George Harrison has been quoted as saying, "If there was no Lead Belly, there would have been no Lonnie Donegan; no Lonnie Donegan, no Beatles. Therefore no Lead Belly, no Beatles."
And if there had been no Beatles, there would have been no Nirvana. That's why it's so amazing that Kurt Cobain took it full circle: he became a Lead Belly fan and did more to popularize his music than anyone had in decades.
Lead Belly, born Huddie Ledbetter, was born ca. 1888. He became an itinerant singer and twelve-string guitarist, what was known as a "songster," playing folk songs, cowboy ballads, prison work songs, children’s songs, field hollers, and spirituals around his native Louisiana. Ledbetter spent most of his late 20s and 30s in various prisons for gun possession, attempted murder and murder. In the early '30s, legendary folk anthologist John Lomax saw him sing on one of his recording trips to penitentiaries in the South and Texas, and eventually brought Lead Belly to New York, where he became the toast of the folk scene until his death in 1949. Seven years later, British skiffle bands were playing songs from Lead Belly's repertoire, such as "Midnight Special," "Pick a Bale of Cotton" and "Goodnight, Irene"; most famously, Lonnie Donegan had a big hit with a sprightly, scrappy take on "Rock Island Line," inspiring not just the Beatles but what turned out to be virtually every major UK musician of the classic rock era.
Kurt certainly didn't learn about Lead Belly from skiffle. He told me that he'd gotten into Lead Belly after reading something that William Burroughs wrote about him, although I've never been able to track down the actual quotation. At any rate, Kurt’s next-door neighbor, Slim Moon (who went on to found the key Olympia indie label Kill Rock Stars), happened to have a copy of Lead Belly’s Last Sessions (recorded in 1948) and played it for Kurt, who quickly became a huge fan. "It's something that I hold really sacred to me," he told me. "Lead Belly is one of the most important things in my life. I'm totally obsessed with him."
They came from very different backgrounds, musical influences, times and places but Lead Belly and Kurt shared some common musical values: sturdy but melodic music that synthesized several different genres, music that spoke volumes about the human experience, sung in plainspoken language that summoned up ineffable feelings. Lead Belly’s music is simple, but simple in the way that only a master musician can be, with the grace that comes from economy. It's much easier said than done. Kurt aspired to that level of artistry.