"The Bourgeois Blues" is a blues song by American folk and blues musician Lead Belly. It was written in June 1937 in response to the discrimination and segregation that he faced during a visit to Washington, D.C. to record for Alan Lomax. It rails against racism, the Jim Crow laws, and the conditions of contemporary African Americans in the southern United States. The song was recorded in December 1938 for the Library of Congress and re-recorded in 1939 for commercial release. "The Bourgeois Blues" is regarded as one of Lead Belly's best original works, but it also drew controversy. There is doubt over the song's authorship, with some scholars contending that Lead Belly was unlikely to have written a work in a genre new to him without a collaborator. Questions have been raised over his role in the American Communist Party and whether he and the song were used to further the party's political goals. Background and creation Most music historians date the writing of "The Bourgeois Blues" to Lead Belly's June 1937 trip to Washington, D.C., when he was invited by the folklorist Alan Lomax to record for the Library of Congress's folk music collection. On the first night Lead Belly and his wife Martha spent in the city, they encountered racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws similar to those found in their native Louisiana: most hotels refused to rent rooms to African Americans and the few that would were either full or refused to serve him because he was with a white man (Lomax). Lomax, in some versions of the story described as an unnamed "white friend", offered to let the couple stay for the night in his apartment near the Supreme Court Building. The next morning, Lead Belly awoke to Lomax arguing with his landlord about the presence of a black man, with the landlord threatening to call the police. While in Washington, Lead Belly encountered several other incidents of segregation that are believed to have contributed to the impetus of the song. For instance, when Lead Belly, Lomax, and their wives wanted to go out to dinner together, they discovered that it was impossible for the mixed race group to find a restaurant that would serve them. Lead Belly was told that if he returned later without Lomax, he would be served. In response to one of these incidents, a friend of Lead Belly's, variously identified as