Topic: Ledbetter in Wilton, Conn,

[frailer24]

I second Stooge's post!

[Mr.OMuck]

Eric Von Schmidt of the Green pastures of Harvard university, whose first Prestige album is prominently featured on the cover of The Mighty Bob's Highway 61 Revisited, and Folk Era album, and poster art illustrator extraordinaire, grew up in Connecticut. He relates (somewhere, positively 4th st. maybe?) the story of hearing Leadbelly on the radio late at night thus blowing his mind and setting him on the Blues path. He discovered later to his sorrow that that same Leadbelly lived just down the road somewhere at the same time he did, and he might have had an opportunity to meet his hero.

[wreid75]

"He discovered later to his sorrow that that same Leadbelly lived just down the road somewhere at the same time he did, and he might have had an opportunity to meet his hero."

That is none of the saddest things I have heard in a while

[RB]

Well, von Schmidt--I see by looking it up--was born in 1931 and lived in Westport. Connecticut, which is not far from Wilton.  When Ledbetter was there that famous time, 1934, von Schmidt was two or three years old.  That doesn't mean that von Schmidt didn't feel at connection, I'd guess he did.

When I was in Ledbetter's home town of Mooringsport, La, in August, 1971, a rural store owner asked me--when I asked about Ledbetter--if I 'was a friend of his.' No, I said, he died ten days before I was born.   I felt a connection anyhow, maybe even more so.

Wilton and Westport were then artsy places for New Yorkers.