ABSTRACT
Two movies about American folk musicians were released in 1976: Leadbelly and Bound for Glory. While both Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie made a name for themselves in the same folk music scene during the 1930s and 1940s, the legacy of their lives, music, and experiences were marketed to the public in drastically different ways. Clearly, Paramount Pictures, in its half-hearted marketing push, targeted a black audience in the release of Leadbelly and sought to associate Lead Belly's story with the popular blaxploitation film genre that emerged in the 1970s. Lead Belly's bad man outlaw persona attracted the curiosity of white, mainstream culture rather than serving as a figure of black protest. Lead Belly's singing his way to a pardon perfectly exemplifies a performative utterance in speech-act theory in that his pardon song had force enough to effect a result.
