Watch the Only Known Footage of the Legendary Bluesman Lead Belly (1935 and 1945)

in Music | January 2nd, 2013

Hud­die Led­bet­ter, bet­ter known as “Lead Bel­ly,” was one of the great­est blues musi­cians of all time. His songs have been cov­ered by hun­dreds of artists, rang­ing from Frank Sina­tra to Led Zep­pelin. Lead Bel­ly is also famous for what his biog­ra­phy at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes as “the myth­ic out­line of his life”:

Born cir­ca 1885 in rur­al north­west Louisiana, Lead Bel­ly ram­bled across the Deep South from the age of 16. While work­ing in the fields, he absorbed a vast reper­toire of songs and styles. He mas­tered pri­mor­dial blues, spir­i­tu­als, reels, cow­boy songs, folk bal­lads and prison hollers. In 1917, Lead Bel­ly served as Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son­’s “lead boy”–i.e., his guide, com­pan­ion and protégé–on the streets of Dal­las. A man pos­sessed with a hot tem­per and enor­mous strength, Lead Bel­ly spent his share of time in South­ern pris­ons. Con­vict­ed on charges of mur­der (1917) and attempt­ed mur­der (1930), Lead Bel­ly lit­er­al­ly sang his way to free­dom, receiv­ing par­dons from the gov­er­nors of Texas and Louisiana. The sec­ond of his releas­es was large­ly obtained through the inter­ven­tion of John and Alan Lomax, who first heard Lead Bel­ly at Ango­la State Prison while record­ing indige­nous South­ern musi­cians for the library of Con­gress.

In 1935 the March of Time news­reel com­pa­ny told the sto­ry of John Lomax’s dis­cov­ery of Lead Bel­ly in the short film above. Although the script­ed film will strike mod­ern view­ers as dubi­ous in some respects (March of Time founder Hen­ry Luce once described the series as “fak­ery in alle­giance to the truth”), the news­reel is nev­er­the­less a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of Lead Bel­ly, who was about 50 years old at the time, along with Lomax and Martha Promise, Lead Bel­ly’s wife. At one point Lead Bel­ly sings his clas­sic song, “Good­night, Irene.”

Accord­ing to Sharon R. Sher­man in Doc­u­ment­ing Our­selves: Film, Video, and Cul­ture, the 1935 Lead Bel­ly news­reel is the ear­li­est cel­lu­loid doc­u­ment of Amer­i­can folk­lore. Lead Bel­ly did work for Lomax after his sec­ond release from prison, as the news­reel says, accom­pa­ny­ing him back East to serve as his chauf­feur. In New York Lead Bel­ly per­formed in Harlem and also came into con­tact with left­ist folk singers like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Lead Bel­ly became known as the “King of the Twelve-String Gui­tar.”

Three Songs by Lead­bel­ly, the only oth­er film known to exist of the great blues­man, was made ten years after the news­reel. The footage of Lead Bel­ly per­form­ing was shot  in 1945 by Bland­ing Sloan and Wah Mong Chang, and edit­ed two decades lat­er by Pete Seeger. The film begins with scenes of the grave­yard in Moor­ingsport, Louisiana, where Lead Bel­ly was buried after his death in 1949, accom­pa­nied by an instru­men­tal ver­sion (with hum­ming) of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” Lead Bel­ly actu­al­ly per­formed six songs for the film, but only three could be sal­vaged. Seeger is quot­ed by Charles Wolfe and Kip Lor­nell in The Life and Leg­end of Lead­bel­ly as describ­ing Sloan’s work as “pret­ty ama­teur­ish”:

I think that he record­ed Lead­bel­ly in a stu­dio the day before, then he played the record back while Lead­bel­ly moved his hands and lips in synch with the record. He’d tak­en a few sec­onds from one direc­tion and a few sec­onds from anoth­er direc­tion, which is the only rea­son I was able to edit it. I spent three weeks with a Movieo­la, up in my barn, snip­ping one frame off here and one frame off there and jug­gli­ing things around. I was able to synch up three songs: “Grey Goose,” “Take This Ham­mer,” and “Pick a Bale of Cot­ton.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leg­endary Folk­lorist Alan Lomax: The Land Where the Blues Began

