A previously unheard song finds Lead Belly singing about an event both literally and figuratively a world away from his life in the piney woods.

A previously unheard song from blues legend Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter finds him in an impish mood, even while losing a battle with ALS.

Emmylou Harris returns to a Gram Parsons song she first took on for 1979’s Grammy-winning Blue Kentucky Girl, only this time alongside the Seldom Scene as the DC-area bluegrass group makes its Smithsonian Folkways debut. You May Also Like: Rod Harris Jr., “I Can’t Tell You Why” from Exits andRead More

There may not be a more unlikely well-spring of hootenanny folk, jug-band blues and heart-bursting country balladry than any group of 20-somethings — but the Dust Busters have always been anything but typical. You May Also Like: No related posts.

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is preparing a new box set in honor of the Woody Guthrie Centennial. Called simply Woody at 100, it’s set for release on July 10, 2012, four days before the treasured musician would have turned 100 years old. You May Also Like: Pre-Fame Bob Dylan Struck aRead More

Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter was a man of sweeping appetites, for songs, for drink and for life. This made his music rugged and true, but also got him into his share of big trouble. Very big. Ledbetter, born on Jan. 29, 1885 on the Jeter Plantation near Mooringsport, La., wouldRead More

NICK DERISO: Cephas and Wiggins, America’s best remaining champions of the easterly Piedmont blues tradition, somehow never really made it. I mean, Robert Cray-type made it. Stevie Ray-type made it. A shame. Self-taught harp player Phil Wiggins, from Washington D.C., met John Cephas as the 1960s blues revival was inRead More

NICK DERISO: This Smithsonian Folkways release, issued today, is a hot-dawg compilation that sets up both as primer for the new-to-this and reminder for the been-there-done-that crowd. A remarkably deep catalogue has helped the label continue for years with a series of myth-confirming sets. “Classic Piano Blues” is no different,Read More

Recorded live — and I do mean live, with no rehearsals and no overdubs — this new release from Cajun master fiddler Michael Doucet possesses a passionate immediacy. And not just in the playing. Once on an academic career track, the LSU graduate long ago (as he once famously said)Read More

by Nick DeRiso A truly special, even virtuoso, street-level discovery, Snooks Eaglin burst onto the musical landscape with this nearly uncatagorizable debut. The in-joke around New Orleans was that he was presented as a “folk” musician, when in actuality the then-22-year-old Eaglin had already been playing in electric blues andRead More