Margaret talks with Prop about the Texan musician who sung his way out of prison.
Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly’s Truths from Jim Crow’s Lies, Sheila Curran Bernard: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/bring-judgment-day/63271E8000571D588BF52B0F7CA2121E (BJD26 for 20% off)
Sources:
Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly’s Truths from Jim Crow’s Lies, Sheila Curran Bernard
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/09/what-is-woke-meaning/11425775002/
https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/scottsboro-boys
https://www.history.com/articles/scottsboro-boys
https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/ledbetter-huddie-leadbelly
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cools Media.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff? Your
weekly reminder that people do really fucking cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
It's in the title of the show.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy and my guest today man,
my returning guest. One of the first guests I've ever
had on this show is Jason Petty aka prop aka Propaganda.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Hey, tell me something good. Yeah, yeah, come on, tell
me that you love me. Kill Joy.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I love you.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Oh, I love you, Sophia.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I am so excited. I changed topics yesterday. I have
like basically not slept. I'm kind of manic right now
because I changed topics about thirty six hours ago, and
I read an entire history book as well as a
whole bunch of other texts in order to do this.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh oh, but it's gonna be worth it. I believe it. Manna.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
You're gonna tell me about some sort of horrible atrocity
that is gonna get me so sad, And then there's
gonna be a turn, because there's gonna be a really
dope person that's gonna pop in and lead us to freedom.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Honestly, yeah, this was gonna happen. Yeah, And I also
figured it's been a minute since I've had a musician
as a guest, and so I thought I'd do an
episode about music. Oh man, Originally, originally I was gonna
cover this man, Alan Lomax. Have you ever heard of
Alan Lomax?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No, help me out.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
All right, he is the guy who recorded folk musicians.
He's a white guy who went down and recorded folk musicians,
especially black musicians in the South. And he's like kind
of caused the folk revival and did all the shit,
and like rock and roll exists because of Alan Lomax,
according to various people. Okay, but along the way, I
was realizing I was covering about how when he was
seventeen and he was with his dad, he went and
(01:52):
recorded a prisoner went by the name of Led Belly.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Oh, Led Belly is a different story, and.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
That is the better story. So this week, yes, okay,
hard covering Honey Ledbetter.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I'm a little I'm a little familiar with this one. Okay, yeah,
I thought you might be. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Led Belly is the king of the twelve string guitar
and one of the most influential musicians in American history yep,
and also one of the most maligned people in American history,
like the way his story is told. A bunch of
white people did a lot of fucking myth making about him. Yeah,
and they were not polite.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
When they did it.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
But I forgot to introduce with Sophie's here. Hey Sophie,
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Return of.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
I'm here, I'm here.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm so excited to do this, Like I feel like
this is like first year cool We blue did cool stuff.
Oh Man, almost uncomplicated. He is a complicated man, but
less complicated. I'm like uncomplicating him from history instead of
more complicating than from history.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You know what's crazy is first year of cool people.
You didn't have a dog. Rop didn't have a dog,
and I only had one dog.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Right, I had a puppy. I had a tiny barkie puppy.
First year, I.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Definitely didn't have a Okay, you did not have your
pug and I did not have Truman.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
True.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
There is twice as many dogs in this room as
there was when we started.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That's what I'm saying. The stats are great.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
This is a glow up. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
What I love about what you're about to do is
one of the things that is infuriating is that.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
The word infuriating.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Infuriating makes me furious is when there's this myth making. Obviously,
all stories have a perspective and an agenda, like you're
trying to accomplish something, and when it happens in history,
you know, the obvious ones are like, well, either trying
(04:00):
to usurp or present power. You know, yeah, totally right.
But then the real story be so much more interesting.
And if you just tell the real story, it's so
much more compelling than the shit you ate up. And
and oftentimes you making it up makes it so obvious
(04:23):
what Joe problem was. And now you look silly. Yeah,
you know, especially in music. But it's just like you
just you're white supremacists and you just want to believe
that everything you make is better, but you stole it all.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, what's what's wild about this story is that they
are blatant about the theft. If you go back far enough,
it's like when early colonists came to white the colonists
came to North America and we're like, well, of course
this used to be yours, but it's mine now I
took it from you. That's what people did to this man.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Yes today, why submitted for the tap in episode, we're
talking about the Hanna Nashoni and Red Jackets letter, and
Benjamin Franklin goes, Yeah, their democracy is better than ours.
We should model at democracy after theirs. They figured out
how to have a representative government.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We should just do what they did.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Like you, I wish we had, or even better, I
wish people just fucking joined them. Yeah, that's what he
left them in charge. We should have just joined him.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
They figured it out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, so Huddy led better because he actually his stage
name was Led Belly with a space in it, but
he he preferred going by Huddy, and sometimes his friends
would call him Led, but his name wasn't Led Belly,
that was his stage name. His story gets into so
(05:51):
much shit and specifically, I'm sure there's versions of this
that have happened before, but this is the earliest I
have read about the making and methodologizing of the scary black.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Man an American culture.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, and some of the like early incredible depths of
appropriation of black music. One that I can tie into
both colonization and slavery more directly than I realized. Like
I can basically say, like this is how a sharecropper
got share cropped on music. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Knowing how this story ends makes me go, yeah, that's
an incredible Yeah, it's an incredible analysis.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, and I'm really excited this story has. I mean,
he dies at sixty, right, but he fucking he makes it,
and he makes it through the worst shit, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And I could be overly polite and say mainstream culture
has always been downstream of Black American culture, but in
Huddy's case, the kid of a Confederate soldier is going
to hire him without paying him and use him to
try and get copyright on as many black songs as possible,
especially songs written by prisoners who are being essentially enslaved
(07:04):
because during after Reconstruction with the Jim Crow laws, they
were like, how do we make black men keep working
for us for free?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And so I'm gonna go with my colonization metaphor, even
though the like downstream of black culture is also.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Part of it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, yeah, but I want to start. Do you know
a Huddy Ledbetter as the first person we have a
recording of saying explicitly and directly stay woke.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
No, I knew it was like great grandfather's slaying, Like
my great grandfather said it.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, it's old as fun.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's so old. But I didn't know he was the
first one. That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
We're gonna do a whole Okay, we're gonna start with
stay woke because this is a Yes, this is my
first deep dive, even before we get to the rest
of it. All right, Marcus Garvey returning character of the
pod founder of Pan Africanism and the red, black.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And Green flag.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, complicated figure from a lot of people's point of view,
but for sure, really fucking interesting. And I eineteen twenty
three he wrote a book of aphorisms. He was like,
these are some sayings I like, and one of them
was wake up Ethiopia, wake Up Africa. And so that's
the oldest that people point to about like this idea of.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
That's where I point out is market Yeah, totally and
that phrasing it clearly means be woke. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
But in nineteen thirty eight Led Belly said it for
the first time on a recording and he said he's
talking about the Scottsboro Boys. When we talked about that
in a second, he said, quote, I advise everybody be
a little careful best, stay woke, keep their eyes open.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Dang, I didn't know him.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yeah, I just don't remember great Grant granting him. You
got to you gotta stay woke, young brother, you gotta
stay woke. Yeah, hey, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And it's so funny because it's like it's now the
fucking culture Warship one hundred years later.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Yeah, you know, literally redefined and used as a weapon
against us so fresh. We should have never like conceited
the definition. And now this is where we are.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Oh yeah, any.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, no, totally and and honestly, I frankly think a
big part of that is because like white, well meaning
lefty people started using it one ironically, Like I think
that's part of how it broke containment.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And I'm not I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I'm actually gonna talk about how that happened in the
sixties in a second, okay, but first the Scottsboro Boys.
I hate to start off with this, just like, fucking
here's some racist shit that happened. Because this is what
Ledbetter was talking about. I think it's useful framing, especially
when we're going to talk about what happened to Ledbetter
(09:41):
was that he got called basically like the scary, violent,
savage black man who happens to be really good at music. Yeah,
you know, yeah, the Scottsboro Boys. Some people call it
the case the lead of the civil rights movement. You
could say that about a lot of cases, because there
was a lot of things yas shit. Yeah, And it
(10:02):
started with racist hobos and I didn't know that part.
Nineteen thirty one is kind of the peak hobo era.
In the Great Depression, people rode freight trains around illegally
trying to find jobs. My granddad was a hobo in
the nineteen thirties. It's March nineteen thirty one, and it's Alabama,
and there's a box car with like twenty something people
(10:23):
in it. Nine of them were black teenagers aged thirteen
to nineteen, and some white boys picked a fight with
the black kids and lost.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
They lost that fight. They lost. They were run out
of the box car.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And if you're a fucking hobo, you're not supposed to
fucking lose a fight and then go run off and
tell the fucking cops, the police. Yeah, fuck you pick
a side, are you crime or not?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:52):
They ran out of the box car, went off to
tell the cops, and an angry mob was waiting for
the train. At the next stop, teens were arrested for assault.
But there were two white women in the box car
two and they were also hoboeing looking for work, so
presumably sex work. And the two were going to get
arrested and charged with vagrancy and like solicitation and sex
(11:15):
crime shit, And they were like, oh, no, those black
teenagers absolutely raped us, that's what happened. Yeah, And they
were rushed off to the doctor who found no evidence
that that happened, just absolutely none. The only evidence in
this case was these two women. That's the only evidence.
All but the youngest of the black teens was sentenced
(11:37):
to death. The all white jury actually wanted to sence
the thirteen year old to death, but the judge was
a softy and only wanted to put everyone.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Else to death.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, this became a national issue. The International Labor Defense,
which was the legal wing of the American Communist Party,
teamed up with the NAACP to fight for their defense.
And it's kind of a thing that doesn't get talked
about that a lot of the early Basically, the NAACP
and like the Communist Party were like two of the
biggest organizations in.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
The twenties and thirties.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, fighting for like what later became the civil rights movement.
And eventually the convictions were overturned, but not before some
of these people were sentenced four different times. Like they
kept getting new trials and they kept being like, well,
you got a new trial, but we still want to
kill these kids.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
They were imprisoned for decades, and even when their rape
charges would get overturned in the end, they'd still be
in prison for like fighting a bailift during all the bullshit.
It wasn't until fucking twenty thirteen that they were posthumorously pardoned.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah. Man, I got a lot of thoughts, but yeah, yeah,
we have these.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Flashpoints in culture and then you get invited to like
help their leadership team of some organization, company, religious parachurch, whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Process and like get woke if you will. Yeah, and
then you're like, I don't even know where.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
To start, because just throw a rock in any decade
and there's this and then you say, okay, you asked
me a question like well, why don't you just call
the police?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Why don't you trust the justice system, And it's like.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, pattern recognition. Yeah, because of pattern.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Pattern recognition, I saw I learned, and some I learned
in therapy with with like couple's therapy, which is like yeah, yeah, yeah,
your your partner doesn't trust your emotions or your words,
they trust your patterns.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Until you change the patterns, the nervous system isn't going
you know what I'm saying, So like it's it's it's
pattern I mean, because I got jumped, we dog walk
these dudes who attacked us. Yeah, and and these white
white women saw it. Yeah, white women, Yes, you saw it.
(14:06):
So why you think we won't trust white women. I'm like, well, you.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Saw this, Yeah, you saw all that happen.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
You saw all this happen.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
And the judge said, I think these little boys is innocent.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Oh but you gotta I gotta wait, I gotta go back,
Like okay, so but I'm still you you found me
innocent multiple times.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
How am I still in jail?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah? I don't understand how I'm still in jail.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah, well it's because you punched someone while you were
being put in a cage for something you didn't do.
So yes, so excuse me, yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
For not trusting the system?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and so when fucking Honey Ledbetter in
nineteen thirty eight, he says, stay woke. It means keep
your fucking wits about you. Remember that you live in
a fucking racist society, and remember that they're fucking after you. Yes,
and he said it as one of the most important
musicians of his era. By the time, he said nineteen
thirty eight, he is one of the most important musicians. Yeah,
(15:08):
and he had experienced racism in the South, but also
from the very fucking white people who are ostensibly helping
and build his career. Yeah, but I want to keep
tracing this woke thing just because it's a fascinating please
do and the.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Thing is too like I like, please don't use your
train of thought because it's so important. But like specifically
as a musician and as myself as a black musician,
I mean up until very recently, and I would even
argue even currently, like all black music is political. Yeah,
like it's it's it's all a protest, even if it's
(15:42):
just for fun.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
You know what I'm saying, Like that the fun is
a protest. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Like so it's just like our tradition is like the
hip hop it's from the same stream that we're talking
about right now. It's like, yeah, absolutely, it's all political, like, yeah,
I don't know what to tell you anyway, go on, yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
No, I mean even like I don't want to like
go hard defending Marcus Garvey. Right, But one of the
reasons that Marcus Garvey, because sometimes I guess a lot
of shit is is I'm going to oversimplify things, get
something's wrong. He was more of a proponent of black
capitalism than most of the people by the late sixties
who are interested in black power.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Right, But trying to build wealth looks really fucking different
when you're having your wealth systematically stripped away.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
From you every time you get it.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, everything is either reinforcing power structures, are trying to
build new ones, you know.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Totally, and then what are you going to do? Like
you like, okay, so we're going to go back to Africa.
