Tom Waits, the gravel-voiced poet laureate of the late-night and the downtrodden, has often tipped his hat to the musical giants who paved the way for his unique sound. Among these titans, Leadbelly, the legendary blues and folk musician, holds a special place. During interviews for his album Mule Variations, Waits repeatedly cited Leadbelly, revealing the deep influence the “King of the Twelve-String Guitar” had on his songwriting, even pointing to at least three songs on the album with Leadbelly origins.
One such track, the gritty blues number “Lowside of the Road,” was directly linked to a Leadbelly anecdote. Waits recounted a story of Leadbelly’s run-in with the law after a dance, stating, “Leadbelly was involved in a skirmish after a dance one night on a dirt road, late. Someone pulled out a knife, someone got stabbed, and he went to jail for it. He was rolling over to the low side of the road. I seem to identify with that. I think we all know where the low side of the road is.” This connection highlights Waits’s affinity for Leadbelly’s raw, real-life storytelling and his ability to find poetry in the darker corners of life.
Even the tender ballad “Picture in a Frame” drew inspiration from Leadbelly’s musical approach. Waits explained, “Sometimes I listen to Blind Lemon Jefferson or Leadbelly, and you’ll just hear a line or a passing phrase. The way they phrase something sounds like the beginning of another whole thing, and they just use it as a passing thought, kind of a transitory moment in the song. But it sounds to me like it could have opened up into another whole thing. I heard that title, ‘Picture in a Frame,’ in another song. I don’t even remember what the song was now. And I thought, that’s a good title for a song.” This illustrates how Waits gleaned inspiration from the fleeting moments and understated brilliance within Leadbelly’s vast catalog.
And then there’s “Cold Water,” the song that directly invokes the spirit of Leadbelly’s rhythmic and repetitive style. Waits expressed his admiration for Leadbelly’s prolific nature and his approach to recording, “I marvel at Leadbelly, who just seems to be a fountain of music. When he started working with Mose Ash, he told Huddie he wanted to record anything—nursery rhymes you remember, whatever. He said, get up and tapdance, and we’ll put a microphone on the floor, and we’ll put that on the record. And play a squeezebox, or tell a story about your grandmother. They were like concept albums. They’re kind of like photo albums, with pictures of you when you’re a kid.”
Waits further elaborated on how Leadbelly’s songs unfolded, emphasizing the seamless transition between storytelling and song. He noted, “I love the way the songs unfolded, the way he would go from telling a story about the song right into the song, and there wasn’t even a bump in the road when he started singing. He could have just talked for another three minutes, and that would have been fine, too.” This admiration extends to Leadbelly’s use of repetition, a hallmark of folk traditions, as Waits points out, “A lot of the litany in his songs were—well, he’d have a lot of repeats. ‘Woke up this morning with cold water, woke up this morning with cold water. . .’ It’s a form. They’re like jump-rope songs, or field hollers.” This “cold water” repetition, a simple yet powerful lyrical motif, resonated with Waits and likely influenced his own songwriting sensibilities, even if not directly resulting in a song explicitly titled “Cold Water Song.”
Waits’s appreciation for Leadbelly is well-documented. He’s covered Leadbelly’s classics like “Goodnight Irene” and “Ain’t Goin’ Down to the Well,” and even borrowed the title “Fannin Street” from another Leadbelly tune. He famously quipped, “I was born the day after Leadbelly died. I’d like to think we passed in the hall,” underscoring a sense of musical lineage and spiritual connection.
Interestingly, Waits was once slated to participate in a Leadbelly tribute record, an opportunity that unfortunately dissolved due to rights issues. As Waits recounted in 2006, the project involved “one of [Leadbelly’s] distant relatives [who] had his guitar, that had been beneath her bed for the last fifty years or whatever, and she was gonna let everybody on the record play his guitar and do a song.” However, clearance from Alan Lomax, who held the rights to Leadbelly’s recorded catalog, couldn’t be secured, and the tribute album remained unrealized.
Perhaps the most humorous anecdote illustrating Leadbelly’s enduring presence in Waits’s life comes from a 2004 interview. When asked about his then-18-year-old son Casey’s musical contributions to the Real Gone album, Waits explained how Casey’s taste in rap music, artists like Sage Francis, Atmosphere, and KRS-One, had infiltrated their household. He joked, “All that stuff gets played around the house because that’s what happens when you have kids. You stop dominating the turntable. I haven’t had that kind of sway around here for years. ‘Put on that Leadbelly record one more time, Dad, and I’m going to throw a bottle at your head.'” This playful image encapsulates the generational shift in musical tastes, yet also subtly reinforces Leadbelly’s continued, if occasionally contested, presence in the Waits household and, more importantly, in Tom Waits’s own musical DNA.
