The Warners (Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne & Frank Warner Collection, Anne Warner with foreword by Alan Lomax,Syracuse University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-8156-0185-9) were among the first to collect Leadbelly songs, although he appears to have been fairly well known by the time they first met him.

Unfortunately, they give only "Leadbelly - Huddie Ledbetter, of Louisianna and Texas, 'King of the Twelve-String Guitar'" as an identification.

They do add a comment that "Leadbelly" was his "prison name," and that his cell-mate was "Iron Head."

The Lomax books that I have at hand do not index the people from whom songs were collected, so if there is anything to be "gleaned" it would require searching the whole of the books. Sorry, but that will have to wait.

John