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Leadbelly (1976) opens with Huddie ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter (Roger E. Mosley) as an old man in prison. By “old” I mean they dyed Mosley’s hair and eyebrows gray, and even “dyed” might be an overstatement. Ledbetter is shirtless when we first meet him, so we can see he’s actually a strapping middle-age man. Perhaps that stuff on his hair is just dust from breaking rocks all day. Ethnomusicologists John and Alan Lomax come to record Ledbetter playing guitar and singing for the Library of Congress. Ledbetter proceeds to narrate the film in a long flashback. Dude, they asked you for a song, not y…
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