You mean, the second largest land mass on the planet.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
What part are you from? I don't know, it was
part of you from?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I think my ancestors was from these four different tribes.
Now that's a nation. Somebody is because the people drew
a line.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Nobody drew a line.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
So like, I think, I don't know when I left,
we weren't Nigerian.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Because there was no sustinct as Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Yeah, yeah, totally, we were Igbo. And now like, so
where are we going to go? I don't know, Yeah,
go to I'll hear you like, yeah, let's go there.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah. So the word hipster kind of originally means white
person trying to be black. Okay, in the middle of
the twentieth century, that's how it was being used.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Basically, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, there's a fuck. I like cited this properly. In
episode like two years ago, a black author from I
think the nineteen forties was talking about the BEATNICKX was
talking about this.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Either way, that's dope.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And so the word hippie comes from that, right, It
comes from people who are like, like, white people are
trying to be cool because like, yeah, black people are cool.
I don't know if you knew that.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I'm sure that no one's ever put that on you. Yeah,
I don't put that on you before. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Although in their defense, most people we call hippies didn't
call themselves hippies.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
They called themselves freaks.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But black authors were very aware of how white people
were copying their style and their language in order to
be hip.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So there's this piece from nineteen sixty two in New
York Times Max magazine from a black author named William
Mellon Kelly about appropriation. Doesn't use that word. It's about appropriation,
and it's called if you're woke, you dig it, And
it doesn't bother saying what woke means in this piece
that's called that, it just assumed that the audience is
(18:18):
familiar with woke as black slang.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
You absolutely know what we mean, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
That white people are starting to use. And in it
he conjectures that a lot of black slang started with
slaves speaking code to confuse the white slavers. He says, quote,
my grandmother told me that ofe, a word for white man,
was foe in pig Latin.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Yeah probably, Yeah, like, no, I don't have another argument,
you know, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
It also gets into how black use of the Southern
accent survived the Great migration of black people leaving the
South in part to be able to maintain a cultural
identity separate from whiteness when they went places. And it
talks about code switching, doesn't use the word code switching,
but it like talks about code switching is the thing
I've read about that. Okay, But there's one piece in there,
one bit of slang or a verbal mannerism. I guess
(19:07):
that I had no idea came from black culture. I
will never be surprised when something comes from black culture.
But that's one I didn't know. Do you know the
word using using the word like it's like punctuation.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yes, from black people?
Speaker 6 (19:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Oh god, see I didn't know that either.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
No, I was goa pulls.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
I got a few I could pull out of, like
out the tank, like like yeah, well, everybody puts your
hands together. That's from Harlem Renaissance. That's shit black people.
That's our slang with hands together. But yeah, I didn't know,
like what was one of them?
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
The uh the example he uses two white women taught
walking out of the like Boston Symphony, and one of
them says to the other, wasn't it like exhilarating nineteen
sixty two? Everybody?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Oh man, these jab percys.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, yes, so woke hit a more wide audience, including
a wider black audience, as I understand from what I've
read in the late aunts and early teens. In two
thousand and eight, Erica Badu saying I'd stay woke in
the song Master Teacher.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
In twenty twelve, she tweeted stay Woke in support of
the band Pussy Riot from Russia.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Then it got hashtagged and response to the murder of
Trayvon Martin and Florida yep. Then when cops and ferguson
Missouri murdered Michael Brown in twenty fourteen, became associated with
the Black Lives Matter movement, and then it became a
right wing boogey man, especially after the twenty twenty Uprising.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
But I would even say, even to your point, even
to that, like if you woke, you could dig it. Yeah,
is this understanding that we already knew it? Admitt Yeah.
So even from that first song of Erica singing that, right,
we all thought of our dads. Yeah, Like she's like,
she's talking the way our dad's talked.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
So she was already referencing our old hits. Yeah. So
we just thought as like, oh, yeah, you married, you
bring them back.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah, it's like you're bringing it back.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
So we was all ready for us a reclaiming of
sixties black slang.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, so it already wasn't We didn't invent it.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
We knew we didn't invent this phrase, right, right, so
like we knew we were again Yeah, we were referencing
our grandparents.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, Well do you know what our grandparents also
had to deal with in the middle of their audio entertainment,
I mean got to got to deal with in the
middle of their audio entertainment advertisers.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
All right, much like these ones.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And we're back, all right. And so the first quote
stay woke we have on a recording is the blue
singer named led Belly you preferred to go by Hoddy
or sometimes just lead.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
And let's talk about him. Let's talk about him, honey.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Led Better was born probably on January twentieth, eighteen eighty nine.
You get back into the nineteenth century of poor folks,
especially poor folks of color.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Yeah, good, look, you do your best. Yeah, it's also
a survival tactic. Side note, Oh, honestly, that makes sense. Yeah,
it's a survival tactic to be like No I was No.
I was born in eighteen twenty six in Negative Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
You know, yes, making up stuff yet.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
No, No, honestly, that makes a lot of sense because
he's later at some point gonna he's gonna break out
of prison and change his name, which.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah you could do that. Yeah, Yeah, You're just gonna
make some shit up when you do that, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
And eighteen eighty nine is a rough time to be
born black in Louisiana. Woo reconstruction is firmly over, and
the air of Jim Crow has begun.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
His parents were Wesley Ledbetter Junior from North Carolina and
Sally Pooh led Better from Louisiana. They'd both been born
into slavery and wound up sharecroppers as kids, and after
Hodey was born, they adopted a girl named Australia whose
parents had died, and I think they had more kids
besides this as well. Nineteenth century names, especially, honestly, names
(23:09):
from black culture will be like, yeah, just not names
you here.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah Australia. Okay, that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
I was like, yeah, yeah, never thought about a name
and a child Australia.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah. And his parents they they bootstrapped themselves. I know,
the whole phrase bootstrap, like picking yourself up by your bootstraps.
The whole point is that that's impossible. Yeah, you know,
but his parents did about as well as anyone in
their position could. Yeah, and they did that with help
of infrastructure built by and for black people about getting.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Land, yeah, because reconstruction was working. Yeah, like that was
the it was actually working.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
So yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I sometimes get really really upset when I think about,
like we like almost I'm sure it wouldn't have been perfect.
We almost had as racial America, Like.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
We kind of solved it, like we accidentally solved the problem.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah. Yeah, and then people realized that they like could
just break the law in order to fucking oppress black
people and know, yeah, oh city worked.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah you better. We gotta put the genie back into
bottle guys.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah yeah. Oh and that's what happens to his parents too, unfortunately,
Like but like all right, we'll get to that.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So a black man that they knew a family friend
had just moved to Texas and bought thousands of acres.
The historian I read didn't know where the hell that
person got the money. My guess just from doing the
show too much around that time, and in that part
of Texas, like the Texas Louisiana kind of area, The
Colored Farmers Alliance was a really powerful movement that specifically
(24:49):
existed to get land into black people's hands by like
loaning them money right and doing it non exploitatively.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
And it was like a black lead movement.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's my best guess about where this person might have
gotten the money, and that farmer immediately now it was
thousands of acres isn't going to work?
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Thousands of acres?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, immediately let the leadbetters come and share crop for him,
but without ripping them off, because part of the reason
the sharecropping system was so fucked up is it was
just basically like how exploitative can we make these contracts?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah? You know.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And so it helps his parents buy sixty eight and
a half acres of land on a seven year loan.
They finished paying it off seven years and they were
able to build themselves a decent life.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
No, that's way shorter an average mortgage.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I was like, must be nice. Yeah, like seven years
were okay?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah for sixty eight and a half acres.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, my kid's a second grader. I paid off the house.
It's great.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, yeah, totally. They're like, all right, now we fucking
raised most of our own food, and they live somewhere
where there's like no white people in twenty miles and
like MT's be nice. Yeah, now he ledbetter, had a
nice childhood by what he says, like they worked hard
as fuck.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
His parents were.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Waking up at one or two in the morning to
clear land for farming, but they lived twenty miles from
the nearest white people. They got to do their own
thing with a bunch of other black families in the region,
and they rode five miles to get the mail once
a week, and they read the newspaper. When his father
had been married, he hadn't been able to sign his
own name. He did an ex and was like witnessed
by somebody, you know. But now he read everything that
(26:22):
he could, and the local shopkeeper kept the whole week's
worth of papers for him. So cool, so when he
would show up, he'd be like, all right, I gotta
read everything, gotta know everything.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
The family would fish in the lake, play music on
the shore, and just lived fucking decent lives despite poverty.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Two of his uncles were somewhat renowned musicians in the area.
What were called songsters, which is a word I hadn't
run across before. Yeah, these are the local folks who
could entertain people. Yeah, no recordings, You're like, who can
plays a nice songs? Two songsters in the family, Yeah,
sing a song, singing man Yeah yeah. And later in
(27:01):
life people are going to play up just basically like
this is not the word they used, but they just
played up how gangster led belly was right. They're like
the whole thing was basically like they're accusing of being
of him at being gangster rap before that was a thing. Yeah,
And he's a violent man. He's mean and angry and dangerous.
And to spoil some of the ending, when he dies,
(27:22):
people come out and talk about him and they're like,
he was an incredibly common, peaceful man who de escalated
so many fights and if you punched him, he'd fucking
stab you. Yeah, like, yeah, he believed in self defense.
He's a country boy. He just a country boy child
of a sharecropper. Yeah, who used to play.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
At the lake.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
But I beat you ass if you like, yeah, like,
which is what you want all your sons to be?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
No, I know this is like yeah, Like I reading
about it, I'm like, yeah, all right, Like fuck absolutely,
like this is absolutely a decent role model, like in
his earlier life if he could have been more committed
to the women he was with. But like there's that,
you know whatever, not anyway, whatever, Yeah, yeah, and who
doesn't want to be dangerous to the people who are
(28:10):
dangerous to us?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
You know?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yes, Like honestly, that's one of the main things I
talk about with like trans shit is I'm like, I'm like, yeah, no,
I try not to be afraid.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I try to be scary. That's my plan, you know.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Yes, there's a phrase in the streets which is like
stay dangerous where it's just like I need you like
that is my Yeah, my greatest tool of defense is
to seem dangerous.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yes, I remember once I was in this I was
taking this martial arts class. I was very classed differently
than everyone else in this class, and one of the
you know, people are like, oh, how do you stay
safe or whatever? And I was like, oh, when people
like you know, call me slurs on the street, I
pull a knife. And to be clear anyone who's listening
to this, I never did that. That would have been illegal.
But theoretically what I would have done if someone caused me,
(28:56):
you know, caused me a fagot.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Is like pull a knife on them.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And they were like, they were like, well, what do
you do if they come after you? And I was like,
oh no, then I run like first, I'm really scare them.
I'm not gonna get in a knife fight. That's dumb.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, it's very it's very inefficient. Too.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Was like that's called front and I was like, yeah,
no that's what they did. It works really well. Yeah,
that's exactly what it is. And then if they catch
up with me, I fight. I never well whatever anyway, No, my.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Friend's granddad used to say, a good run beats a
bad stand any day.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And so young Young soon to be led belly. He's
a studious kid. He got to go to school until
eighth grade, at which point he had to come home
and work on the farm because there's work that needed doing.
He was respectful and friendly, and his family fucking loved him,
and he loved his family. And he was a musical prodigy.
(29:50):
And so people are like, oh, he was just naturally talented. No,
he worked his ass off. Yeah, like he sat by
the fire and did the well. His first instrument was accordion.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Wow, yeah, no, his his family bought him an accordion,
a wind jammer.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
He called it. One of the button accordions is diatonic
instead of fully chromatic. Swahili, you just spoke to Swahili.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
But anyway, going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I used to play
accordion on the street, so that's my I don't know
what you just said, but I believe yeah, yeah, yeah.
