Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889–1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous – as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons. But, as this deeply researched book shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past.

‘Sheila Curran Bernard rescues the legendary ‘Lead Belly’ from a swirl of fabrication and racist presumption, and simultaneously illuminates the systemized oppression that cruelly stalked Black artists and ensured, for a century after the ostensible end of slavery, that bitter chords of racial injustice would remain as central to the American chorus as any melodies of freedom.’

Douglas A. Blackmon - author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

‘Sheila Curran Bernard’s thoroughly researched book is necessary for recuperating and rescuing the truth of Huddie Ledbetter from racist myths and stereotypes, but also for recasting deeply held myths and assumptions about white paternalism and the origins of American folk music.’

Mary Ellen Curtin - author of Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900

‘A beautiful tribute to Lead Belly’s legacy. This book will forever change the way we think about one of America’s most iconic musical legends and one of its most misunderstood.’

Talitha L. LeFlouria - author of Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South

‘Sheila Curran Bernard is the first to give us a biographical book on Huddie Ledbetter as he really was: a complicated man tactically negotiating a complex, racist, and overwhelmingly unforgiving world.’

Gustavus Stadler - author of Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life