Please, Gov'ner Neff, be good an' kind, An' if I can't get a pardon, will you cut
my time? If I had you, Gov'ner Neff, like you got
me, I would wake up in the mornin' and set
you free.
This plea, crooned in a soft baritone over the twanging of a cracked and patched guitar, once swayed Texas' Governor Pat Morris Neff into granting a pardon to the coal-black, swampland Negro who sang it. The Negro, Huddie ("Lead Belly") Ledbetter, self-styled "King of de twelve-string guitar players of de worl'," had been sentenced seven...
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