Lesley Riddle worked many odd jobs: he pressed clothes, mixed cement, shined shoes, even preached the Gospel. He never became a professional musician; however, it is his contribution to country music for which he is most remembered. Riddle spent much of his childhood with his paternal grandparents near Kingsport, Tennessee. After a cement factory accident robbed him of his right leg, Riddle became greatly interested in the guitar and mandolin. He was soon a regular in the area African-American musical scene, which included Steve Tarter, Brownie McGhee and John Henry Lyons. It was Lyons who introduced Riddle to A.P. Carter in 1927. Riddle became fast friends with the Carter Family, staying with them at their home in Maces Springs, Virginia, for weeks at a time and accompanying A.P. on song collecting trips throughout East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. Maybelle Carter credited Riddle with teaching her the "bottleneck" style of guitar picking, in which the index finger plays the melody while the thumb keeps the rhythm on the bass strings. Riddle taught the Carter Family such songs as "The Cannon Ball," "1 Know What It Means To Be Lonesome," and "Let the Church Roll On." In 1942, Riddle and his wife moved to Rochester, N.Y., and lost touch with both the Carter Family and music. He had sold his guitar in 1945. After meeting Mike Seeger in the mid-1960's, Riddle began performing once again after his wife's death in 1976. He appeared at such venues as the Smithsonian Folk Festival and the Mariposa Folk Festival, as well as the Carter Family Fold before he passed away in 1980.
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Lesley "Esley" Riddle (b. June 13, 1905 in Burnsville, NC, d. July 13, 1980 in Asheville, NC) was an African American musician whose influence on the Carter Family helped to shape country music.
Riddle was born in Burnsville, North Carolina, United States. He grew up with his paternal grandparents near Kingsport, Tennessee, not far from the Virginia border. While working as a young man at a cement plant, in August 1927, he tripped on an auger. The resulting injury entailed the amputation of his right leg at the knee. While he recovered, he took up the guitar, developing an innovative picking and slide technique. Soon, he was collaborating with other musicians from Sullivan and Scott counties, including Steve Tarter, Harry Gay, Brownie McGhee and John Henry Lyons. In December 1928, Riddle met A.P. Carter, who founded the Carter Family country band. The Carter Family had become known for their recordings at the Bristol Sessions in August 1927. Riddle began to divide his time between Kingsport and the Carter home in Maces Spring, Virginia. Riddle and Carter embarked on song-collecting trips around the region: Riddle would act as a "human tape recorder," memorizing the melody while Carter gathered lyrics. The Carter Family went on to record a number of songs that Riddle either composed or transmitted, including "Cannonball Blues," "Hello Stranger," "I Know What It Means To Be Lonesome," "Let the Church Roll On," "Bear Creek Blues," "March Winds Goin' Blow My Blues Away" and "Lonesome For You." Riddle's guitar technique made an impression on Maybelle Carter, and she incorporated elements of it into her style. In 1937, Riddle got married and, in 1942, moved to Rochester, New York. Soon he retired from music, and in 1945, he sold his guitar, remaining obscure for the next twenty years. In 1965, Mike Seeger, fresh from a collaboration with Maybelle Carter, tracked down Riddle and persuaded him to return to recording music. Over the next 13 years, Riddle and Seeger made a series of studio recordings, several of them compiled in the album "Step by Step", released in 1993. Riddle also made appearances at the Smithsonian Folk Festival and the Mariposa Folk Festival.
Riddle died in July 1980, in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1993, a selection from the sessions with Mike Seeger was released by Rounder Records as Step By Step: Lesley Riddle Meets The Carter Family: Blues, Country & Sacred Songs.
On July 31, 2009, a stage production about Riddle's life, including his time with and influence on the Carter Family, had its world premier at the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville, North Carolina, Riddle's birthplace. The show featured biographical details of his life, plus versions of songs as he played them, and then again as the Carters played them. The production was called Esley: The Life and Music of Lesley Riddle, written by Jeff Douglas Messer, directed by Michael Lilly, and starring Jim Arrendell as Esley. In mid-2015, Parkway Playhouse revived the stage production of Esley with a new cast of actors, but still under the direction of Michael Lilly. Playwright Jeff Douglas Messer is currently working on a screenplay and novel based on the stage script. In 2008, the Traditional Voices Group, a North Carolina organization with a mission partly to preserve and promote the memory of Lesley Riddle, began annual RiddleFest Concerts in Burnsville, North Carolina.
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By Steve Leggett
Country music may owe its very existence in part to a one-legged African-American guitar player named Lesley Riddle. Riddle was born on June 13, 1905, in Burnsville, NC. As a young man he worked in the local cement plant, where an unfortunate accident cost him his right leg at the knee. During his convalescence Riddle learned to play guitar, developing a unique picking technique and a biting slide style. A.P. Carter, patriarch of the Carter Family, met Riddle in Kingsport, TN, in 1928, learning "Cannonball" from him. Carter began using Riddle as a source for traditional material and arrangements, and he started to accompany A.P. on his song-collecting trips. Riddle essentially lived with the Carter Family off and on for several years at their home in Virginia, where he was occasionally called upon to teach Maybelle Carter a tricky guitar part or two. Legend has it that Sara Carter eventually presented Riddle with a brand new wooden leg as a sort of thank you.
Riddle moved to Rochester, NY, in 1942, which was where Mike Seeger discovered him in the mid-'60s. Seeger made several field recordings with Riddle between 1965 and 1978, and an album called Step By Step, featuring Riddle on guitar and piano, was assembled from those recordings and issued on CD by Rounder Records in 1993. Riddle had an easy, comfortable, and world-weary voice, and his guitar playing was solid and revealing, and it isn't hard to understand what A.P. Carter saw in Riddle when he met him in the 1920s. A musician of tremendous talent and integrity, Riddle made an undeniable impact on the material and overall sound of the Carter Family, and thus on the whole of country music. He died on July 13, 1980.