Biography
Kelly Pace (born 1902 - ?) in Camden, Ouachita County, Arkansas, USA.
In 1934 John Lomax with the help of Huddie Ledbetter (Leadbelly) made the first two recordings of "Rock Island Line", a song that would become world-famous later. The singer was a prisoner named Kelly Pace, who was doing five years for burglary. Pace would eventually contribute more than thirty performances to the Library of Congress archives.
Read full biography ↓
Lomax made additional recording trips to Arkansas prisons in 1939 and 1942, unaccompanied by Ledbetter. Pace was a free man at the time of the 1939 visit, but Lomax collected a third version of “The Rock Island Line,” this time in Cummins Prison. By 1942, Pace was back in stir, sent up for forty-two years for stealing a car, and once again he was the star.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.