Hear 17,000+ Tra­di­tion­al Folk & Blues Songs Curat­ed by the Great Musi­col­o­gist Alan Lomax

The Sto­ry of Blues­man Robert Johnson’s Famous Deal With the Dev­il Retold in Three Ani­ma­tions

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

The Best of Open Culture 2012: Free Music, Film, Books, Life Advice & More

in Art, e-books, Film, Literature, Music | January 1st, 2013

Anoth­er year gone by. Anoth­er 1200+ cul­tur­al blog posts in the books. Which ones did you like best? We let the data decide. Below, you’ll find the 17 that struck a chord with you.
Free Art Books from The Guggen­heim and The Met: Way back in Jan­u­ary, the Guggen­heim made 65 art cat­a­logues avail­able online, all free of charge. The cat­a­logues offer an intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al intro­duc­tion to the work of Calder, Munch, Bacon, and Kandin­sky, among oth­ers. Then, months lat­er, The Met fol­lowed suit and launched Met­Pub­li­ca­tions, a por­tal that now makes avail­able 370 out-of-print art titles, includ­ing works on Ver­meer, da Vin­ci, Degas and more.

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam: Ter­ry Gilliam knows some­thing about ani­ma­tion. For years, he pro­duced won­der­ful ani­ma­tions for Mon­ty Python (watch his cutout ani­ma­tion primer here), cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es. Giv­en these bona fides, you don’t want to miss Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time.

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Hands down, it was the biggest sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery of the year. But what is the Hig­gs Boson exact­ly? Are you still not sure? Phd Comics explains the con­cept with ani­ma­tion.

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son: Here’s anoth­er great dis­cov­ery — the long lost gui­tar solo by George Har­ri­son from my favorite Bea­t­les’ song, “Here Comes the Sun.” In this clip, George Mar­tin (Bea­t­les’ pro­duc­er) and Dhani Har­ri­son (the gui­tarist’s son) bring the for­got­ten solo back to life. When you’re done tak­ing this sen­ti­men­tal jour­ney, also see anoth­er favorite of mine: gui­tarist Randy Bach­man demys­ti­fy­ing the open­ing chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’.

18 Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to and Shake­speare, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way and Calvi­no: Over the years we have fea­tured lit­er­ary works that have been won­der­ful­ly re-imag­ined by ani­ma­tors. Rather than leav­ing these won­drous works buried in the archives, we brought them back and put them all on dis­play. And what bet­ter place to start than with a foun­da­tion­al text — Plato’s Repub­lic.

Ray Brad­bury Offers 12 Essen­tial Writ­ing Tips and Explains Why Lit­er­a­ture Saves Civ­i­liza­tion: In June, we lost Ray Brad­bury, who now joins Isaac Asi­mov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Hein­lein, and Philip K. Dick in the pan­theon of sci­ence fic­tion. In this post, we revis­it two moments when Brad­bury offered his per­son­al thoughts on the art and pur­pose of writ­ing — some­thing he con­tem­plat­ed dur­ing the 74 years that sep­a­rat­ed his first sto­ry from the last.

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Speak­ing of sci­ence fic­tion, we brought you a roundup of some of the great Sci­ence Fic­tion, Fan­ta­sy and Dystopi­an clas­sics avail­able on the web in audio, video and text for­mats. They include Orwell’s 1984, Hux­ley’s Brave New World, Asi­mov’s Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy, C.S. Lewis’ Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia, many sto­ries by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman, and much more. Find more great works in our col­lec­tions of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks.

This is Your Brain in Love: Scenes from the Stan­ford Love Com­pe­ti­tion: Can one per­son expe­ri­ence love more deeply than anoth­er? That’s what Stan­ford researchers and film­mak­er Brent Hoff set out to under­stand when they host­ed the 1st Annu­al Love Com­pe­ti­tion. Sev­en con­tes­tants, rang­ing from 10 to 75 years of age, took part. And they each spent five min­utes in an fMRI machine. It’s to hard watch this short film and not shed a hap­py tear.

