Leadbelly Birthplace — Mooringsport, Louisiana

Huddie William Ledbetter — Leadbelly — was born on 20 January 1889 on a plantation near Mooringsport in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, close to the Texas border. He grew up in the rural South in the sharecropping era, learning guitar, twelve-string guitar, accordion, and mandolin, and absorbing the field hollers, blues, and work songs of the African American community in the Red River country. His extraordinary twelve-string guitar playing and his vast repertoire of songs — blues, prison songs, folk songs, children's songs, pop standards — made him one of the most important figures in American music, though his turbulent life ensured that recognition came slowly and incompletely.

Leadbelly was imprisoned twice for violent crimes — in Texas in 1918 and in Louisiana in 1930 — and it was in Angola Prison in Louisiana that he was discovered by musicologists John and Alan Lomax, who were conducting field recordings for the Library of Congress. The Lomaxes arranged for his release and brought him to New York, where he performed for audiences unfamiliar with the folk and blues tradition. His repertoire included songs that became standards of the folk revival: 'Midnight Special', 'Goodnight Irene', 'Black Betty', 'Gallows Pole', and 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night?' — the last of which became famous again through Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance.

Mooringsport is a small community in the Louisiana-Texas border region. There is no major heritage attraction at Leadbelly's birthplace, though a historical marker acknowledges his birth in the area. The Shreveport area, nearby, has documented connections to his early life and career. The Library of Congress holds the field recordings that the Lomaxes made of Leadbelly and that remain among the most important documents of American folk music.