Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter

Ledbetter's fame was made far from Caddo Parish. After the Lomaxes recorded him at Angola, he reached New York on December 31, 1934, and in the 1940s he recorded for RCA Victor, Asch and Capitol. In 1950 the Weavers took his arrangement of Goodnight Irene to number one, the first folk song to get there, with about two million copies sold. He died of ALS in New York on December 6, 1949, and was buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church cemetery at Mooringsport. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1988.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum — 1.6 mi
  The state's first public petroleum museum in Oil City, on the 1905 Caddo Parish strike and the 1911 over-water well on Caddo Lake, with a derrick and a log-jam exhibit.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 12 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 19 mi
  An 1887 brick pumping station on McNeill Street where Worthington steam pumps ran until 1980, now a free museum and a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Caddo Lake — steps away
• First Over Water Oil Well — steps away
• Trees City Office & Bank — 0.9 mi
• Oil City — 1.1 mi