His music has been characterized as a mixture of blues, pop songs, and original topical ballads.
He eventually moved to the Battlefield, a rough district of the city, where several events inspired some of the songs he later wrote.
[3] His sixth recorded song, “Great Northern Blues,” was not released and is considered to be lost.
"The Downfall of the Lion" and "Gyp the Blood" were based on events that occurred in New Orleans.
An anthology of rural acoustic gospel music, Goodbye, Babylon, released in 2003, included one of the two known recordings by an otherwise undocumented singer named Blind Willie Harris.