John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax promoted Lead Belly as an authentic American folksinger, and two of his songs rank high in the folk pantheon:  “Goodnight Irene” was a big hit in 1950 for the early folksinging group the Weavers (whose members included Pete Seeger), and the country-blues song “Midnight Special” became the name and also the theme song of a popular musical variety program, The Midnight Special which ran from 1972 to 1981.  The latter song was attributed by the Lomaxes to Lead Belly (that was the way that Huddie Ledbetter himself used the nickname); though the song is actually much older, Lead Belly apparently supplied several verses of his own to the song.  The reference is to a late-night train that would lift the spirits of men in prison as it rolled past. 

(February 2015)

*       *       *

“One After 909” definitely sounds like a song from that era.  As quoted in Wikipedia, Paul McCartney has fond memories of this song:  “It’s not a great song but it’s a great favorite of mine because it has great memories for me of John [Lennon] and I trying to write a bluesy freight-train song.  There were a lot of those songs at the time, like ‘Midnight Special’, ‘Freight Train’, ‘Rock Island Line’, so this was the ‘One After 909’; she didn’t get the 909, she got the one after it.” 

(June 2015)