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’: In April of 1959–five years before her death at the age of 39 from lupus–Flannery O’Connor ven­tured away from her seclud­ed fam­i­ly farm in Milledgeville, Geor­gia, to give a read­ing at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty. She read one of her most famous and unset­tling sto­ries, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The audio is one of two known record­ings of the author read­ing that sto­ry.

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web: On the eve of the 2012 Acad­e­my Awards, we scout­ed around the web and found 33 Oscar-win­ning (or nom­i­nat­ed) films from pre­vi­ous years. The list includes many short films, but also some long ones, like Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic ver­sion of War & Peace. Sit back, enjoy, and don’t for­get our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online, where you’ll find many great noir films, west­erns, clas­sics, doc­u­men­taries and more.

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946: Stay­ing with movies for a sec­ond, we also showed you a very dif­fer­ent mid-1940s Dis­ney pro­duc­tion – The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion. Made in the 1940s, an esti­mat­ed 105 mil­lion stu­dents watched the film in sex ed class­es across the US.

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web: We spent some time track­ing down 23 free sto­ries and essays pub­lished by David Fos­ter Wal­lace between 1989 and 2011, most­ly in major U.S. pub­li­ca­tions like The New York­er, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Enjoy, and don’t miss our oth­er col­lec­tions of free writ­ings by Philip K. Dick and Neil Gaiman.

Every­thing I Know: 42 Hours of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Vision­ary Lec­tures Free Online (1975): In Jan­u­ary 1975, Buck­min­ster Fuller sat down to deliv­er the twelve lec­tures that make up Every­thing I Know, all cap­tured on video and enhanced with the most excit­ing blue­screen tech­nol­o­gy of the day. The lec­ture series is now online and free to enjoy, so please do so.

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More: It’s pret­ty much what the title says. Great per­for­mances by some of our great­est jazz artists. It starts with Bil­lie Hol­i­day singing “Strange Fruit.”

Sig­mund Freud Speaks: The Only Known Record­ing of His Voice, 1938: On Decem­ber 7, 1938, a British radio crew vis­it­ed Sig­mund Freud at his newhome at Hamp­stead, North Lon­don. He was 81 years old and suf­fer­ing from incur­able jaw can­cer. Every word was an agony to speak. The record­ing is the only known audio record­ing of Freud, the founder of psy­cho­analy­sis and one of the tow­er­ing intel­lec­tu­al fig­ures of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Also see: Sig­mund Freud’s Home Movies: A Rare Glimpse of His Pri­vate Life.

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”: Phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor and “ser­i­al entre­pre­neur” Damon Horowitz explains why he left a high­ly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, to pur­sue a Ph.D. in Phi­los­o­phy at Stan­ford. Read­ers will also enjoy The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973): Deliv­ered at Har­vard in ’73, Leonard Bernstein’s lec­ture series, “The Unan­swered Ques­tion,” cov­ered a lot of ter­rain, touch­ing on poet­ry, lin­guis­tics, phi­los­o­phy and physics. But the focus inevitably comes back to music — to how music works, or to the under­ly­ing gram­mar of music. The mas­ter­ful lec­tures run over 11 hours. They’re added to our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es. You can also find Borges’ lec­tures at Har­vard here.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry:  When it came to giv­ing advice to writ­ers, Kurt Von­negut was nev­er dull. He once tried to warn peo­ple away from using semi­colons by char­ac­ter­iz­ing them as “trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolute­ly noth­ing.” In this brief video, Von­negut offers eight tips on how to write a short sto­ry.