It doesn't play every note in the scale. It plays
certain ones, and it's used much more in like creole
music and all of that kind of stuff as compared
to like French music, is like the bigger accordions.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
So his cousin teaches him guitar when there's still little kids,
and he is really good, and he sits by the
fire and he does it over and over and over
again until he gets it right. He loved dancing. He
would tap dance for the family. Soon enough, as a
young teen, he's getting asked to play all the local
parties and at the school and all that shit. So
(30:51):
he and his cousin, Edmund, the one who got him
into guitar, they're playing Saturday nights out in the town,
including at the white owned stores, and he starts bringing
in money for folks, which I think it's still possible
to make a living as a musician. But I don't
know if you knew this prop it's hard.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
It's yeah, man, it's news to me. Man. I was, yeah,
pretty crazy, man, I was really hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I remember the first timesode I gave me money for
playing a show. I have been playing shows for like
ten years. Someone was like, here's forty bucks, and I
was like, holy shit.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Wait what Yeah, he got in a drink ticket and
gas money. You're like, oh, you're paying me for yeah?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Wait it get to you to pay me for this.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, as far as I can tell before, recorded music
is everywhere actually a little easier. Yeah, Like you still
have to be fucking good and you still have to
work your ass off. But he's like fifteen and bringing
in money for his family. Yeah, but his cousin drops out.
His cousin is like, no, these parties are too wild.
I'm not into the drinking and cussin. I like church.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And so he stopped playing out and he became a deacon.
Likely story, Harry Black story.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, so Honey was on his own and he's traveling
around on his horse booker, and he kept his horse immaculate.
He would wash it down all the time. How glossy
his horse was. Yeah know like we've been we've been
cleaning our whibs.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
They was horse.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah, you gotta keep it clean.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Baby, Yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
No.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Later he's like later in his life, he kind of
yells at a younger musician. He's like, why are you
playing dressed up? Like shit, you gotta wear a fucking suit.
You gotta come do take your suit jacket off when
you play. Oh man, you gotta come.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Is this not fair?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I'm turning red?
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Oh spooky like that. We've been cleaning our whips.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Yeah, baby, you know you got candy paint.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And you feel me.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
There's this Irish song, this Irish fucking rap band called
the Rubber Band.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
That's their joke. They're like a joke band.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
But their song is like I got a horse outside,
And it's like trying to pick up on a woman
by being like leaving her like I think her mom's
funeral and is like, no, I can't kick you in
a car, but I got my horse outside.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
The horse outside. Yeah, what's that band that goes right
itself in? In medieval times? They're like an uh Irish like
rap group. They're like, uh, I wrote the whipping in
medieval times. I signed up whipped bitch in the medieval times.
It's all in the medieval times. It's pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
anywhere you are.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So young. Ledbetter is not afraid of the rough and
tumble life. He is not like preferring church.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
He does.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Actually he goes to church, I think his whole fucking life.
But like this isn't like he doesn't mind he's playing
in brothels when he is fifteen years old. Yeah, and
his whole life. He particularly enjoys playing music for kids.
He is like both wholesome and rough in every measure,
and it's part of why he's so fascinating.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Love it.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
And also every all the great, all the best musicians
are at church, so like you got to go play there.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
No, And actually a lot of when they're later they're
collecting songs from people. A lot of people are like, no,
I'm not going to play secular music for you. Yeah,
like yeah, like no, we play religious music. That's like
it's weird. We played for church. We played for the church.
It's all yeah, parties called Suki Jumps paid him fifty
cents to play when he was fifteen, which is jumps.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
You're a suki jump, suki jem No, I've heard it
all Suki suki Now.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I heard that. I never heard of, right, suki.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Jump, So suki jarre so ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I can't All right.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
This part is perfect. So first of all, fifty cents
is about seventeen bucks. Yeah, okay, so it's not paying him. Incredible,
but they're going to fifty so'll not getting paid. Okay,
all right, I never heard of a suki jump, so
I looked it up. Suki is old slang word for
an enslaved person, s uk e y ooh. So a
suki jump in the nineteenth century was a party by
and for the enslaved people. Okay, so it's entire thing
(34:48):
is this is the party for black people who are enslaved.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Now, I'm going to tell you something that is probably
not going to shock you. The twenty first century band
called the Suki Jump Band that I found while trying
to look up suki jumps is all white people. Of
course it is, Yeah, of course it is, at least
by looking at the photos. Yeah, one of them is
either not white or is just a white person dressed
up like free to Callo, But no one is black
(35:12):
in this picture, just.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Like freed To.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
It might actually be Freeda. She had a wild life anyway,
that's true.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
That's a good point. Yeah, no, yeah, But what you
might be surprised to know about the Suki Jump Band
is that the singer of the band is the actor
who played George g Stanza's fiance on Seinfeld, the woman
who dies from licking poles in the stamps.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
What wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Okay, okay, we got to draw the band string for us.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
Yeah, you're gonna have to do that, and then I'm
gonna need you to explain this to our mutual friend
Sarah Marshall, because that will blow her mind.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
It has been a million years since I watched Seinfeld.
There's this whole thing where George Castanza is like, I think,
dating a lesbian and then she dies off screen from
lick poisonous stamps and he like, I remember that, doesn't
really care. The actor who played that woman is a
folk musician who is the lead singer of the Suky
(36:09):
Chup Band.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
That is the motion.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Please tell Sarah about.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Just please, specifically a word for enslaved people having dances
like I'm not the first to cry appropriation. I do
believe on some level, culture blends and bleeds into each other.
But there's yeah, there's there's some borrowing, there's some fucking lines.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yeah, yeah, there's some stuff that's like look, man, uh
I listen, listen. I live in I'm married a first
in Mexican woman, and I live in Nagelus. I live
in I grew up in a almost an entirely Latino
Mexican environment.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I feel like that's why you dress up as free
to CALLO.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Yes, I feel like I got a lot of passes,
and there are a lot of things that are okay,
like dressing up like free to call No. I'm just
like and even me with with biracial children, I just
feel like there's pot city these conversations I just shouldn't
be a part of. Yeah, And I'm like, I feel
like I understand, like I'll get into the Mexico El
(37:08):
Salvador thing like day little beef, especially when I'm like, Okay, well,
your borders were drawn by the cognizers, so don't understand
why y'all like each other.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Right, totally.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
What that's none of my business.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Right, It's like you can like think about it and
read about it. Yeah, there's so many things I don't
need to have.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
A say in.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Just exactly. I was like, myless things, Yeah, I don't
need to have a saying this. Yeah, just like be
interested in is fine, yes, totally. You know, like you
should learn the difference to you know, why are the
borders were drawn at various times by who?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Like right, like yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So like when I like meet people who are like,
you know, African American versus Black, I'm thinking about like
two folks that I used to work with, two like
older black, an older Black man, an older African American man,
and both folk are strongly about these identities. Yeah, and
one was very in a Marcus Garvey and one was
very not in a Marcus garb. And I was like, man,
I want to hear both of your sides so badly.
And I have no fucking opinion. Yeah, I'm just curious.
(38:02):
I just wanted to hear you talk.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
You're both so smart. Yeah, and like, what do you
think kill joy doesn't matter at all? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, exactly what I think. Yeah. It it opened my
eyes to how some people see Marcus Garvey in a
way that was useful for me. Yeah, you know, yeah,
but do you know what I do know absolutely nothing
about oh.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Man whoever was about to advertise on his show. Yeah,
I have literally no idea, not a clue.
Speaker 6 (38:29):
Yeah, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
So he's a fifteen year old riding a horse around
in Texas, rural Texas at night by starlightes. So his
dad buys him a handgun. As you do and over
and over again, dad is like, you are not to
go looking for trouble, but if trouble finds you, be
ready there.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
It is advice. It's great dad advice. Yeah, fucking solid advice.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah. Yeah, if you're carrying a gun, that has to
be why you're doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
And this actually goes fine for about ten years. This
wasn't a like and then he immediately ran off and
did crazy shit. He's going to be as several violent altercations,
to go to jail many times. Yeah, but he is
going to prove that he is not a hot headed man.
He does, however, from a pretty early age, make it
very clear that he's not very good at being faithful
to the women that he dates. He had two daughters
(39:37):
in short secession with one woman named Margaret, just as
he married another woman named Alifa. Like his first daughter
with Margaret was born six months after he married Alifa,
and his second daughter with Margaret was born about a
year after he was married.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
So got one night in town baby.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, but he didn't deny being the father of those children.
He actual he's going to have a bunch of kids
by a bunch of different, bunch of different women, and
he's never going to be a shitty dad about it.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
He's always going to like try and keep up with them.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, a lot of them take the name ledbetter even
though their parents aren't married to him, just because they're
like first of all, that name kind of goes hard. Yeah,
and it goes extra hard once your dad's fucking led belly.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
That's pretty dope. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
There's also a lot of evidence that overall, like the
women he's with like care about him, and he cares
about them.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
He's cheating on them, but like ya, we'll get to
it more later, Okay.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
He and Alifa wanted the big city life, not the
small town life. The couple moves to the Dallas area
and they worked as hired cotton pickers. They're not sharecropping,
and they're like daily they're like day labors, you know,
hourly labor, day labor. Yeah, and he sings to her
as they work, and this is also described as a
reasonably happy time in his life. He plays out every
(40:51):
chance he can. He tries to make it as a musician.
And it's there in Dallas that he learns the Mexican instrument,
the twelve string guitar. Whoa, that becomes his signature instrument.
Speaker 5 (41:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
He often played with Blind Lemon Jefferson, the father of
the Texas Blues, who played Hawaiian guitar aka and open
tune guitar played with a slide Yeah, usually a bottleneck
or actually usually a pocket knife. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
And then Huddy plays mandolin or accordion alongside.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Oh, they seem happy enough for a couple of them.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
From nineteen ten to nineteen fifteen, they make decent money.
They starts building an audience. Later, the white people who
discover him are going to be like, we pulled this
man out of nowhere. No one had heard of this,
like swamp creature we found.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Yeah, this guy with a ten year music career. Yeah, Yeah,
he is packing shows.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, And there's always scales though, right, because there is
a difference between like even Tory nationally and suddenly being
like a fucking pop star, you know.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Yeah, or just having like a local buzz where you
just play out of juke joints down here, versus like
you're an artist now. So yeah, there is fair enough,
but like, yeah, I'm only on your radar because.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
I was killing it where I was at No.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
And that's such a good point that it even just
goes to like when people are like, oh, you got lucky,
and you're like, yeah, by showing up to work every
single day for ten years, yeah, eventually someone noticed me. Yeah,
totally don't get noticed unless you show up and play shows.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
For the last ten years. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (42:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
So he's twenty six years old in nineteen fifteen and
he has his first serious run in with the law,
and it's going to tie into both white supremacy and
self defense.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
This is going to be a continuing pattern. Great.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
He and Aalitha went home that year for the fiftieth Juneteenth.
It had been fifty years since the text.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
And slaves were freed. What a thought.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
A few days before the celebrations, Huddy goes to go
play a party somewhere along the way, like somewhere along
the road at night. He gets into a fight and
he shoots and injures another black man. And there's no
particular evidence about how exactly this went down. The only
people who even said, like, this is what happened are
the people who are exploiting him or trying to build
(42:58):
up the.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Story about him.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah, the myth making is that it was a fight
over a woman, because Huddy is a horrible flanderer.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
He's a little bit of a flanderer.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, but also it might have been self defense, even
in that particular case. I do know that he carried
a pistol for eleven years before he ever fired it
in a way that brought police attention. So I don't
think he was reckless. Yeah, he drank and he gambled,
it probably wasn't reckless. He's brought up on charges. His
parents hire two white lawyers to defend him. No, which
(43:28):
is not easy. They sign over they have sixty eight
and a half acres, They sign over thirty fucking acres dail,
which is like just loving parents, you know.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Yeah, because it's like it's not like they have cash,
you know what I'm saying. Yeah, but like exactly, you
got land and then right, yeah, when these two white
lawyers are and even if, even if you give them
the most kindest read of them, even if I were
to do this for free, yeah, I am ending my
law career by showing up up defending this black man.
(44:01):
So yeah, I mean I might not be able to
spore myself for the rest of my life. So like,
is there something y'all could do?
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Well?
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Maybe, I think in this case, because it's it's it's
black on black crimes, I'll get to air quots. I
believe that these people are part of a white spres
and take land away from black people. But later he
actually is going to get defended I think pro bono
by just like straight up well meaning white people who
I think maybe like his music. Okay, but that's decades late.
