Lead Belly: The Convicted Killer Who Changed American Music

Huddie Ledbetter spent a combined fifteen or so years behind bars for a killing and a stabbing, and somewhere in between those two prison terms he became one of the most influential musicians America has ever produced. He wrote or preserved songs that would later define skiffle, shape the Beatles, and get covered by everyone from Nirvana to Led Zeppelin, and he did it while being marketed for years by the white folklorist who discovered him as, in his own words, a convict first and a musician...