Free Online Cer­tifi­cate Cours­es & MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties: A Com­plete List:  We gath­ered a list of 200 free mas­sive open online cours­es (MOOCs) offered by lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties. Most of these free cours­es offer “cer­tifi­cates” or “state­ments of com­ple­tion.” Many new cours­es start in Jan­u­ary 2013. So be sure to check it out. Also don’t miss our oth­er new resource col­lec­tion: 200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & Beyond.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Clock, the 24-Hour Montage of Clips from Film & TV History, Introduced by Alain de Botton

in Art, Film, Life, Philosophy, Video - Arts & Culture | January 1st, 2013

To ful­ly expe­ri­ence the clip above, you’ll need to be awake and press­ing play at pre­cise­ly 12:04 am. What you’ll be see­ing is a very small seg­ment of The Clock, a 24-hour video assem­blage that keeps time with clips culled from a cen­tu­ry’s worth of film his­to­ry. Some of these mark­ers are in the dia­logue, but most are shots of clocks and watch­es in which a spe­cif­ic time is clear­ly vis­i­ble.

If view­ing the com­plete piece sounds like a marathon, con­sid­er that artist Chris­t­ian Mar­clay and a pha­lanx of assis­tants spent three years locat­ing and plac­ing the clips and smooth­ing out the result­ing sound­track. Some of these moments came pre­loaded with the import of a High Noon. Oth­ers were of a more inci­den­tal, back­ground-type nature pri­or to being cast in Mar­clay’s project.

Those unable to spend qual­i­ty time with The Clock at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art this Jan­u­ary can get a feel for it via philoso­pher and writer Alain de Bot­ton’s  brief chat with Mar­clay below.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day resolves to use it bet­ter in 2012. Per­haps you should­n’t fol­low her on Twit­ter @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Stephen Colbert Brings Laughs and Book Tour to Google

in Comedy, Google, Television, Video - Arts & Culture, YouTube | January 1st, 2013

Stephen Col­bert is one of the most refresh­ing come­di­ans work­ing today. He main­tains his character’s obnox­ious­ness dur­ing his own show, riff­ing and impro­vis­ing dur­ing inter­views with every­one from Bill O’Reilly to Eli­jah Wood, build­ing his char­ac­ter to dead­pan heights even with Jane Fon­da’s tongue in his ear.

But in the hot seat him­self, as an inter­vie­wee on Let­ter­man, Oprah or even with Play­boy mag­a­zine, Col­bert is authen­tic, can­did, fun­ny and a fast-on-his-feet smar­tie. In ear­ly Decem­ber Col­bert vis­it­ed Google’s New York offices and taped an inter­view for At Google Talks. Col­bert fans will want to check out the unedit­ed ver­sion recent­ly post­ed by Google. As a guest, Col­bert is fun­nier than Jon Stew­art and we get an hon­est look at the bright guy behind the buf­foon. The uncut inter­view has its high­lights, includ­ing the point when Colbert’s reac­tion to Eric Schmidt’s sug­ges­tion that The Col­bert Report launch its own YouTube show. His answers to ques­tions from the audi­ence are engag­ing, fun­ny and reveal­ing. It’s won­der­ful to hear the per­son­al sto­ry about the moment he real­ized he want­ed to make peo­ple laugh.

Col­bert was also con­duct­ing busi­ness. The inter­view was part of his book tour to pro­mote Amer­i­ca Again: Re-Becom­ing the Great­ness We Nev­er Weren’t. Below, you can see Col­bert give his comedic pitch for the book. And, if you want to down­load a free audio copy, you can always do so by start­ing a Free 30-Day Tri­al with Audible.com. We have details here.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and at thenifty.blogspot.com. 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear Beck’s Song Reader Songbook Performed by the Portland Cello Project

in Music | January 1st, 2013

Beck Hansen is the ulti­mate musi­cal changeling. His career has tak­en him from ear­ly anti-folk begin­nings to the lo-fi col­lage art of his major label debut Mel­low Gold.  He has per­fect­ed tongue-in-cheek white-boy funk on Mid­nite Vul­tures and sad sack coun­try trou­ba­dourism on Sea Change. His mas­tery of gen­res and styles and abil­i­ty to shift from rev­er­ent homage to irrev­er­ent par­o­dy on a dime is per­haps matched only by the sad­ly now-defunct Ween. But with his lat­est release, Song Read­er, Beck leaps out of the ranks of pop chameleon and into that of the Amer­i­can Com­pos­er.  In per­haps the great­est exper­i­ment in retro musi­cal crowd­sourc­ing, Beck released his last album as a book of sheet music—20 songs in all, with lyrics—and asked the fans them­selves to arrange, play, sing, and record the songs.

