Honestly I do, I can listen to some songs straight, but come on... some of it is hard to stomach. Just like Johnny Cash, rock fans are digging out leadbelly and professing his greatness.

I like it, but some of it is unlistenable.

lilgish said:

The same can be said about just about ANY musician when you consider their entire body of work.

I dunno, there's something about root music, maybe it's the bad quality of recording, the song has to be catchy for me to even listen. even Billie Holiday..if the recording is of a low quality then it's hard for me to get into it.

Plus, you have to understand that musicians in that era created their music with completely different expectations in mind than we have today. These days, you expect an artist to create an album that you can listen to straight through.
In Leadbelly's era, an artist would record sporadically, a few songs here and there. Often, they would record varaitions of the same song for different companies. So , when all these songs are compiled on a CD today, and you listen to them one after another , the repetion of melodies and lyrics can be numbing. But these songs were never created to be heard in such a context, instead intended to be parceled out to the public a few at a time