THE STAR
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Wednesday, January 17, 2024 • PAGE 3
The Reid Feed: The bittersweet sound of Sugar Land JANET SUE
RYAN LEE
Art and Culture Columnists
By Ryan Lee Reid and Janet Sue Reid Many people are probably unaware that the Interstate 10 corridor between Texas and Louisiana is probably the most important area of musical development in all of the United States. The area has served as a crossroads for so many different ethnic groups, social forces, political forces, and economic forces that make it one of the most complex and diverse places in the country. This tremendous amount of diversity created an astounding amount of thriving musical genres and subgenres including gospel, ragtime, jazz, conjunto, Tejano, Cajun, zydeco, polka, Country, Western swing, rock and roll, and a number of others that have mixed and mingled like no other place in the country. And even though the blues was born in the Mississippi Delta in the early nineteenth century, East Texas is considered the second most important geo-
graphical location for the development of the blues. During the second half of the 19th century the blues traveled west due to the end of slavery after the Civil War in 1865. African Americans were now able to travel freely, even though they still faced poverty and discrimination. Many ended up traveling west to Louisiana and Texas where they set up sharecropper communities that gave birth to a staggering amount of early blues musicians who would have an immeasurable impact on the music and musicians of the 20th century. When, In the 1890’s when crops were decimated by a pest called the boll weevil, many African-Americans emigrated from rural areas to large Texas cities like Dallas and Houston where the jobs were. Since the blues was an oral tradition and nothing was written down, it was in the Black neighborhoods that early blues musicians were able to find audiences and some national appeal. Early Texas blues man like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mance Lipscomb, Sam “Lightning” Hopkins, and Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter would make their living playing in brothels, whiskey joints, fairs, and dance halls all around these two great Texas cities. However, since it was easy for AfricanAmericans at this time to go
to prison for various “infractions”, many would also find themselves in jail for inordinate amounts of time. In the case of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, he would find himself incarcerated in Sugar Land’s only prison at the time, and one of Texas’s first penal institutions owned by the state, The Texas Imperial State Prison Farm also known as the Central State Prison Farm and the Central Unit, in 1921. If you are curious where this now-defunct prison existed, it is actually right next door to the Sugar Land Airport on U.S. Highway 90A, close to its intersection with Highway 6, and adjacent to the train tracks. Our neighborhood, New Territory, is directly across the street on the other side of U.S. Highway 90A. Lead Belly is by far the most well-known inmate to come through Sugar Land’s prison system. He has more than one hundred songs recorded for the Library of Congress and is considered one of the most important and influential blues musicians that has ever lived. What sets him apart from some of his colleagues of this era is that he was more than just a blues musician, he was a songster. A songster is someone who plays and sings for many of the community’s events, and because of this must be comfortable play-
ing a wide range of musical genres. In fact many of his songs were re-recorded and made hits by other musicians like Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Harry Belefonte, and Creedence Clearwater Revival to name just a few. It’s in the Texas Imperial State Prison Farm in Sugar Land that Lead Belly learned many of his songs and was given the nickname Lead Belly. According to Ledbetter, “One day the Chaplain of the (Sugar Land) prison, the Reverend ‘Sin Killer’ Griffin, came to him. ‘He says to me, you’re a hard driving man. Instead of guts, you got lead in your belly. That’s who you are, old Lead Belly!’” Most likely the Chaplain was probably referring to his vocal strength and his hardworking nature. One of Lead Belly’s most popular and covered songs, “Midnight Special”, was created in the prison, literally right across the street from where we are currently writing this article. The title refers to the Southern Pacific train that would pass by the prison along U.S. Highway 90A, heading west around midnight every night. A biographer of Lead Belly stated that the song “became a cruel, tantalizing and regular reminder of life beyond the Sugar Land fences.” In 1924, Texas Gov. Pat Neff visited the Sugar Land prison and heard Lead Belly
performing an original song pleading to the governor for a pardon. Neff liked the song so much that he pardoned Lead Belly, commuting almost twenty-three years of his prison sentence. John Lightfoot writes in “The Roots of Texas Music, “Indeed, Lead Belly did sing his way out of prison, Lightning Hopkins and Texas Alexander sang their way off East Texas road gangs.” The prison which opened in 1909 closed down in August 2011, the first prison in Texas to close without being replaced. Most former prisoner plantation land today is the master- planned community of Telfair, and one of the former prison buildings has even been renovated as the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Sugar Land branch, located on University Boulevard. As far as Lead Belly goes, he would continue playing and recording up until his death in 1949, never really making much money as a singer or songwriter. It wouldn’t be until after his passing that his importance and inspiration on the next generation of musicians would be uncovered. Finally in 1992 an issue of Newsweek gave Lead Belly the distinction of “America’s greatest folk singer”, and nowadays he consistently ranks among the top ten of most important Texas musi-
cians that have ever lived. So next time you’re driving on US-90A and see a train go by, imagine Lead Belly sitting in his cell singing this bittersweet sound of Sugar Land “You can bet your bottom dollar that you’re Sugar Land bound. Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me.” Watch Sugar Land’s Ryan Lee Reid perform Lead Belly’s “Midnight Special” at tinyurl.com/MidnightSpecial. NOTE: Information in this article is derived from the following sources: “The Roots of Texas Music”, edited by Lawrence Clayton and Joe Specht (Chapter 1: The Roots Run Deep “An Overview of Texas Music History” by Gary Hartman; Chapter 4: “Early Texas Bluesmen” by John Lightfoot); “The Life and Legend of Lead Belly” by Charles K. Wolfe and Kip Lornell; Kip Lornell, liner notes, “The Titanic”; and the “Central State Prison Farm” article on Wikipedia. Ryan Lee Reid, “The Piano Cowboy”, and Janet Sue Reid, “The Culinary Cowgirl”, are artists and creators. They transform space and time to move and heal people through art. They live in Sugar Land with their children. Find their full bios and contact them through ReidFeed.com.
The bittersweet sound of Sugar Land. The Texas Central Unit is depicted in this image from the 1930s, via the Texas Department of Criminal Justice archives. Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter is depicted in his heyday in this image from The Library of Congress Alan Lomax collection, via Wikipedia. Photo montage by Janet Sue Reid
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