Personnel includes: Leadbelly (vocals, acoustic guitar).

Recorded between September and November, 1948. Originally released on Folkways (241/2941, 242/2942). Includes liner notes by Frederic Ramsey, Jr. Moses Asch, Sean Killeen, Anthony Seeger, Jeff Place and Matt Walters.

Legend has it that when Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter was shown one of the first commercially available tape recorders--as opposed to the then-standard disc-cutting machines--in the fall of 1948, he immediately sat down in front of it for a marathon impromptu recording session. This fact comes across on the first of these discs taken from those tapes: most of its 35 tracks are traditional blues hollers without even his trademark 12-string guitar for accompaniment.

The other three discs are jam-packed with songs, fragments, and often fascinating conversations. Rather than edit the material--which the listener can do quite nicely with a programmable CD player and blank cassettes--the archivists at Smithsonian/Folkways wisely chose to release these four hours of material exactly as it was recorded. As a result, the sound quality is occasionally a bit dodgy, but the historical import and musical quality of these recordings are undeniable.

Q (3/95, p.118) - 3 Stars - Good - "...though these were his last recordings, they were his first made on magnetic tape and the medium's fidelity communicates a greater intimacy than was achieved on his many other recordings..."

Vibe (12/99, p.158) - Included in Vibe's 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century