Lead Belly - 'Irene (Goodnight Irene)' [Official Audio]

Listen to the official audio for Lead Belly's "Irene (Goodnight Irene)" from the 2015 box set 'Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection.'

'Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection' available on CD Box Set and Digital.

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'Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection,' the first career-spanning box set dedicated to the American music icon, is a 5 CD, 140-page, large-format book featuring 5 hours of music with 16 unreleased tracks. Lead Belly is “the hard name of a harder man,” said Woody Guthrie of his friend and fellow American music icon who was born Huddie Ledbetter (c. 1888–1949). From the swamplands of Louisiana, the prisons of Texas, and the streets of New York City, Lead Belly and his music became cornerstones of American folk music and touchstones of African American cultural legacy.

With his 12-string Stella guitar, he sang out a cornucopia of songs that included his classics “The Midnight Special,” “Irene,” “The Bourgeois Blues,” and many more, which in turn have been covered by musical notables such as the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Van Morrison, Nirvana, Odetta, Little Richard, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and Tom Waits. 'Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection' brings us the story of the man as well as the musician.

[IreneMerchant]

Irene is my name. And I just love this song.

[pdcvbwh]

Lovely 💕💕💕 ... My aunt Irene and uncle John Henry loved this song. ... Those were kinder times than today 😢😮

[jodav]

Omg my grandfather sang this to my grandmother 😢

[psawbrid]

Goddamn we were lucky to have leadbelly and lomax who preserved his greatness for posterity. he could have been lost in the sands of time. And thank god for Kurt Cobain, while we're at it, who introduced leadbelly to literally millions of kids (including me).

[rustyshackleford]

Happy Birthday Lead Belly 🖤
(1/20/2020)

[thomasoneill]

Seemingly hé wrote midnight spécial
In the pénitentiairy thé governor liked thé songs so much hé pardoee
Pardoned him.

[michaelcooper]

original to say the least. gotta love the classics.

[martinelbourne-ct]

song now mostly remembered by bristol rovers fans for nearly seventy years been the club song
if you are interested b/c radio 5 did great programme about the history of this today

[etheangel]

Wow Ive never heard this version before. Who is that on the harp?

[rochas]

Is it true that he kill 2 at a bar fight?

[petermateer]

Doesn't translate to m4a well. The high end is all crackly little squares n diamonds. Best heard on vinyl.