Now what's happening right now?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah, Actually later a man like drops out of grad
school to raise money for his defense.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Later like he fucking rips man way later.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Yeah, and his parents might have thought they were just
staking half their farm, not signing it over completely. Oh no,
but now that they have Okay, So now they have
white lawyers, and the charges mysteriously got dropped. They didn't
even have to the whitelayers didn't have to show up
in court. They just fucking magic network that bullshit, right,
But instead he gets charged with carrying a pistol and
(45:02):
it is either from this, I believe it's two charges
in like three weeks. It's both the self defense carrying
a pistol and later a walking while black. Yeah, and
because it was illegal at the time in Texas to
walk around carrying a pistol, and all white men did
it all of the time and no one stopped them.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
One of the most fun things fun gets quotes here.
One of the most fun things about America is it's
so racist that both gun control and pro gun lobbies
they just both come from racism.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
It's so bizarre. Yeah, it's like, man, nothing will make
y'all happy.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
Yeah, yeah, oh totally.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
They're like the state wants certain people to be armed
and able to commit extra judicial violence, and it wants
other people disarmed, and so you make laws and then
you selectively enforce them, and that's how you can do that.
And that still happens today. Recently, the ATF announced that
it's pistol brace rule. There's this thing where like, if
you have an AR fifteen, this is going to be
totally in the weeds. Let's go, gi have an AAR
(46:00):
fifteen and you put a regular it can be technically
a pistol, or it could be technically a rifle, but
it's illegal if it's short and a rifle that's a
short barreled rifle. Yeah, and so a stock versus a
brace is what sets this apart.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And the ATF said the a fucking couple of weeks ago, like, well,
we're just going to if you get arrested for something else,
take a closer look at your guns and then decide
whether or not it's a fucking short barreled rifle to
charge you. So they're just blatantly saying opinion, if you
if you ain't got nothing to hide, it's.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Not a problem. Yeah, we'll decide if you committed a crime.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:40):
Day and again you wonder why we don't trust the system,
It's like you're making it up as you go along.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
That's why. That's why I don't trust Yeah, yeah, why I'm.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Really fucking careful about gun laws, like I don't. There's
no gray area that I feel is safe for me
to be in, you know, like, and so it's completely possible.
One history and I read conjectures that this whole thing
was orchestrated to get this land into the hands of
white oil prospectors, because that's what fucking happened. Yeah. In
(47:13):
one of the other episodes I've done a while ago,
I talk about the like numbers. The black ownership of
land in the South at the end of the nineteenth
century versus thirty years later is dramatic because the hardest
people to disenfranchise during Jim Crow were the landowners. Congratulations,
Leoy Supremase succeeded at that. Finally, you know, they figured
it out. Yeah, and so oil prospectors get the thirty acres. Meanwhile,
(47:38):
Hotey gets himself thirty days on a chain gang, plus
extra at least five months to pay off his fines
of fifty cents a day. We actually don't know how
long he was supposed to be in jail, because this man.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Did not stay in jail. Let's go, I'm out cuz.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah, just to reverence my granddad, the hobo again, my
granddad also was on a chain gang for a while
because he was stealing a car and he refused to
snitch out the people he stole the car with.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Yeah, let's go Grandpops. Yeah, hey, pop Pop, what'd you
do when I was a.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Stole a car, didn't snitch?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah? And then he fought in World War two and
worked for the government. But like before that.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Yeah, before then, I was pretty badass. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
The rest of my family is confused that the part
that I'm really interested in is the hobo stories. Yeah yeah, yeah,
like no, I wrote trains, I want to fucking Yeah.
And so he gets sent out. They give him some
unknown length of time. Officials are getting paid out in
a cash for convicts kind of program. Chain gangs provide
cheap labor for various private interests. Yea, four months into
(48:42):
his one month sentence, he decides he's been in jail
long enough. He and his fellow convicts they're in these
like prison wagons, these wooden wagons that take them around
to do work on the chain gang. And so like
even like Sundays they're like day off, they're just like
in cages by the side of the fucking road, you know. Yeah,
And so he and his fellow convicts start a fire
(49:03):
and burn a hole in the floor of the jail wagon.
Cut yeah, and they all get off and movie. Unlike
almost every other story about jail breaks that I've ever read,
including some of his later jail breaks, this is not
the only time he's going to break out of jail.
He succeeds so crazy, he never does the rest of
that sentence. So crazy he goes. And he also doesn't
(49:24):
have to hide like a lot of times now, if
you break out of jail, they catch you because you
go home to your family, right, Yeah, but it's old
timey times.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
So he and Alitha, his wife, fuck off up north
and they change their name to mister and Ms Walter
boyd Yes, and they moved to another black community up
near the Oklahoma border. The pair of them sharecropped, and
he broke wild horses. He played his twelve string guitar
for everybody all the time. Some of his young nieces
and nephews came to live with him because his family's
(49:52):
having a rough time because they just lost a lot
of their land and everything's going badly.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And then a year into his new life, he killed
a man.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Oh so there's that.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah, yeah, I was about to make a joke about Okay, nephew,
now when you come up here, my name is BOYD now.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah yeah yeah yeah, boy yeah yeah No, it's that's
not what got him in trouble. It was definitely shooting
a guy that got him in trouble. He killed a guy,
He shot and killed his distant cousin's husband. The most
likely story is that the two men were arguing. The
story that's completely possible, but is the story that's played
up is that the guy was like, you slept with
(50:31):
my wife and then attacked him, and then he shot
him in self defense, possibly with that guy's own gun,
or they were gambling and arguing about money. There are
witnesses that say it was self defense because the guy
pulled a gun on him, But self defense doesn't get
black men, even black men accused of killing black men
(50:51):
out of jail, because there's no profit in not convicting
a black man where there's lots of profit, and convicting
a black man too was con.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
And sends to twenty years bail.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
And just because I love the name Margaret, the wife
in question was named Peggy, which means her name was
probably Margaret, but her she went by pig. Yeah, that's precious,
which is a whole new nickname for Margaret I've never
heard before.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Cute.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
That's amazing, Yeah, yeah, cute.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
So he had lawyers, and this time he had white
lawyers working pro bono and no one seems quite sure why.
But he gets convicted and he goes to jail and
his lawyers are trying to get him retried because it's
pretty obviously self defense, but he doesn't like being in jail.
So anywait, no, when the jailer comes into the cell
one day, one of the inmates, there's like four of them.
(51:41):
You break got her jail again?
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Huh yeah, no, totally yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
After a couple of weeks, How fast is this dude?
This time one inmate jumps out of a pile of
laundry and overpowers the guard and steals his gun and.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
Then they run for it. This is amazing.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
It didn't go as well this time, for actually one
of them might have gotten away, but one of them
was shot and killed in the escape attempt, and Huddy
was caught a.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Few miles away. He was unarmed.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
One escape he might have made it, so he was
found guilty for the attempted murder of the prison guard,
and he was going to be in prison. Both sentences
were not running but at the same time. Yeah, they
were running consecutively. Instead he had one then the other.
It was going to be in prison for seven to
thirty years. Who while he was in prison, another child
he'd had with someone else who wasn't his wife, was born.
(52:31):
Had a kid what whatever the right way the grammar
of that sentence. He had a kid with somebody. He
likely never got to know about this kid. He was
in jail for a while. Alitha, for her part, I
think she's done with him. I feel like at this
point and she becomes a preacher. Of course she does. Yes, yes, no,
(52:53):
she tied. Ah, he's you know, I'm gonna give my
life to Jesus. I was outside, Yeah, cussing and fussing.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
I don't know if they ever got divorced, maybe they
just stopped being married. But that's where we're gonna leave it.
Now he's in prison for a second time. He's he's
not gonna stay there. He's gonna become incredibly famous. The
people who are gonna help make him famous are gonna
treat him like absolute fucking garbage, and then he's gonna
fuck well, I don't want to spoil.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
All of you, don't ruin it.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Yeah, but he's gonna do some awesome fucking cool stuff,
including apparently be faithful. I'm quite happy with his second
wife to the end of his days.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Ah, And so neither first recorded Wolkester.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Stay Woke. No, you can hear the recording too, it's
on YouTube. It's it's one of him many times he
sings Scottsboro Boys. Yeah, anyway, what do you think about
old Ladbelly so far?
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Man, He's not a cool person yet, He's just a
regular dude who has lived some really dope adventures.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (53:53):
But like, knowing where this goes is just like I
didn't I've obviously I had no idea at his backstory.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
I just knew his contributions. But this is so fun,
Like I've been smiling the whole time.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Well, one of the things that I like about him,
he's a regular dude, Yeah, who made amazing contributions, who
had crazy adventures. Yeah, who like did some fucked up
stuff and did some really fucking cool stuff, And like
it makes them more real.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (54:23):
Yeah, it makes the music makes so much more sense too,
where you're just like, yeah, yeah, bro, like he look
came into town.
Speaker 3 (54:30):
Playing his twelve string.
Speaker 4 (54:31):
He out there up there being fine as hell, and yeah,
bagged him with chick that night. He just happened to
get it pregnant and he's like, yeah, well, I mean
I made another kid today, So yeah, all right, I
mean it is what it is, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
Yeah, and as funny is, he's still like not rock
star level.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
Oh, he's just like, you know, like there's there's such
thing as like like black Hollywood, like you black famous
like that. Yeah, everybody don't You're not a megastar like
the world don't know, but like we mess with you, you know.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
Yeah yeah yeah. Well if people want to hear your
music or maybe your podcast, other ways that they can
do it.
Speaker 4 (55:08):
Yeah, the politics prop I'm on the same network with
these wonderful humans right here, proptpop dot Com. A lot
of new music rolling out, man, I'm actually really excited
about the new stuff.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Check this out.
Speaker 4 (55:20):
Actually this is something to promote I am going to
somehow I got involved in improv.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
I don't know how this happened.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
I'm so sorry. Huh and uh.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
But the show got invited to the Fringe Festival. If
you're the Fringe.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
No, I never heard of it, but it's.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
I think I've heard the name, so it must be big.
If I have heard, it's pretty big.
Speaker 4 (55:38):
It's in Scotland, in Edinburgh and it's like kind of
a thing. So anyway, the people putting it together put
together like a seed and spark to like support it
because this ain't like paid gig, you know what I'm saying,
which was weird to me because I was like, oh, yeah,
it's cool go to the festival.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
But yeah, yeah, hit me up and they're like, oh no,
you have to. You have to pay your way there, and.
Speaker 4 (56:02):
I was like, oh shit, I don't know really, So
then I told some people and they were like, no,
you got to figure out how to Apparently mister Bean
the first sight all right, he's yep, his first showing
was at Fringe. Yeah, and then got the show, so
it's like, okay, so you gotta go, you gotta go
do it.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Jamie performed at the Fringe Festival.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
Oh yeah, see so shit, yeah it's a thing. So
now I'm going, but like y'all want to support to boy.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, they should talk to Jamie about it.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Okay, No, it makes sense that there's like there's certain
things where you're like, you want me to do what
you're gonna pay me if I'm going to do that,
and then every now and then you're like, I will
do that for exposure.
Speaker 3 (56:38):
Yeah, because it's a fucking lot of exposure.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
It's kind of dope, Like, yeah, this is kind of dope.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
Yeah. So yeah, sports A Boy, that's some of my websites.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
You're going to practicup perform every night.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
Fifteen seventeen days and fifteen shows. Yeah, every other night
or every night everybody too, So it's like it's going down. Yeah,
I basically freestyle a spoken word.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Jimmy did boss whum his girl at that friend festival
like several years ago.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Dude, I'll ask her, Yeah, I talked to her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Well, people should listen to Politics a Prop. It is
one of the best shows about just actually breaking down
what's fucking happening in the world, Like like, if you
ever are like I'm confused about what all this fucking
shit means. I just listened to Politics a Prop. That
sounds like I'm doing an ad read. I just literally
do that. That is a thing that I do.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and so I
have visual memories of where Yeah, like ah, I learned
that thing, well, hanging curtains, yeah, or like whatever the
fucking thing is, Like, ah, walk in the dog, That's
where I learned about this thing. So cool people should.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Listen to that man and thank you.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah people should listen to this show on Wednesday when
we come back for part two. Whoo, I just want
to pop in real quick from the future and say,
I can't believe I forgot to kind of more specifically
and directly point out the person and the book that
helped bring all of this information to light. It's right
(57:59):
there in the title. It's called Bring Judgment Day. Reclaiming
Leadbelly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies by Sheila Kuran Bernard.
Speaker 5 (58:13):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Cools Media.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff? Your
weekly reminder that people do really fucking cool stuff.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
It's in the title of the show.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy and my guest today man,
my returning guest. One of the first guests I've ever
had on this show is Jason Petty aka prop aka Propaganda.
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Hey, tell me something good. Yeah, yeah, come on, tell
me that you love me. Kill Joy.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
I love you.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Oh, I love you, Sophia.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I am so excited. I changed topics yesterday. I have
like basically not slept. I'm kind of manic right now
because I changed topics about thirty six hours ago, and
I read an entire history book as well as a
whole bunch of other texts in order to do this.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh oh, but it's gonna be worth it. I believe it. Manna.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
You're gonna tell me about some sort of horrible atrocity
that is gonna get me so sad, And then there's
gonna be a turn, because there's gonna be a really
dope person that's gonna pop in and lead us to freedom.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Honestly, yeah, this was gonna happen. Yeah, And I also
figured it's been a minute since I've had a musician
as a guest, and so I thought I'd do an
episode about music. Oh man, Originally, originally I was gonna
cover this man, Alan Lomax. Have you ever heard of
Alan Lomax?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No, help me out.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
All right, he is the guy who recorded folk musicians.
He's a white guy who went down and recorded folk musicians,
especially black musicians in the South. And he's like kind
of caused the folk revival and did all the shit,
and like rock and roll exists because of Alan Lomax,
according to various people. Okay, but along the way, I
was realizing I was covering about how when he was
seventeen and he was with his dad, he went and
(01:52):
recorded a prisoner went by the name of Led Belly.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Oh, Led Belly is a different story, and.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
That is the better story. So this week, yes, okay,
hard covering Honey Ledbetter.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I'm a little I'm a little familiar with this one. Okay, yeah,
I thought you might be. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Led Belly is the king of the twelve string guitar
and one of the most influential musicians in American history yep,
and also one of the most maligned people in American history,
like the way his story is told. A bunch of
white people did a lot of fucking myth making about him. Yeah,
and they were not polite.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
When they did it.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
But I forgot to introduce with Sophie's here. Hey Sophie,
I'm here.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Return of.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
I'm here, I'm here.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm so excited to do this, Like I feel like
this is like first year cool We blue did cool stuff.
Oh Man, almost uncomplicated. He is a complicated man, but
less complicated. I'm like uncomplicating him from history instead of
more complicating than from history.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
You know what's crazy is first year of cool people.
You didn't have a dog. Rop didn't have a dog,
and I only had one dog.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Right, I had a puppy. I had a tiny barkie puppy.
First year, I.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Definitely didn't have a Okay, you did not have your
pug and I did not have Truman.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
True.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
There is twice as many dogs in this room as
there was when we started.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
That's what I'm saying. The stats are great.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
This is a glow up. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
What I love about what you're about to do is
one of the things that is infuriating is that.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
The word infuriating.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Infuriating makes me furious is when there's this myth making. Obviously,
all stories have a perspective and an agenda, like you're
trying to accomplish something, and when it happens in history,
you know, the obvious ones are like, well, either trying
(04:00):
to usurp or present power. You know, yeah, totally right.
But then the real story be so much more interesting.
And if you just tell the real story, it's so
much more compelling than the shit you ate up. And
and oftentimes you making it up makes it so obvious
(04:23):
what Joe problem was. And now you look silly. Yeah,
you know, especially in music. But it's just like you
just you're white supremacists and you just want to believe
that everything you make is better, but you stole it all.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, what's what's wild about this story is that they
are blatant about the theft. If you go back far enough,
it's like when early colonists came to white the colonists
came to North America and we're like, well, of course
this used to be yours, but it's mine now I
took it from you. That's what people did to this man.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Yes today, why submitted for the tap in episode, we're
talking about the Hanna Nashoni and Red Jackets letter, and
Benjamin Franklin goes, Yeah, their democracy is better than ours.
We should model at democracy after theirs. They figured out
how to have a representative government.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
We should just do what they did.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Like you, I wish we had, or even better, I
wish people just fucking joined them. Yeah, that's what he
left them in charge. We should have just joined him.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
They figured it out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, so Huddy led better because he actually his stage
name was Led Belly with a space in it, but
he he preferred going by Huddy, and sometimes his friends
would call him Led, but his name wasn't Led Belly,
that was his stage name. His story gets into so
(05:51):
much shit and specifically, I'm sure there's versions of this
that have happened before, but this is the earliest I
have read about the making and methodologizing of the scary black.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Man an American culture.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, and some of the like early incredible depths of
appropriation of black music. One that I can tie into
both colonization and slavery more directly than I realized. Like
I can basically say, like this is how a sharecropper
got share cropped on music. Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Knowing how this story ends makes me go, yeah, that's
an incredible Yeah, it's an incredible analysis.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, and I'm really excited this story has. I mean,
he dies at sixty, right, but he fucking he makes it,
and he makes it through the worst shit, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And I could be overly polite and say mainstream culture
has always been downstream of Black American culture, but in
Huddy's case, the kid of a Confederate soldier is going
to hire him without paying him and use him to
try and get copyright on as many black songs as possible,
especially songs written by prisoners who are being essentially enslaved
(07:04):
because during after Reconstruction with the Jim Crow laws, they
were like, how do we make black men keep working
for us for free?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And so I'm gonna go with my colonization metaphor, even
though the like downstream of black culture is also.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Part of it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, yeah, but I want to start. Do you know
a Huddy Ledbetter as the first person we have a
recording of saying explicitly and directly stay woke.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
No, I knew it was like great grandfather's slaying, Like
my great grandfather said it.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, it's old as fun.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It's so old. But I didn't know he was the
first one. That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
We're gonna do a whole Okay, we're gonna start with
stay woke because this is a Yes, this is my
first deep dive, even before we get to the rest
of it. All right, Marcus Garvey returning character of the
pod founder of Pan Africanism and the red, black.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And Green flag.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, complicated figure from a lot of people's point of view,
but for sure, really fucking interesting. And I eineteen twenty
three he wrote a book of aphorisms. He was like,
these are some sayings I like, and one of them
was wake up Ethiopia, wake Up Africa. And so that's
the oldest that people point to about like this idea of.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
That's where I point out is market Yeah, totally and
that phrasing it clearly means be woke. Right.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
But in nineteen thirty eight Led Belly said it for
the first time on a recording and he said he's
talking about the Scottsboro Boys. When we talked about that
in a second, he said, quote, I advise everybody be
a little careful best, stay woke, keep their eyes open.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Dang, I didn't know him.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
Yeah, I just don't remember great Grant granting him. You
got to you gotta stay woke, young brother, you gotta
stay woke. Yeah, hey, okay.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And it's so funny because it's like it's now the
fucking culture Warship one hundred years later.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Yeah, you know, literally redefined and used as a weapon
against us so fresh. We should have never like conceited
the definition. And now this is where we are.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
Oh yeah, any.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, no, totally and and honestly, I frankly think a
big part of that is because like white, well meaning
lefty people started using it one ironically, Like I think
that's part of how it broke containment.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
And I'm not I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
I'm actually gonna talk about how that happened in the
sixties in a second, okay, but first the Scottsboro Boys.
I hate to start off with this, just like, fucking
here's some racist shit that happened. Because this is what
Ledbetter was talking about. I think it's useful framing, especially
when we're going to talk about what happened to Ledbetter
(09:41):
was that he got called basically like the scary, violent,
savage black man who happens to be really good at music. Yeah,
you know, yeah, the Scottsboro Boys. Some people call it
the case the lead of the civil rights movement. You
could say that about a lot of cases, because there
was a lot of things yas shit. Yeah, And it
(10:02):
started with racist hobos and I didn't know that part.
Nineteen thirty one is kind of the peak hobo era.
In the Great Depression, people rode freight trains around illegally
trying to find jobs. My granddad was a hobo in
the nineteen thirties. It's March nineteen thirty one, and it's Alabama,
and there's a box car with like twenty something people
(10:23):
in it. Nine of them were black teenagers aged thirteen
to nineteen, and some white boys picked a fight with
the black kids and lost.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
They lost that fight. They lost. They were run out
of the box car.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And if you're a fucking hobo, you're not supposed to
fucking lose a fight and then go run off and
tell the fucking cops, the police. Yeah, fuck you pick
a side, are you crime or not?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:52):
They ran out of the box car, went off to
tell the cops, and an angry mob was waiting for
the train. At the next stop, teens were arrested for assault.
But there were two white women in the box car
two and they were also hoboeing looking for work, so
presumably sex work. And the two were going to get
arrested and charged with vagrancy and like solicitation and sex
(11:15):
crime shit, And they were like, oh, no, those black
teenagers absolutely raped us, that's what happened. Yeah, And they
were rushed off to the doctor who found no evidence
that that happened, just absolutely none. The only evidence in
this case was these two women. That's the only evidence.
All but the youngest of the black teens was sentenced
(11:37):
to death. The all white jury actually wanted to sence
the thirteen year old to death, but the judge was
a softy and only wanted to put everyone.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Else to death.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, this became a national issue. The International Labor Defense,
which was the legal wing of the American Communist Party,
teamed up with the NAACP to fight for their defense.
And it's kind of a thing that doesn't get talked
about that a lot of the early Basically, the NAACP
and like the Communist Party were like two of the
biggest organizations in.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
The twenties and thirties.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, fighting for like what later became the civil rights movement.
And eventually the convictions were overturned, but not before some
of these people were sentenced four different times. Like they
kept getting new trials and they kept being like, well,
you got a new trial, but we still want to
kill these kids.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
They were imprisoned for decades, and even when their rape
charges would get overturned in the end, they'd still be
in prison for like fighting a bailift during all the bullshit.
It wasn't until fucking twenty thirteen that they were posthumorously pardoned.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah. Man, I got a lot of thoughts, but yeah, yeah,
we have these.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
Flashpoints in culture and then you get invited to like
help their leadership team of some organization, company, religious parachurch, whatever.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Process and like get woke if you will. Yeah, and
then you're like, I don't even know where.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
To start, because just throw a rock in any decade
and there's this and then you say, okay, you asked
me a question like well, why don't you just call
the police?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Why don't you trust the justice system, And it's like.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, pattern recognition. Yeah, because of pattern.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Pattern recognition, I saw I learned, and some I learned
in therapy with with like couple's therapy, which is like yeah, yeah, yeah,
your your partner doesn't trust your emotions or your words,
they trust your patterns.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Until you change the patterns, the nervous system isn't going
you know what I'm saying, So like it's it's it's
pattern I mean, because I got jumped, we dog walk
these dudes who attacked us. Yeah, and and these white
white women saw it. Yeah, white women, Yes, you saw it.
(14:06):
So why you think we won't trust white women. I'm like, well, you.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Saw this, Yeah, you saw all that happen.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
You saw all this happen.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
And the judge said, I think these little boys is innocent.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Oh but you gotta I gotta wait, I gotta go back,
Like okay, so but I'm still you you found me
innocent multiple times.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
How am I still in jail?
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah? I don't understand how I'm still in jail.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah, well it's because you punched someone while you were
being put in a cage for something you didn't do.
So yes, so excuse me, yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
For not trusting the system?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and so when fucking Honey Ledbetter in
nineteen thirty eight, he says, stay woke. It means keep
your fucking wits about you. Remember that you live in
a fucking racist society, and remember that they're fucking after you. Yes,
and he said it as one of the most important
musicians of his era. By the time, he said nineteen
thirty eight, he is one of the most important musicians. Yeah,
(15:08):
and he had experienced racism in the South, but also
from the very fucking white people who are ostensibly helping
and build his career. Yeah, but I want to keep
tracing this woke thing just because it's a fascinating please
do and the.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
Thing is too like I like, please don't use your
train of thought because it's so important. But like specifically
as a musician and as myself as a black musician,
I mean up until very recently, and I would even
argue even currently, like all black music is political. Yeah,
like it's it's it's all a protest, even if it's
(15:42):
just for fun.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
You know what I'm saying, Like that the fun is
a protest. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Like so it's just like our tradition is like the
hip hop it's from the same stream that we're talking
about right now. It's like, yeah, absolutely, it's all political, like, yeah,
I don't know what to tell you anyway, go on, yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
No, I mean even like I don't want to like
go hard defending Marcus Garvey. Right, But one of the
reasons that Marcus Garvey, because sometimes I guess a lot
of shit is is I'm going to oversimplify things, get
something's wrong. He was more of a proponent of black
capitalism than most of the people by the late sixties
who are interested in black power.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Right, But trying to build wealth looks really fucking different
when you're having your wealth systematically stripped away.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
From you every time you get it.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, everything is either reinforcing power structures, are trying to
build new ones, you know.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Totally, and then what are you going to do? Like
you like, okay, so we're going to go back to Africa.
You mean, the second largest land mass on the planet.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
What part are you from? I don't know, it was
part of you from?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I think my ancestors was from these four different tribes.
Now that's a nation. Somebody is because the people drew
a line.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Nobody drew a line.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
So like, I think, I don't know when I left,
we weren't Nigerian.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Because there was no sustinct as Nigeria.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Yeah, yeah, totally, we were Igbo. And now like, so
where are we going to go? I don't know, Yeah,
go to I'll hear you like, yeah, let's go there.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah. So the word hipster kind of originally means white
person trying to be black. Okay, in the middle of
the twentieth century, that's how it was being used.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Basically, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, there's a fuck. I like cited this properly. In
episode like two years ago, a black author from I
think the nineteen forties was talking about the BEATNICKX was
talking about this.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Either way, that's dope.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And so the word hippie comes from that, right, It
comes from people who are like, like, white people are
trying to be cool because like, yeah, black people are cool.
I don't know if you knew that.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I'm sure that no one's ever put that on you. Yeah,
I don't put that on you before. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Although in their defense, most people we call hippies didn't
call themselves hippies.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
They called themselves freaks.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
But black authors were very aware of how white people
were copying their style and their language in order to
be hip.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So there's this piece from nineteen sixty two in New
York Times Max magazine from a black author named William
Mellon Kelly about appropriation. Doesn't use that word. It's about appropriation,
and it's called if you're woke, you dig it, And
it doesn't bother saying what woke means in this piece
that's called that, it just assumed that the audience is
(18:18):
familiar with woke as black slang.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
You absolutely know what we mean, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
That white people are starting to use. And in it
he conjectures that a lot of black slang started with
slaves speaking code to confuse the white slavers. He says, quote,
my grandmother told me that ofe, a word for white man,
was foe in pig Latin.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Yeah probably, Yeah, like, no, I don't have another argument,
you know, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
It also gets into how black use of the Southern
accent survived the Great migration of black people leaving the
South in part to be able to maintain a cultural
identity separate from whiteness when they went places. And it
talks about code switching, doesn't use the word code switching,
but it like talks about code switching is the thing
I've read about that. Okay, But there's one piece in there,
one bit of slang or a verbal mannerism. I guess
(19:07):
that I had no idea came from black culture. I
will never be surprised when something comes from black culture.
But that's one I didn't know. Do you know the
word using using the word like it's like punctuation.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yes, from black people?
Speaker 6 (19:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Oh god, see I didn't know that either.
Speaker 5 (19:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
No, I was goa pulls.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
I got a few I could pull out of, like
out the tank, like like yeah, well, everybody puts your
hands together. That's from Harlem Renaissance. That's shit black people.
That's our slang with hands together. But yeah, I didn't know,
like what was one of them?
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:38):
The uh the example he uses two white women taught
walking out of the like Boston Symphony, and one of
them says to the other, wasn't it like exhilarating nineteen
sixty two? Everybody?
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Oh man, these jab percys.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Yeah, yes, so woke hit a more wide audience, including
a wider black audience, as I understand from what I've
read in the late aunts and early teens. In two
thousand and eight, Erica Badu saying I'd stay woke in
the song Master Teacher.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
In twenty twelve, she tweeted stay Woke in support of
the band Pussy Riot from Russia.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Then it got hashtagged and response to the murder of
Trayvon Martin and Florida yep. Then when cops and ferguson
Missouri murdered Michael Brown in twenty fourteen, became associated with
the Black Lives Matter movement, and then it became a
right wing boogey man, especially after the twenty twenty Uprising.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
But I would even say, even to your point, even
to that, like if you woke, you could dig it. Yeah,
is this understanding that we already knew it? Admitt Yeah.
So even from that first song of Erica singing that, right,
we all thought of our dads. Yeah, Like she's like,
she's talking the way our dad's talked.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
So she was already referencing our old hits. Yeah. So
we just thought as like, oh, yeah, you married, you
bring them back.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Yeah, it's like you're bringing it back.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
So we was all ready for us a reclaiming of
sixties black slang.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, so it already wasn't We didn't invent it.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
We knew we didn't invent this phrase, right, right, so
like we knew we were again Yeah, we were referencing
our grandparents.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Yeah, yeah, Well do you know what our grandparents also
had to deal with in the middle of their audio entertainment,
I mean got to got to deal with in the
middle of their audio entertainment advertisers.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
All right, much like these ones.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And we're back, all right. And so the first quote
stay woke we have on a recording is the blue
singer named led Belly you preferred to go by Hoddy
or sometimes just lead.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
And let's talk about him. Let's talk about him, honey.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Led Better was born probably on January twentieth, eighteen eighty nine.
You get back into the nineteenth century of poor folks,
especially poor folks of color.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Yeah, good, look, you do your best. Yeah, it's also
a survival tactic. Side note, Oh, honestly, that makes sense. Yeah,
it's a survival tactic to be like No I was No.
I was born in eighteen twenty six in Negative Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
You know, yes, making up stuff yet.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
No, No, honestly, that makes a lot of sense because
he's later at some point gonna he's gonna break out
of prison and change his name, which.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Is pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah you could do that. Yeah, Yeah, You're just gonna
make some shit up when you do that, you know.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
And eighteen eighty nine is a rough time to be
born black in Louisiana. Woo reconstruction is firmly over, and
the air of Jim Crow has begun.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
His parents were Wesley Ledbetter Junior from North Carolina and
Sally Pooh led Better from Louisiana. They'd both been born
into slavery and wound up sharecroppers as kids, and after
Hodey was born, they adopted a girl named Australia whose
parents had died, and I think they had more kids
besides this as well. Nineteenth century names, especially, honestly, names
(23:09):
from black culture will be like, yeah, just not names
you here.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Yeah Australia. Okay, that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
I was like, yeah, yeah, never thought about a name
and a child Australia.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah. And his parents they they bootstrapped themselves. I know,
the whole phrase bootstrap, like picking yourself up by your bootstraps.
The whole point is that that's impossible. Yeah, you know,
but his parents did about as well as anyone in
their position could. Yeah, and they did that with help
of infrastructure built by and for black people about getting.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
Land, yeah, because reconstruction was working. Yeah, like that was
the it was actually working.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
So yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I sometimes get really really upset when I think about,
like we like almost I'm sure it wouldn't have been perfect.
We almost had as racial America, Like.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
We kind of solved it, like we accidentally solved the problem.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah. Yeah, and then people realized that they like could
just break the law in order to fucking oppress black
people and know, yeah, oh city worked.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah you better. We gotta put the genie back into
bottle guys.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah yeah. Oh and that's what happens to his parents too, unfortunately,
Like but like all right, we'll get to that.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
So a black man that they knew a family friend
had just moved to Texas and bought thousands of acres.
The historian I read didn't know where the hell that
person got the money. My guess just from doing the
show too much around that time, and in that part
of Texas, like the Texas Louisiana kind of area, The
Colored Farmers Alliance was a really powerful movement that specifically
(24:49):
existed to get land into black people's hands by like
loaning them money right and doing it non exploitatively.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
And it was like a black lead movement.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
That's my best guess about where this person might have
gotten the money, and that farmer immediately now it was
thousands of acres isn't going to work?
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Thousands of acres?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, immediately let the leadbetters come and share crop for him,
but without ripping them off, because part of the reason
the sharecropping system was so fucked up is it was
just basically like how exploitative can we make these contracts?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah? You know.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
And so it helps his parents buy sixty eight and
a half acres of land on a seven year loan.
They finished paying it off seven years and they were
able to build themselves a decent life.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
No, that's way shorter an average mortgage.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I was like, must be nice. Yeah, like seven years
were okay?
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yeah for sixty eight and a half acres.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Yeah, my kid's a second grader. I paid off the house.
It's great.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, yeah, totally. They're like, all right, now we fucking
raised most of our own food, and they live somewhere
where there's like no white people in twenty miles and
like MT's be nice. Yeah, now he ledbetter, had a
nice childhood by what he says, like they worked hard
as fuck.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
His parents were.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Waking up at one or two in the morning to
clear land for farming, but they lived twenty miles from
the nearest white people. They got to do their own
thing with a bunch of other black families in the region,
and they rode five miles to get the mail once
a week, and they read the newspaper. When his father
had been married, he hadn't been able to sign his
own name. He did an ex and was like witnessed
by somebody, you know. But now he read everything that
(26:22):
he could, and the local shopkeeper kept the whole week's
worth of papers for him. So cool, so when he
would show up, he'd be like, all right, I gotta
read everything, gotta know everything.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
The family would fish in the lake, play music on
the shore, and just lived fucking decent lives despite poverty.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Two of his uncles were somewhat renowned musicians in the area.
What were called songsters, which is a word I hadn't
run across before. Yeah, these are the local folks who
could entertain people. Yeah, no recordings, You're like, who can
plays a nice songs? Two songsters in the family, Yeah,
sing a song, singing man Yeah yeah. And later in
(27:01):
life people are going to play up just basically like
this is not the word they used, but they just
played up how gangster led belly was right. They're like
the whole thing was basically like they're accusing of being
of him at being gangster rap before that was a thing. Yeah,
And he's a violent man. He's mean and angry and dangerous.
And to spoil some of the ending, when he dies,
(27:22):
people come out and talk about him and they're like,
he was an incredibly common, peaceful man who de escalated
so many fights and if you punched him, he'd fucking
stab you. Yeah, like, yeah, he believed in self defense.
He's a country boy. He just a country boy child
of a sharecropper. Yeah, who used to play.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
At the lake.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
But I beat you ass if you like, yeah, like,
which is what you want all your sons to be?
Speaker 2 (27:50):
No, I know this is like yeah, Like I reading
about it, I'm like, yeah, all right, Like fuck absolutely,
like this is absolutely a decent role model, like in
his earlier life if he could have been more committed
to the women he was with. But like there's that,
you know whatever, not anyway, whatever, Yeah, yeah, and who
doesn't want to be dangerous to the people who are
(28:10):
dangerous to us?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
You know?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
Yes, Like honestly, that's one of the main things I
talk about with like trans shit is I'm like, I'm like, yeah, no,
I try not to be afraid.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I try to be scary. That's my plan, you know.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
Yes, there's a phrase in the streets which is like
stay dangerous where it's just like I need you like
that is my Yeah, my greatest tool of defense is
to seem dangerous.
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yes, I remember once I was in this I was
taking this martial arts class. I was very classed differently
than everyone else in this class, and one of the
you know, people are like, oh, how do you stay
safe or whatever? And I was like, oh, when people
like you know, call me slurs on the street, I
pull a knife. And to be clear anyone who's listening
to this, I never did that. That would have been illegal.
But theoretically what I would have done if someone caused me,
(28:56):
you know, caused me a fagot.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Is like pull a knife on them.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
And they were like, they were like, well, what do
you do if they come after you? And I was like,
oh no, then I run like first, I'm really scare them.
I'm not gonna get in a knife fight. That's dumb.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, it's very it's very inefficient. Too.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Was like that's called front and I was like, yeah,
no that's what they did. It works really well. Yeah,
that's exactly what it is. And then if they catch
up with me, I fight. I never well whatever anyway, No, my.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Friend's granddad used to say, a good run beats a
bad stand any day.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And so young Young soon to be led belly. He's
a studious kid. He got to go to school until
eighth grade, at which point he had to come home
and work on the farm because there's work that needed doing.
He was respectful and friendly, and his family fucking loved him,
and he loved his family. And he was a musical prodigy.
(29:50):
And so people are like, oh, he was just naturally talented. No,
he worked his ass off. Yeah, like he sat by
the fire and did the well. His first instrument was accordion.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Wow, yeah, no, his his family bought him an accordion,
a wind jammer.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
He called it. One of the button accordions is diatonic
instead of fully chromatic. Swahili, you just spoke to Swahili.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
But anyway, going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I used to play
accordion on the street, so that's my I don't know
what you just said, but I believe yeah, yeah, yeah.
It doesn't play every note in the scale. It plays
certain ones, and it's used much more in like creole
music and all of that kind of stuff as compared
to like French music, is like the bigger accordions.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
So his cousin teaches him guitar when there's still little kids,
and he is really good, and he sits by the
fire and he does it over and over and over
again until he gets it right. He loved dancing. He
would tap dance for the family. Soon enough, as a
young teen, he's getting asked to play all the local
parties and at the school and all that shit. So
(30:51):
he and his cousin, Edmund, the one who got him
into guitar, they're playing Saturday nights out in the town,
including at the white owned stores, and he starts bringing
in money for folks, which I think it's still possible
to make a living as a musician. But I don't
know if you knew this prop it's hard.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
It's yeah, man, it's news to me. Man. I was, yeah,
pretty crazy, man, I was really hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
I remember the first timesode I gave me money for
playing a show. I have been playing shows for like
ten years. Someone was like, here's forty bucks, and I
was like, holy shit.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
Wait what Yeah, he got in a drink ticket and
gas money. You're like, oh, you're paying me for yeah?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Wait it get to you to pay me for this.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, as far as I can tell before, recorded music
is everywhere actually a little easier. Yeah, Like you still
have to be fucking good and you still have to
work your ass off. But he's like fifteen and bringing
in money for his family. Yeah, but his cousin drops out.
His cousin is like, no, these parties are too wild.
I'm not into the drinking and cussin. I like church.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
And so he stopped playing out and he became a deacon.
Likely story, Harry Black story.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah, so Honey was on his own and he's traveling
around on his horse booker, and he kept his horse immaculate.
He would wash it down all the time. How glossy
his horse was. Yeah know like we've been we've been
cleaning our whibs.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
They was horse.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Yeah, you gotta keep it clean.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Baby, Yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
No.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Later he's like later in his life, he kind of
yells at a younger musician. He's like, why are you
playing dressed up? Like shit, you gotta wear a fucking suit.
You gotta come do take your suit jacket off when
you play. Oh man, you gotta come.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Is this not fair?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I'm turning red?
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Oh spooky like that. We've been cleaning our whips.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Yeah, baby, you know you got candy paint.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And you feel me.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
There's this Irish song, this Irish fucking rap band called
the Rubber Band.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
That's their joke. They're like a joke band.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
But their song is like I got a horse outside,
And it's like trying to pick up on a woman
by being like leaving her like I think her mom's
funeral and is like, no, I can't kick you in
a car, but I got my horse outside.
Speaker 4 (33:04):
The horse outside. Yeah, what's that band that goes right
itself in? In medieval times? They're like an uh Irish like
rap group. They're like, uh, I wrote the whipping in
medieval times. I signed up whipped bitch in the medieval times.
It's all in the medieval times. It's pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
anywhere you are.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So young. Ledbetter is not afraid of the rough and
tumble life. He is not like preferring church.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
He does.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Actually he goes to church, I think his whole fucking life.
But like this isn't like he doesn't mind he's playing
in brothels when he is fifteen years old. Yeah, and
his whole life. He particularly enjoys playing music for kids.
He is like both wholesome and rough in every measure,
and it's part of why he's so fascinating.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Love it.
Speaker 4 (33:49):
And also every all the great, all the best musicians
are at church, so like you got to go play there.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
No, And actually a lot of when they're later they're
collecting songs from people. A lot of people are like, no,
I'm not going to play secular music for you. Yeah,
like yeah, like no, we play religious music. That's like
it's weird. We played for church. We played for the church.
It's all yeah, parties called Suki Jumps paid him fifty
cents to play when he was fifteen, which is jumps.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
You're a suki jump, suki jem No, I've heard it
all Suki suki Now.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I heard that. I never heard of, right, suki.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Jump, So suki jarre so ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
I can't All right.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
This part is perfect. So first of all, fifty cents
is about seventeen bucks. Yeah, okay, so it's not paying him. Incredible,
but they're going to fifty so'll not getting paid. Okay,
all right, I never heard of a suki jump, so
I looked it up. Suki is old slang word for
an enslaved person, s uk e y ooh. So a
suki jump in the nineteenth century was a party by
and for the enslaved people. Okay, so it's entire thing
(34:48):
is this is the party for black people who are enslaved.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Now, I'm going to tell you something that is probably
not going to shock you. The twenty first century band
called the Suki Jump Band that I found while trying
to look up suki jumps is all white people. Of
course it is, Yeah, of course it is, at least
by looking at the photos. Yeah, one of them is
either not white or is just a white person dressed
up like free to Callo, But no one is black
(35:12):
in this picture, just.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Like freed To.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
It might actually be Freeda. She had a wild life anyway,
that's true.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
That's a good point. Yeah, no, yeah, But what you
might be surprised to know about the Suki Jump Band
is that the singer of the band is the actor
who played George g Stanza's fiance on Seinfeld, the woman
who dies from licking poles in the stamps.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
What wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Okay, okay, we got to draw the band string for us.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
Yeah, you're gonna have to do that, and then I'm
gonna need you to explain this to our mutual friend
Sarah Marshall, because that will blow her mind.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
It has been a million years since I watched Seinfeld.
There's this whole thing where George Castanza is like, I think,
dating a lesbian and then she dies off screen from
lick poisonous stamps and he like, I remember that, doesn't
really care. The actor who played that woman is a
folk musician who is the lead singer of the Suky
(36:09):
Chup Band.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
That is the motion.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Please tell Sarah about.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Just please, specifically a word for enslaved people having dances
like I'm not the first to cry appropriation. I do
believe on some level, culture blends and bleeds into each other.
But there's yeah, there's there's some borrowing, there's some fucking lines.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Yeah, yeah, there's some stuff that's like look, man, uh
I listen, listen. I live in I'm married a first
in Mexican woman, and I live in Nagelus. I live
in I grew up in a almost an entirely Latino
Mexican environment.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I feel like that's why you dress up as free
to CALLO.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Yes, I feel like I got a lot of passes,
and there are a lot of things that are okay,
like dressing up like free to call No. I'm just
like and even me with with biracial children, I just
feel like there's pot city these conversations I just shouldn't
be a part of. Yeah, And I'm like, I feel
like I understand, like I'll get into the Mexico El
(37:08):
Salvador thing like day little beef, especially when I'm like, Okay, well,
your borders were drawn by the cognizers, so don't understand
why y'all like each other.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
Right, totally.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
What that's none of my business.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Right, It's like you can like think about it and
read about it. Yeah, there's so many things I don't
need to have.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
A say in.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Just exactly. I was like, myless things, Yeah, I don't
need to have a saying this. Yeah, just like be
interested in is fine, yes, totally. You know, like you
should learn the difference to you know, why are the
borders were drawn at various times by who?
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Like right, like yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
So like when I like meet people who are like,
you know, African American versus Black, I'm thinking about like
two folks that I used to work with, two like
older black, an older Black man, an older African American man,
and both folk are strongly about these identities. Yeah, and
one was very in a Marcus Garvey and one was
very not in a Marcus garb. And I was like, man,
I want to hear both of your sides so badly.
And I have no fucking opinion. Yeah, I'm just curious.
(38:02):
I just wanted to hear you talk.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
You're both so smart. Yeah, and like, what do you
think kill joy doesn't matter at all? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah, exactly what I think. Yeah. It it opened my
eyes to how some people see Marcus Garvey in a
way that was useful for me. Yeah, you know, yeah,
but do you know what I do know absolutely nothing
about oh.
Speaker 3 (38:24):
Man whoever was about to advertise on his show. Yeah,
I have literally no idea, not a clue.
Speaker 6 (38:29):
Yeah, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yay.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
So he's a fifteen year old riding a horse around
in Texas, rural Texas at night by starlightes. So his
dad buys him a handgun. As you do and over
and over again, dad is like, you are not to
go looking for trouble, but if trouble finds you, be
ready there.
Speaker 4 (39:06):
It is advice. It's great dad advice. Yeah, fucking solid advice.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Yeah. Yeah, if you're carrying a gun, that has to
be why you're doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
And this actually goes fine for about ten years. This
wasn't a like and then he immediately ran off and
did crazy shit. He's going to be as several violent altercations,
to go to jail many times. Yeah, but he is
going to prove that he is not a hot headed man.
He does, however, from a pretty early age, make it
very clear that he's not very good at being faithful
to the women that he dates. He had two daughters
(39:37):
in short secession with one woman named Margaret, just as
he married another woman named Alifa. Like his first daughter
with Margaret was born six months after he married Alifa,
and his second daughter with Margaret was born about a
year after he was married.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
So got one night in town baby.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Yeah, but he didn't deny being the father of those children.
He actual he's going to have a bunch of kids
by a bunch of different, bunch of different women, and
he's never going to be a shitty dad about it.
Speaker 3 (40:06):
He's always going to like try and keep up with them.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, a lot of them take the name ledbetter even
though their parents aren't married to him, just because they're
like first of all, that name kind of goes hard. Yeah,
and it goes extra hard once your dad's fucking led belly.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
That's pretty dope. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
There's also a lot of evidence that overall, like the
women he's with like care about him, and he cares
about them.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
He's cheating on them, but like ya, we'll get to
it more later, Okay.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
He and Alifa wanted the big city life, not the
small town life. The couple moves to the Dallas area
and they worked as hired cotton pickers. They're not sharecropping,
and they're like daily they're like day labors, you know,
hourly labor, day labor. Yeah, and he sings to her
as they work, and this is also described as a
reasonably happy time in his life. He plays out every
(40:51):
chance he can. He tries to make it as a musician.
And it's there in Dallas that he learns the Mexican instrument,
the twelve string guitar. Whoa, that becomes his signature instrument.
Speaker 5 (41:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
He often played with Blind Lemon Jefferson, the father of
the Texas Blues, who played Hawaiian guitar aka and open
tune guitar played with a slide Yeah, usually a bottleneck
or actually usually a pocket knife. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
And then Huddy plays mandolin or accordion alongside.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Oh, they seem happy enough for a couple of them.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
From nineteen ten to nineteen fifteen, they make decent money.
They starts building an audience. Later, the white people who
discover him are going to be like, we pulled this
man out of nowhere. No one had heard of this,
like swamp creature we found.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
Yeah, this guy with a ten year music career. Yeah, Yeah,
he is packing shows.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, And there's always scales though, right, because there is
a difference between like even Tory nationally and suddenly being
like a fucking pop star, you know.
Speaker 4 (41:49):
Yeah, or just having like a local buzz where you
just play out of juke joints down here, versus like
you're an artist now. So yeah, there is fair enough,
but like, yeah, I'm only on your radar because.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
I was killing it where I was at No.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
And that's such a good point that it even just
goes to like when people are like, oh, you got lucky,
and you're like, yeah, by showing up to work every
single day for ten years, yeah, eventually someone noticed me. Yeah,
totally don't get noticed unless you show up and play shows.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
For the last ten years. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (42:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
So he's twenty six years old in nineteen fifteen and
he has his first serious run in with the law,
and it's going to tie into both white supremacy and
self defense.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
This is going to be a continuing pattern. Great.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
He and Aalitha went home that year for the fiftieth Juneteenth.
It had been fifty years since the text.
Speaker 3 (42:36):
And slaves were freed. What a thought.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
A few days before the celebrations, Huddy goes to go
play a party somewhere along the way, like somewhere along
the road at night. He gets into a fight and
he shoots and injures another black man. And there's no
particular evidence about how exactly this went down. The only
people who even said, like, this is what happened are
the people who are exploiting him or trying to build
(42:58):
up the.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Story about him.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Yeah, the myth making is that it was a fight
over a woman, because Huddy is a horrible flanderer.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
He's a little bit of a flanderer.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, but also it might have been self defense, even
in that particular case. I do know that he carried
a pistol for eleven years before he ever fired it
in a way that brought police attention. So I don't
think he was reckless. Yeah, he drank and he gambled,
it probably wasn't reckless. He's brought up on charges. His
parents hire two white lawyers to defend him. No, which
(43:28):
is not easy. They sign over they have sixty eight
and a half acres, They sign over thirty fucking acres dail,
which is like just loving parents, you know.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Yeah, because it's like it's not like they have cash,
you know what I'm saying. Yeah, but like exactly, you
got land and then right, yeah, when these two white
lawyers are and even if, even if you give them
the most kindest read of them, even if I were
to do this for free, yeah, I am ending my
law career by showing up up defending this black man.
(44:01):
So yeah, I mean I might not be able to
spore myself for the rest of my life. So like,
is there something y'all could do?
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Well?
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Maybe, I think in this case, because it's it's it's
black on black crimes, I'll get to air quots. I
believe that these people are part of a white spres
and take land away from black people. But later he
actually is going to get defended I think pro bono
by just like straight up well meaning white people who
I think maybe like his music. Okay, but that's decades late.
Now what's happening right now?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 2 (44:29):
Yeah, Actually later a man like drops out of grad
school to raise money for his defense.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Later like he fucking rips man way later.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
Yeah, and his parents might have thought they were just
staking half their farm, not signing it over completely. Oh no,
but now that they have Okay, So now they have
white lawyers, and the charges mysteriously got dropped. They didn't
even have to the whitelayers didn't have to show up
in court. They just fucking magic network that bullshit, right,
But instead he gets charged with carrying a pistol and
(45:02):
it is either from this, I believe it's two charges
in like three weeks. It's both the self defense carrying
a pistol and later a walking while black. Yeah, and
because it was illegal at the time in Texas to
walk around carrying a pistol, and all white men did
it all of the time and no one stopped them.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
One of the most fun things fun gets quotes here.
