The sound of

In another life, if I couldn't have been a nonfiction writer, I would have wanted to have Alan Lomax's job. Lomax was a folklore recorder, and in the 1930s he and his father met Leadbelly at the Angola State Prison in Louisiana, where Leadbelly (whose real name was Huddie Ledbetter) was doing time for murder.

Leadbelly's voice eventually became deeper and raspier, but I'm partial to these Library of Congress recordings from the late 1930s.

Midnight Special

Governor K Allen

Frankie and Albert