Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tales of Black and unknown bards of long ago
O black and unknown bards
of long ago,
How came your lips to touch
the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness,
did you come to know The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?
— James Weldon Johnson, “O Black and Unknown Bards”
Huddie Ledbetter didn’t like to be called “Lead Belly.” One of his relatives told me. Florida Combs was his second cousin, and spoke with the authority of great age and seriousness.
She said he tolerated the nickname because he understood it was a show-business conceit, that it sold tickets and drew interest. He tolerated a lot in the name of commerce, allowing himself to be presented as a dangerous and untamed criminal to eager up the blood of the Bryn Mawr girls come to watch him sing and play — some kind of minstrel Mighty Kong.
So I try not to call him Lead Belly, though sometimes I slip up, for the same reasons of expediency that caused him to grudgingly accept the nickname. (“Don’t get too close, girls — a gutload of shotgun pellets couldn’t kill this beast.”)
There is a Little Golden Books fairy story about the “friendship” between the convict Huddie Ledbetter and the white man who “saved” him, John A. Lomax. The rough outlines are that Lomax met Ledbetter when he was making field recordings of folk musicians during the Depression. Lomax and his son Alan traveled to Louisiana State Prison at Angola to record prisoners in 1933; Ledbetter was among the inmates he recorded.
The legend is that Lomax recognized in Ledbetter a singular talent, and arranged to have him sing for Gov. O.K. Allen, who pardoned him on the spot. Lomax
and Ledbetter then teamed up to spread the gospel of the King of the 12-String Guitar.
The truth is more prosaic; Lomax did meet and record Ledbetter, and Lomax did deliver a copy of his recording to Allen, who may or may not have listened to it. But the governor did not pardon Ledbetter right away; Ledbetter was released in 1934, when he became eligible for early release. After he was released, he wrote to Lomax, asking him for a job. Lomax agreed to an interview.
Lomax later told the New York Herald Tribune about meeting Ledbetter:
“On Aug. 1, Leadbelly [sic] got his pardon. On Sept. 1, I was
dad found him in the — you guessed it — woods. It took my dad months’ worth of dog food and countless trips out to the little thicket behind the middle school before he could ever even touch Woody.
If Dad hadn’t been willing to put in so much effort, Woody might’ve wound up on Jazz’s back deck, or worse.
My dog barks from the laundry room. Her name’s Layla. She’s a red merle Australian Shepherd with iceblue eyes. In other words, she’s fancy. So fancy that we named this whole wonderful
place where we live “Layla’s Landing.”
Yes. My dog is spoiled. Pampered beyond belief and now I’m thinking of her as my daughter, the same way I keep thinking of the pit bull as some of the kids I’ve met over the years. The ones who look mean but are really just scared. I’m still thinking of Woody, too, and what would’ve happened to him if my dad hadn’t come around.
I text Jazz. I ask him if I can feed the dog. He says it’s cool, so I do.
I cry as I watch the stray woof it down, knowing that’s it. That’s all I’m going to do. With a dog, a cat, two kids and a wife, my house is full already.
There are still tears in my eyes when I leave Jazz’s yard and enter my own. My kids got a trampoline for Christmas. I walk past it, knowing some kids got nothing. Some kids get a raw deal when it comes to life, just like that dog out there. Maybe somebody comes along every now and then and dumps some food out, buys a few Christmas presents, but it takes more than that to save a life.
It takes someone like my other neighbor, Marilyn Spencer, aka the “TypsyGypsy.”
My phone buzzes. The group text again, and again, and again. Marilyn has taken the dog in. She knows somebody who fosters pit bulls.
She’s going to look after the dog for a while. She sends a picture of her daughter and the dog, the same one who growled at me right before I fed him, the same animal somebody, somewhere, dropped off on the side of the road.
When I look at the picture, the dog’s eyes are what I notice first. Amber colored and still full of pain, but the fear is finally gone from them, at least for now.
Eli Cranor is an Arkansas author whose debut novel, “Don’t Know Tough,” is available wherever books are sold. He can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor.