The Lead Belly Songbook - Lead Belly, no stranger to the blues

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National Defense Blues

Click here to listen to Real Audio Format 28.8 modem

This is a good song to learn about the walking bass rhythm. There is no swing time in this song, it is played straight. The song is in the C position. Lead Belly never plays an obvious chord pattern, but rather plays the walking bass throughout the entire song. For the beginner, it can be difficult to play the bass rhythm and simultaneously find the rhythm for the sung lyrics. It may help to just stop moving the thumb (playing the bass notes) when beginning the melody phrases, then resuming the bass run as the melody develops.

Lead Belly wrote the song in response to someone whose wife had left him after she started making money working for the defense industry during World War II. I think that it is interesting that for nearly thirty years after the end of W.W.II, women did not have easy access to high paying jobs. After the war, most men did not expect women to work outside the home. The theme of the song reflects a man's attitude toward women gaining new found money and freedom, and tangentially, a woman's attitude toward life after finding good paying work.

Click here to listen to Lead Belly sing National Defense Blues.   This is in RealAudio G2 format only.