One of the most fun things about America is it's
so racist that both gun control and pro gun lobbies
they just both come from racism.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
It's so bizarre. Yeah, it's like, man, nothing will make
y'all happy.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
Yeah, yeah, oh totally.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
They're like the state wants certain people to be armed
and able to commit extra judicial violence, and it wants
other people disarmed, and so you make laws and then
you selectively enforce them, and that's how you can do that.
And that still happens today. Recently, the ATF announced that
it's pistol brace rule. There's this thing where like, if
you have an AR fifteen, this is going to be
totally in the weeds. Let's go, gi have an AAR
(46:00):
fifteen and you put a regular it can be technically
a pistol, or it could be technically a rifle, but
it's illegal if it's short and a rifle that's a
short barreled rifle. Yeah, and so a stock versus a
brace is what sets this apart.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And the ATF said the a fucking couple of weeks ago, like, well,
we're just going to if you get arrested for something else,
take a closer look at your guns and then decide
whether or not it's a fucking short barreled rifle to
charge you. So they're just blatantly saying opinion, if you
if you ain't got nothing to hide, it's.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Not a problem. Yeah, we'll decide if you committed a crime.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:40):
Day and again you wonder why we don't trust the system,
It's like you're making it up as you go along.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
That's why. That's why I don't trust Yeah, yeah, why I'm.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
Really fucking careful about gun laws, like I don't. There's
no gray area that I feel is safe for me
to be in, you know, like, and so it's completely possible.
One history and I read conjectures that this whole thing
was orchestrated to get this land into the hands of
white oil prospectors, because that's what fucking happened. Yeah. In
(47:13):
one of the other episodes I've done a while ago,
I talk about the like numbers. The black ownership of
land in the South at the end of the nineteenth
century versus thirty years later is dramatic because the hardest
people to disenfranchise during Jim Crow were the landowners. Congratulations,
Leoy Supremase succeeded at that. Finally, you know, they figured
it out. Yeah, and so oil prospectors get the thirty acres. Meanwhile,
(47:38):
Hotey gets himself thirty days on a chain gang, plus
extra at least five months to pay off his fines
of fifty cents a day. We actually don't know how
long he was supposed to be in jail, because this man.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
Did not stay in jail. Let's go, I'm out cuz.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah, just to reverence my granddad, the hobo again, my
granddad also was on a chain gang for a while
because he was stealing a car and he refused to
snitch out the people he stole the car with.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Yeah, let's go Grandpops. Yeah, hey, pop Pop, what'd you
do when I was a.
Speaker 3 (48:09):
Stole a car, didn't snitch?
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Yeah? And then he fought in World War two and
worked for the government. But like before that.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
Yeah, before then, I was pretty badass. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
The rest of my family is confused that the part
that I'm really interested in is the hobo stories. Yeah yeah, yeah,
like no, I wrote trains, I want to fucking Yeah.
And so he gets sent out. They give him some
unknown length of time. Officials are getting paid out in
a cash for convicts kind of program. Chain gangs provide
cheap labor for various private interests. Yea, four months into
(48:42):
his one month sentence, he decides he's been in jail
long enough. He and his fellow convicts they're in these
like prison wagons, these wooden wagons that take them around
to do work on the chain gang. And so like
even like Sundays they're like day off, they're just like
in cages by the side of the fucking road, you know. Yeah,
And so he and his fellow convicts start a fire
(49:03):
and burn a hole in the floor of the jail wagon.
Cut yeah, and they all get off and movie. Unlike
almost every other story about jail breaks that I've ever read,
including some of his later jail breaks, this is not
the only time he's going to break out of jail.
He succeeds so crazy, he never does the rest of
that sentence. So crazy he goes. And he also doesn't
(49:24):
have to hide like a lot of times now, if
you break out of jail, they catch you because you
go home to your family, right, Yeah, but it's old
timey times.
Speaker 3 (49:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
So he and Alitha, his wife, fuck off up north
and they change their name to mister and Ms Walter
boyd Yes, and they moved to another black community up
near the Oklahoma border. The pair of them sharecropped, and
he broke wild horses. He played his twelve string guitar
for everybody all the time. Some of his young nieces
and nephews came to live with him because his family's
(49:52):
having a rough time because they just lost a lot
of their land and everything's going badly.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
And then a year into his new life, he killed
a man.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Oh so there's that.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah, yeah, I was about to make a joke about Okay, nephew,
now when you come up here, my name is BOYD now.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Yeah yeah yeah yeah, boy yeah yeah No, it's that's
not what got him in trouble. It was definitely shooting
a guy that got him in trouble. He killed a guy,
He shot and killed his distant cousin's husband. The most
likely story is that the two men were arguing. The
story that's completely possible, but is the story that's played
up is that the guy was like, you slept with
(50:31):
my wife and then attacked him, and then he shot
him in self defense, possibly with that guy's own gun,
or they were gambling and arguing about money. There are
witnesses that say it was self defense because the guy
pulled a gun on him, But self defense doesn't get
black men, even black men accused of killing black men
(50:51):
out of jail, because there's no profit in not convicting
a black man where there's lots of profit, and convicting
a black man too was con.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
And sends to twenty years bail.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
And just because I love the name Margaret, the wife
in question was named Peggy, which means her name was
probably Margaret, but her she went by pig. Yeah, that's precious,
which is a whole new nickname for Margaret I've never
heard before.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
Cute.
Speaker 3 (51:15):
That's amazing, Yeah, yeah, cute.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
So he had lawyers, and this time he had white
lawyers working pro bono and no one seems quite sure why.
But he gets convicted and he goes to jail and
his lawyers are trying to get him retried because it's
pretty obviously self defense, but he doesn't like being in jail.
So anywait, no, when the jailer comes into the cell
one day, one of the inmates, there's like four of them.
(51:41):
You break got her jail again?
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Huh yeah, no, totally yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:45):
After a couple of weeks, How fast is this dude?
This time one inmate jumps out of a pile of
laundry and overpowers the guard and steals his gun and.
Speaker 3 (51:56):
Then they run for it. This is amazing.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
It didn't go as well this time, for actually one
of them might have gotten away, but one of them
was shot and killed in the escape attempt, and Huddy
was caught a.
Speaker 3 (52:06):
Few miles away. He was unarmed.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
One escape he might have made it, so he was
found guilty for the attempted murder of the prison guard,
and he was going to be in prison. Both sentences
were not running but at the same time. Yeah, they
were running consecutively. Instead he had one then the other.
It was going to be in prison for seven to
thirty years. Who while he was in prison, another child
he'd had with someone else who wasn't his wife, was born.
(52:31):
Had a kid what whatever the right way the grammar
of that sentence. He had a kid with somebody. He
likely never got to know about this kid. He was
in jail for a while. Alitha, for her part, I
think she's done with him. I feel like at this
point and she becomes a preacher. Of course she does. Yes, yes, no,
(52:53):
she tied. Ah, he's you know, I'm gonna give my
life to Jesus. I was outside, Yeah, cussing and fussing.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
I don't know if they ever got divorced, maybe they
just stopped being married. But that's where we're gonna leave it.
Now he's in prison for a second time. He's he's
not gonna stay there. He's gonna become incredibly famous. The
people who are gonna help make him famous are gonna
treat him like absolute fucking garbage, and then he's gonna
fuck well, I don't want to spoil.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
All of you, don't ruin it.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Yeah, but he's gonna do some awesome fucking cool stuff,
including apparently be faithful. I'm quite happy with his second
wife to the end of his days.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Ah, And so neither first recorded Wolkester.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
Stay Woke. No, you can hear the recording too, it's
on YouTube. It's it's one of him many times he
sings Scottsboro Boys. Yeah, anyway, what do you think about
old Ladbelly so far?
Speaker 4 (53:47):
Man, He's not a cool person yet, He's just a
regular dude who has lived some really dope adventures.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (53:53):
But like, knowing where this goes is just like I
didn't I've obviously I had no idea at his backstory.
Speaker 3 (54:01):
I just knew his contributions. But this is so fun,
Like I've been smiling the whole time.
Speaker 2 (54:08):
Well, one of the things that I like about him,
he's a regular dude, Yeah, who made amazing contributions, who
had crazy adventures. Yeah, who like did some fucked up
stuff and did some really fucking cool stuff, And like
it makes them more real.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
I love it.
Speaker 4 (54:23):
Yeah, it makes the music makes so much more sense too,
where you're just like, yeah, yeah, bro, like he look
came into town.
Speaker 3 (54:30):
Playing his twelve string.
Speaker 4 (54:31):
He out there up there being fine as hell, and yeah,
bagged him with chick that night. He just happened to
get it pregnant and he's like, yeah, well, I mean
I made another kid today, So yeah, all right, I
mean it is what it is, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (54:45):
Yeah, and as funny is, he's still like not rock
star level.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
Oh, he's just like, you know, like there's there's such
thing as like like black Hollywood, like you black famous
like that. Yeah, everybody don't You're not a megastar like
the world don't know, but like we mess with you, you know.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
Yeah yeah yeah. Well if people want to hear your
music or maybe your podcast, other ways that they can
do it.
Speaker 4 (55:08):
Yeah, the politics prop I'm on the same network with
these wonderful humans right here, proptpop dot Com. A lot
of new music rolling out, man, I'm actually really excited
about the new stuff.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
Check this out.
Speaker 4 (55:20):
Actually this is something to promote I am going to
somehow I got involved in improv.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
I don't know how this happened.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
I'm so sorry. Huh and uh.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
But the show got invited to the Fringe Festival. If
you're the Fringe.
Speaker 3 (55:33):
No, I never heard of it, but it's.
Speaker 2 (55:35):
I think I've heard the name, so it must be big.
If I have heard, it's pretty big.
Speaker 4 (55:38):
It's in Scotland, in Edinburgh and it's like kind of
a thing. So anyway, the people putting it together put
together like a seed and spark to like support it
because this ain't like paid gig, you know what I'm saying,
which was weird to me because I was like, oh, yeah,
it's cool go to the festival.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
But yeah, yeah, hit me up and they're like, oh no,
you have to. You have to pay your way there, and.
Speaker 4 (56:02):
I was like, oh shit, I don't know really, So
then I told some people and they were like, no,
you got to figure out how to Apparently mister Bean
the first sight all right, he's yep, his first showing
was at Fringe. Yeah, and then got the show, so
it's like, okay, so you gotta go, you gotta go
do it.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Jamie performed at the Fringe Festival.
Speaker 4 (56:21):
Oh yeah, see so shit, yeah it's a thing. So
now I'm going, but like y'all want to support to boy.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, they should talk to Jamie about it.
Speaker 2 (56:29):
Okay, No, it makes sense that there's like there's certain
things where you're like, you want me to do what
you're gonna pay me if I'm going to do that,
and then every now and then you're like, I will
do that for exposure.
Speaker 3 (56:38):
Yeah, because it's a fucking lot of exposure.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
It's kind of dope, Like, yeah, this is kind of dope.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
Yeah. So yeah, sports A Boy, that's some of my websites.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
You're going to practicup perform every night.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
Fifteen seventeen days and fifteen shows. Yeah, every other night
or every night everybody too, So it's like it's going down. Yeah,
I basically freestyle a spoken word.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Jimmy did boss whum his girl at that friend festival
like several years ago.
Speaker 3 (57:01):
Dude, I'll ask her, Yeah, I talked to her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Well, people should listen to Politics a Prop. It is
one of the best shows about just actually breaking down
what's fucking happening in the world, Like like, if you
ever are like I'm confused about what all this fucking
shit means. I just listened to Politics a Prop. That
sounds like I'm doing an ad read. I just literally
do that. That is a thing that I do.
Speaker 3 (57:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:22):
I listen to a lot of podcasts, and so I
have visual memories of where Yeah, like ah, I learned
that thing, well, hanging curtains, yeah, or like whatever the
fucking thing is, Like, ah, walk in the dog, That's
where I learned about this thing. So cool people should.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Listen to that man and thank you.
Speaker 2 (57:38):
Yeah people should listen to this show on Wednesday when
we come back for part two. Whoo, I just want
to pop in real quick from the future and say,
I can't believe I forgot to kind of more specifically
and directly point out the person and the book that
helped bring all of this information to light. It's right
(57:59):
there in the title. It's called Bring Judgment Day. Reclaiming
Leadbelly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies by Sheila Kuran Bernard.
Speaker 5 (58:13):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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