page_title: Lead Belly
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Lead Belly / Biography / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) draft registration card, ca. 1942. The U.S. officially entered World War II on 8 December 1941 following an attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Just about a year before that, in October 1940, President Roosevelt had signed into law the first peacetime selective service draft in U.S. history, due to rising world conflicts. After the U.S. entered WWII a new selective service act required that all men between ages 18 and 65 register for the draft. Between November 1940 and October 1946, over 10 million American men were registered. This database is an indexed collection of the draft cards from the Fourth Registration, the only registration currently available to the public (the other registrations are not available due to privacy laws). The Fourth Registration, often referred to as the "old man's registration", was conducted on 27 April 1942 and registered men who born on or between 28 April 1877 and 16 February 1897 - men who were between 45 and 64 years old - and who were not already in the military. Information available on the draft cards includes: Name of registrant Age Birth date Birthplace Residence Employer information Name and address of person who would always know the registrant's whereabouts Physical description of registrant (race, height, weight, eye and hair colors, complexion) Additional information such as mailing address (if different from residence address), serial number, order number, and board registration information may also be available. For individuals who lived near a state border, sometimes their Draft Board Office was located in a neighboring state. Therefore, you may find some people who resided in one state, but registered in another.
context_page_description: Huddie William Ledbetter, better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk and blues singer, musician and songwriter notable for his strong vocals, virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the folk standards he introduced, including his renditions of "Goodnight, Irene", "Midnight Special", "Cotton Fields", and "Boll Weevil".
  Lead Belly usually played a twelve-string guitar, but he also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and windjammer. In some of his recordings, he sang while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.
  Lead Belly's songs covered a wide range of genres and topics including gospel music; blues about women, liquor, prison life, and racism; and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding, and dancing. He also wrote songs about people in the news, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, Jack Johnson, the Scottsboro Boys and Howard Hughes. Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
context_section_description: Lead Belly pronounced his first name /ˈhuhdːee/. He can be heard pronouncing his name this way both speaking at the beginning and singing toward the end on one of his recordings of "Boll Weevil".
  The younger of two children, Lead Belly was born Huddie William Ledbetter to Sallie Brown and Wesley Ledbetter on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana.   On his World War II draft registration card in 1942, he gave his birthplace as Freeport, Louisiana ("Shreveport").
  There is uncertainty over his precise date and year of birth.  The Lead Belly Foundation gives January 20, 1889, and his grave marker gives the year 1889.  His 1942 draft registration card states January 23, 1889.  However, the 1900 United States Census lists "Hudy Ledbetter" as 12 years old, born January 1888, and the 1910 and 1930 censuses also give his age as corresponding to a birth in 1888. The 1940 census lists his age as 51, with information supplied by wife Martha.  The books Blues: A Regional Experience by Eagle and LeBlanc and Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians by Tomko gives January 23, 1888,  while the Encyclopedia of the Blues gives January 20, 1888.
  His parents had cohabited for several years, but they legally married on February 26, 1888. When Huddie was five years old, the family settled in Bowie County, Texas.   The 1910 census of Harrison County, Texas, shows "Hudy Ledbetter" living next door to his parents with his first wife, Aletha "Lethe" Henderson. Aletha is registered as age 19 and married one year. Others say she was 15 when they married in 1908. It was in Texas that Ledbetter received his first instrument, an accordion, from his uncle Terrell. By his early twenties, having fathered at least two children, Ledbetter left home to make his living as a guitarist and occasional laborer.
  Between 1915 and 1939, Ledbetter served several prison and jail terms for a variety of criminal charges. In 1934, when Lead Belly was released from one of his last incarcerations, the United States was deep in the Great Depression, and jobs were very scarce. In September of that year, in need of regular work in order to avoid cancellation of his release from prison, Lead Belly asked John Lomax to take him on as a driver. For three months, he assisted the 67-year-old in his folk song collecting around the South. Alan Lomax, his son, was ill and did not accompany him on this trip.
caption: Lead Belly's draft registration card in 1942 (SERIAL NUMBER U2214 and address listed as 604 E 9TH ST., N.Y. N. Y.)
exif: {}