Plen­ty of peo­ple have tak­en up the chal­lenge. A col­lec­tion of Song Read­er interpretations—from sim­ple acoustic gui­tar treat­ments to lush piano-and-strings arrangements—is avail­able here (each with accom­pa­ny­ing videos). Most recent­ly, an ensem­ble called the Port­land Cel­lo Project has tak­en on Beck’s “album,” enlist­ing the tal­ents of a hand­ful of vocal­ists. In the video above, watch the cel­lists per­form “Title of this Song” with Lizzy Elli­son at Portland’s Aladdin The­ater. You can hear the full record­ing of the Port­land Cel­lo Project’s Song Read­er below, and lis­ten to Beck explain the gen­e­sis of Song Read­er on NPR’s “All Things Con­sid­ered” here.

via NPR

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Genius of Charles Darwin Revealed in Three-Part Series by Richard Dawkins

in Biology, Television | January 1st, 2013

Evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins has, over the past decade or so, grown close­ly asso­ci­at­ed in the pub­lic mind with athe­ism, and specif­i­cal­ly with the cause of tak­ing down cre­ation­ism. While he has no doubt court­ed this fame by writ­ing books like The God Delu­sion (wher­aeas thir­ty years ago he wrote books like The Self­ish Gene), we for­get at our own per­il that Dawkins can argue for things as well or bet­ter than he can argue against them. If Dawkins’ intel­lec­tu­al bête noire, the notion that an intel­li­gent design­er delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed life on Earth, already holds no appeal for you, you’ll enjoy The Genius of Charles Dar­win, his cel­e­bra­tion of the father of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry, all the more. Even hard­core cre­ation­ists, in refer­ring to the accep­tance of evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­ry as “Dar­win­ism,” acknowl­edge the nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry nat­u­ral­ist’s exten­sive influ­ence. Dawkins, an even more ardent Dar­win admir­er than he is a cre­ation­ism detrac­tor, lays it unam­bigu­ous­ly out at the begin­ning: “This series is about per­haps the most pow­er­ful idea ever to occur to a human mind. The idea is evo­lu­tion by nat­ur­al selec­tion, and the genius who thought of it was Charles Dar­win.”

This British Broad­cast Award-win­ning Chan­nel 4 doc­u­men­tary series comes in three parts: “Life, Dar­win & Every­thing” (the title a nod to Dawkins’ late friend, Hitch­hik­ers’ Guide to the Galaxy author and biol­o­gy fan Dou­glas Adams), “The Fifth Ape,” and “God Strikes Back.” Begin­ning with the basics, it has Dawkins explain how, exact­ly, species evolve by way of nat­ur­al selec­tion, at one point to a dubi­ous high school class­room. After tak­ing the stu­dents on a field trip to check out the fos­sil record for them­selves, he returns to his colo­nial birth­place of Nairo­bi, Kenya — coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin of homo sapi­ens itself. He explores the reli­gious impli­ca­tions of of evo­lu­tion, the wrong­head­ed nature of what’s called “social Dar­win­ism,” and the even wronger-head­ed nature of eugen­ics. He inter­views fig­ures like evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker, Cre­ation Research pres­i­dent John Mack­ay, and Con­cerned Women for Amer­i­ca pres­i­dent Wendy Wright. All have some­thing to say about Dar­win’s obser­va­tion, whether for or against, and if against, Dawkins has a response. Call him over­con­fi­dent if you must, but in a show like this, he cer­tain­ly does take pains to approach his sub­ject from every pos­si­ble angle.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dar­win: A 1993 Film by Peter Green­away

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins & John Lennox Debate Sci­ence & Athe­ism

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Darwin’s Lega­cy, a Stan­ford course in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back
Quantcast