The Lead Belly Songbook - Lead Belly, no stranger to the blues

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Roberta

Click here to listen to Real Audio format 28.8 modem.

Huddie played this in the F position. Many of the versions have extensive semi-shouted, sung stories about the main character in the song, looking for Roberta. These interspersed "raps" or "chant fables" were a trademark of Lead Belly's live and recorded performances and may have been inspired by the need for Huddie to make his songs and their stories more easily understood. John and Alan Lomax encouraged this style of "rap" to help Lead Belly overcome any comminication problems between Lead Belly and his audience due to his thick accent.

Lead Belly worked on making his accent more understandable, and his later recordings show a little less reliance on the sung or shouted narrative and more on a conversational style of narrative such as can be heard on Rock Island Line.