Source: Discogs
Once a year or so, I am contacted by someone who actually has a question about my painfully assembled and laboured list about Lead Belly’s complete recordings. I love these messages. It is a bit like I imagine the heydays of amateur radio or a romanticized version of a dystopian romcom, where I sit in my room postapocalyptically and every now and then an alluring signal lights my cabin: There’s someone out there! How exciting! Then the signal stops: I am alone, cursed to continue work on discographies. This is why I take care and time to answer these messages.
The message started by pointing out that my list missed the compilation The Definitive Leadbelly and asked whether I had any of the liner notes available as the information about the whence the songs came was missing. Here’s my answer (originally in German):
„The reason you won’t find the set on my list is because it is not a list of all issued records with pieces by Lead Belly. The list only names the records (LPs and CDs) you need to acquire all known published tracks with as little overlap as possible.
To skip ahead: It is next to certain that all of the pieces on the set by Proper Records were already published on previous sets with superior documentation.
I never saw this set with my own eyes and I don’t have the liner notes. But one can usually infer from the composistion and grouping of track titles, which songs stem from which sessions in these cases. Compilators licensing material (like Proper Records) tend to group the tracks that already have been released before in a certain sequence.
I tried to form some educated guesses by looking at the track list of the first CD. Some of those titles were only recorded once by Lead Belly (respectively, only one recording surviving) – these are „Uncle Sam Says“, „I’ve a Pretty Flowers“ (another version under another title), „Blind Lemon (Memorial Record“, „Leadbelly’s Dance“, „I’m on My Last Go Round“, „I’m Alone Because I Love You“ and „Well You Know I Had to Do It“, so we know which takes these are on the Proper Records set. Some other tracks were recorded several times, but they are from the same sessions as those named tracks and were already compiled on other compilations as those known tracks. We can therefore assume where this (small) group of tracks comes from – for example, Lead Belly recorded „It’s Tight Like That“ several times, but the take here is next to the singularly recorded „Well You Know I Had to Do It“, stemming from the same session and having been published in this sequencing before. So it’s safe to assume, it is that version of „It’s Tight Like That“.
For many other tracks, there are just better and worse candidates. „Good Morning Blues“ (or variations of the title) has been recorded by Lead Belly about a dozen times or so. On CD1, we find several track names that were published on the same Document Records-CD as one version of „Good Morning Blues“, stemming from closely related sessions. For instance, seven of the first ten track titles on CD1 appear on the Document-CD DOCD-5568. When it comes to compilations using licensed material, this is a strong indication that we’re dealing with those same tracks. This is not secured knowledge until we listen to the pieces.
Another example: At first, I assumed that the „Hitler Song“ is the version with an unknown recording date (probably 1944) due to its appearance right next to „Uncle Sam Says“ – the two titles appear in this exact sequencing on DOCD-1018. That’s a good indication. However, there is another version of the „Hitler Song“ from May 1944 which appears on DOCD-5310 – and five other titles on this CD1 here stem most probably from that Document-compilation due to their conspicuous grouping here. This accumulation of titles on a previous compilation (which labels like Proper Records use for reference) would be an indication for this other version. As mentioned, without listening to the Proper Records set, there is little we can confirm for sure. Here is an incomplete overview with corresponding appearances of titles on previous compilations for the first CD here.
The set also includes a DVD which I know nothing about.
Text Lambrecht 