices and walking away from the consequences. That would be fine if it led to an epiphany, but he remains blinder than Blind Lemon Jefferson. Even when Ledbetter claims self-defense, he can’t help boasting, “He stuck me with a knife, but I stuck him better.”
In the end, when he learns the Lomaxes “collect songs,” Ledbetter compares it to “sticking pins through butterflies.” Ledbetter collaborated repeatedly with the Lomaxes; here, though, he is determined to keep them from “killing” his songs. This, however, doesn’t lead to a breakthrough. Ledbetter doesn’t work on himself and become a model prisoner — and, by extension, a better human being — so he can get an early release. As I mentioned above, he only has six months left. He doesn’t need to change or improve; he just needs to wait.
I’m speaking strictly about the cinematic Ledbetter. I’d be a fool to think any of what transpires in this film actually happened, and if it did, that it happened as portrayed. Leadbelly is best understood as a blacksploitation take on Ledbetter’s life. Suffice it to say that its director, Gordon Parks, also directed Shaft and Shaft’s Big Score.
