Living in the Country - Part II: Pete Seeger’s 1959 Tribute to Lead Belly

After years of searching, I found Pete Seeger’s 1959 tribute to Lead Belly, a unique rendition of Pete’s well-known 12‑string guitar instrumental, Living in the Country.

Pete introduces Track 4, I Knew Leadbelly, as follows:

This friend of mine, who died just ten years ago this December, was during his life very little known outside of a narrow circle of people who loved his music. His music never got on the hit parade, until after he died. Six months after he died, his song, Goodnight Irene, sold about two million copies. Huddie Ledbetter didn’t play very fancy guitar, but what he played was so powerful, he couldn’t help but impress people; very straightforward.

What follows is a one-minute Lead-Belly-like instrumental that gracefully transitions into a 1¾ minute version of Living in the Country as I heard it for the first time in the ’60s. For that story, click here.

Pete Seeger in England is a 2016 re‑release by Fellside Recordings of two previous albums, Pete Seeger in Concert Vols. 1 & 2, recorded October 4, 1959 at the St. Pancras Town Hall, London, and a recording made of his concert in February 1964, at Free Trade Hall, Manchester. The recording is also available on Amazon. You can hear the beginning of the track on Amazon's UK website, here: I Knew Leadbelly.

Here is the description of Pete Seeger in England provided by Fellside Recordings:

The legendary American Folk singer’s career had been seriously knocked off course by the McCarthy witch-hunts into Unamerican Activities in the USA affecting artists believed to be communists. At one stage Seeger was facing a ten year prison sentence, but he managed to visit the UK in 1958. The concert was recorded and issued by the Folklore label which emanated out of the Dobell’s record shop on Charing Cross road in West London. In 1964 he was back again and at one concert, at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, he was recorded again.

Both concerts on this DOUBLE CD FOR THE PRICE OF ONE set are typical Seeger material of that time. He talks about his friends Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie and champions new songwriters like Tom Paxton and Malvina Reynolds. The concerts also give a wonderful insight to how Seeger worked an audience and had them eating out of his hand. His ability to engage the audience is an object lesson for young performers. The Folklore LPs had limited circulation and the Manchester concert has never been heard before. The booklet comes with an informative essay about Pete Seeger by Joe Stead.

Update: 9 August 2026 

Here is another recording on Folkways FA 2439, Nonesuch and Other Folk Tunes by Pete Seeger and Frank Hamilton, where it's entitled "Singing in the Country." In an interview with Pete Seeger in the July 2002 issue of Acoustic Guitar, reprinted here, Pete refers to this version and says,

And, as of last month I have put, of all things, words to it—not to my tune, but to what Frank Hamilton improvised. We made a Folkways record years ago called Nonesuch, and on a steel-string guitar, he played three notes above the melody of “Living in the Country,” and it was a melody all on its own. So I am now sending this to my long-suffering publisher and saying melody by Frank Hamilton, words by Pete Seeger. [Sings] “If you would be patient and teach me I think that I could learn to dance.” It’s the best love song I’ve ever written. I wrote those words ten years ago, but I couldn’t figure what to make of the rest of it until just three weeks ago.

So, there's a reference to the words for this well-known 12-string guitar instrumental. But I still can't find it!

P.S. I should note that "Living in the Country" is likely a reference to a line from Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene:"

Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in the town
Sometimes I have a great notion
To jump in the river and drown.

Living in the Country - Part I

Every time I heard Living in the Country I said to myself, I must dig out that unique recording I have of Living in the Country, the one with that powerful, rhythmic, bluesy introduction that dramatically shifts into the light-aired melody everyone is familiar with. The one that Pete Seeger attributed to Huddie Ledbetter, that I recorded off the WQXR radio show, Folk Music of the World, programmed by Robert Sherman, in the late 1960s. It was the first time I heard it, and it became my aspiration, my obsession. I had to learn how to play it on the guitar. I even bought a 12-string. I listened to that tape repeatedly in high school and college, and then stored it away. And although I have heard many performances and recordings of Living in the Country by many artists, none of them approach that first one I heard by Pete Seeger. And although I said many times I should retrieve that tape, I never found the time.


A few years ago, my sister asked if I wanted my father’s old Wollensak 7" reel-to-reel tape recorder. I said yes, anticipating that I would use it to play back that old recording. After all, it was the machine I had used to record that radio show in the first place. But the old Wollensak just laid there, gathering dust. I didn't even know if it still worked.

When Pete Seeger died I could put it off no longer.  I looked for those old 7" reel-to-reel tapes – in my old storage crate in the attic, in my cartons of old books, in my box of high-school treasures. Not there. I gave up. And then, days later,  I spotted them on the book shelf above my desk. I had retrieved them some years ago and placed them there – so they would be handy.

I opened the old Wollensak and cleaned off four decades of grime, only to find there was no take-up reel.  It took me a few days before I set about finding one on eBay: $3.00 (plus $5.94 for shipping) from a seller in Orlando, Florida. Then I had to wait several days for the auction to close, and more until finally the package arrived. But I had found not one but two of my old 7" reel-to-reel tapes and it would likely take hours to find that particular recording. I was too busy. 

I don't know what inspired me today to drop everything and listen to those recordings. And I got lucky – Living in the Country was one of the first recordings on the first side of the first reel. I was pleased.

I retrieved my bag of audio cables and adapters from the basement, a carry over from my college days when I thought myself knowledgeable in such matters. I connected the Wollensak's outputs to my computer's inputs in every conceivable configuration, to no avail. Audacity recorded hums and buzzes. Watching the afternoon tick by, I gave up and held a microphone in front of the Wollensak, a reversal of the process I had used to record the radio show (using a microphone in front of the radio speaker) some 45 years ago.

The quality of the recording is poor, but still conveys the essence of this unique arrangement.

The host of the radio show provides a brief introduction to these two versions of Living in the Country.  The first version is from a London recording made in 1959. I searched the web but was unable to find a better quality version. (See update below).  It starts with Pete Seeger talking about Huddie Ledbetter and he seems to attribute Living in the Country to him. Indeed, “Living in the Country” is likely a reference to "Goodnight Irene," Lead Belly's #1 hit song of 1950, that has the line, "“Sometimes I live in the country/ Sometimes I live in the town/ Sometimes I have the great notion/ Of jumpin’ into the river and drown.“  It is unlike any other recording of Living in the Country, starting with a powerful, rhythmic, blues section that breaks into the lighter melody with which we are so familiar. The second version is the well-known “whistling” version that appears in numerous recordings by Pete Seeger and other artists.

You can listen to my recording of Living in the Country from the Folk Music of the World radio show here.

But that's not quite the end of the story. You see, I've been trying to find the lyrics to Living in the Country for as long as I've been trying to play it on the 12-string. I thought I saw the lyrics printed in an issue of Sing Out! magazine, but the lyrics did not turn up in a search of it's archives. To the best of my recollection, here they are.

Living in the Country

I'm living way out in the country
I rarely come into the town.
It's always so lovely, delightful,
I wish that you would come around.

Oh, please, won't you come away with me.
We'd be so happy living in the country.

Work all day,
Laugh and play,
Sing this song to you.

Perhaps I will retrieve my old 12-string from the attic.

Update June 19, 2019

I recently found Pete Seegers 1959 recording, I Knew Leadbelly which was recently re-released, as described here.