Leadbelly

Truly outstanding performance by Roger Mosely as Leadbelly. A must-see for any music or blues fan. The film takes you back in time, shows the pain, suffering and hardship of the American Black experience, and the music that evolved from that suffering. Most interesting is the explanation for how Leadbelly got his nickname. The film is true to life and captures your attention right from the start - taking you right into Leadbelly's world - one not only filled with very hard times, but the best of American blues roots music. An outstanding biography with excellent acting, GREAT music - an all-in-all unforgettable biography.

It's a biopic of the blues and folk musician Lead Belly. It alternates between Texas and Louisiana and covers Lead Belly's life from about 1910 to 1933.

The film opens with Lead Belly (Roger E. Mosley) in prison in 1933, where John (James Brodhead) and Alan Lomax visit him. They are recording African American folk music, including early blues, for the Library of Congress. The film then flashes back to Lead Belly's early 20s when he still lived at home with his father, Wes (Paul Benjamin), and mother, Sally (Lynn Hamilton), and his wife, Lethe (Rhetta Greene).

Lead Belly then moves to the redlight district of Shreveport, Louisiana, where he plays at whorehouses and encounters Miss Eula (Madge Sinclair) and singer Blind Lemon (Art Evans). "Leadbelly" follows his life, including two murders--one of a friend in the early 1910s and a later one around 1925, soon after his release from a Texas prison. There is much time given to his prison experiences. The movie concludes with his 1933 encounter with Thomas Lomax.

The movie is straightforward, but Lead Belly's music, dubbed by Hi Tide Harris, holds it together. Harris does an excellent job. The "Leadbelly" dialogue is blunt, reflecting the racial understandings of the day. The cinematography struck me as only OK, and some of the acting, particularly by secondary characters, seemed stiff.

Marvellously atmospheric piece, loaded with great music, full of the air and vibe of blues legend Leadbelly's life and times. Color, energy, wonderful cinematography with washed-out colors suggesting heat and years of sun; truly great soundtrack. Every blues and rock fan should see it.

If all you knew of Roger E. Mosley was as Tom Selleck's chopper pilot sidekick, T. C., on '80s TV's "Magnum, P. I.," then it may come as a surprise how good he is playing the title role in this fictionalized story of the legendary bluesman Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Leadbelly, directed by Gordon Parks. Covering a span of more than 20 years, from his 20s to 40s, the master songwriter and guitarist hones his craft while serving prison sentences slaving away on Southern chain gangs. He's even pardoned by an outgoing Governor, largely because of his popular musicianship, but as he tries to make his way back to his ancestral home, he is still not able to be completely free of the painful chains that have bound him. Some fine acting by several of the leads, and Mosley adds much of his own vocals (with the only slightly less legendary Brownie McGhee, who had played with Leadbelly in the 1940s, adding guitar), but it's equally worth noting that most Southern whites are depicted as racist, one-dimensional morons (not that that's unfair, necessarily; it's not *their* story, and therefore they are only notable for their incessant and relentless cruelty). I couldn't decide between 7 or 8 stars out of 10, and the lower number reflects the failings of the studio more than the film. (Hollywood still could barely conceive of a serious dramatic movie cast populated predominantly with people of color, but equally appealing to mostly a Caucasian moviegoing audience, despite it having witnessed the success of "Sounder" just 2-3 years earlier.) Oh well; at least, in a post Marvel's "Black Panther" world, that thinking no longer predominates.

Leadbelly isn't a great movie, but it does a good job of conveying a sense of the man, and the lead performance is very strong.

Director Parks doesn't quite carry off the sense of how alien a world the old segregated South was, and the movie has a bit too much of a this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened quality to it, rather than shaping Leadbelly's story to make a great movie.

But overall the movie is engaging, entertaining, and educational, and you get a sense of why he was such an influence on today's music. It's an enormous shame that the Weavers never credited him in "Wasn't that a time."