I was just talking about Leadbelly the other day at work. One of my colleague was looking for that "Pines" song that Robert Johnson sang. I didn't know which one he meant. Finally it dawned on me: he meant Leadbelly, not RJ! He went online to look at the lyrics, and said "Oh, I didn't know he wrote 'Goodnight Irene.'" "

"he didn't, really," I said. "It's probably descended from an old popular Tin Pan Alley song published as sheet music. Leadbelly always said he learned it from his uncle Terrell, and his Uncle Bob confirmed that, but when they copyrighted it, he and John Lomax shared the credit."

At that point everyone's mouth was hanging open, because why did I know all this trivia? Most people just don't care that much.

Bobert, it was mostly John Lomax who made the business arrangements with Leadbelly and employed him as a servant, not his son Alan. He was much more paternalistic, much more the "Massa," than Alan was. I think Alan sometimes gets a bad rap because people don't distinguish between him and his father. Alan was a great promoter of Leadbelly's talent, arranging recording sessions with everyone from RCA Victor to Folkways, etc. In fact, in 1939 when Leadbelly got in trouble with the law for stabbing another man in NYC (probably someone trying to molest his wife, though Leadbelly was tight-lipped about it), Alan Lomax took a semester off from Columbia University just to raise money for Leadbelly's defense. Most accounts make him a true believer and loyal friend of Leadbelly's, if a little paternalistic in his old-fashioned Texas way.

Then, too, according to most accounts (including the authoritative Wolfe and Lornell book) Leadbelly begged John Lomax pretty obsequiously for a job as driver/cook/servant, sending him four letters in August and September of 1933; Lomax did not seek out such services from Leadbelly. So it may be true that John Lomax treated him as a servant, but he invited and even begged for such treatment. He seems to have grown to resent it later, after John Lomax's attitudes toward him were pretty well set.