Rock Island Line - Lead Belly
Song of the Day #28
Apple Music link: https://music.apple.com/us/album/rock-island-line/219637503?i=219637960
To me, Lead Belly's main appeal lies in his charisma and presence above all. While bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson would dazzle with their technical playing prowess and enigmatic personas, Lead Belly succeeded by the sheer passion and emotions he squeezed out of every note he sang. He sounds like an ordinary guy, but he performs it with a level of conviction that forces you to take his material very deeply. Every time I listen to a Lead Belly recording, I feel I come closer and closer to the beating heart of the human spirit, and there just aren't that many artists that can make their personal material that impactful.
So even if Lonnie Donegan used Lead Belly's version helped to kick off the skiffle craze (thus the rock 'n' roll scene in the UK) and Johnny Cash recorded a funny, kickass version for Sun, neither of them ever fully surpassed the fervor of Lead Belly's original rendition. He truly unlocked the potential of the original prison song by capitalizing on its subject matter, transforming a mere chanting tune into an exhilarating journey just by the passion in his voice. When he starts to show the depot agent the animals he has on board, you can feel the excitement brew up for getting onto the road, and when the chug-a-chug guitar starts to pick up, you know you're in for a hell of a ride. He performs the song with such overpowering energy that it's hard not to get caught up with the thrill of it all, and he accentuates the excitement by adding little hooks to make each verse mind-grabbing. What can resist the rapid fire of "if you want to ride you gotta ride like you find it, get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Liiiiiiine" or the subtly twisty phrasings of the main chorus? It's one of those songs performed with so much sincere feeling that it cuts so much deeper than you would expect, one among his many timelessly beautiful recordings that haven't aged a day. If you think that pre-war country blues are deadly boring, this is one of those songs to dispel that notion.
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