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"Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins, one of the great country blues singers and perhaps the greatest single influence on rock guitar players." (New York Times Obituary, Feb 1, 1982 )
"These are not necessarily the best known Lightnin' Hopkins tracks, but in many ways that makes this CD even more valuable." (This review)
This is album review number One Hundred and Ninety Nine in the series of retro-reviews of both vinyl and CD albums from my collection.
The series is called Cream of The Crate and each review represents an album that I believe represents significant musical value, either because of its rarity, because it represents the best of a style or styles of a music or because there is something unique about the music, the group or the particular production. The first fifty reviews were based on vinyl albums from my collection, with the following fifty on CD albums from my collection. Links to all these reviews can be found at the bottom of the page.
This is the penultimate retro-review in what has been a series based upon albums in my collection and while the collection goes on, these reviews will finish for a while, after next weeks album [review number 200].
However I could not finish up without dipping into my blues collection and bringing forward yet another giant among the many wonderful men and women who have written and sung the blues.
The artist is Lightnin' Hopkins and the CD album is titled - The Gold Star Series (Vol 1). It was released on the Arhoolie label and was released in 1991 with the identifying code of ARHCD 330. The album has 24 tracks. It is interesting that the label has him identified as Lightning Hopkins (with a "g") when it is in fact - Lightnin' Hopkins. A bit of a blunder from a major company like this.
Sam (Lightnin’) Hopkins was born in Centerville, Texas, on March 15, probably in 1911. Though some sources give his year of birth as 1912, his Social Security application listed the year as 1911. He was the son of Abe and Frances (Sims) Hopkins. After his father died in 1915, the family (Sam, his mother and five brothers and sisters) moved to Leona.
The Hopkins family home in the early 1930's
At age eight he made his first instrument, a cigar-box guitar with chicken-wire strings. By ten the young Hopkins was exposed to quality blues music and while initially learning from his older cousin, country-blues singer Alger 'Texas' Alexander, he was also heavily and directly influenced by an absolute legend in Blind Lemon Jefferson, who encouraged the young Hopkins to persevere.
Hopkins also played with his brothers, blues musicians John Henry and Joel. In fact in an interview for a documentary on him, Hopkins recalled his childhood: “I was eight years old when I made my first guitar. I got the screen wire off the screen door to make my little sound on my little box. I made it out of a cigar box, I kept champing on it and I’d ask my brother to let me play his guitar. He said, no boy, you can’t play this guitar. He never did decide to let me play his guitar. So he told me one day, boy don’t you fool with my guitar. But it wasn’t hanging too high from the wall. I got a chair and got it down. One day they went to the field. They come in and I had it down on the floor, laying on the floor but I was picking a tune, and he heard the guitar and he walked in and it was playing so good he just stood there and listened. He liked it so well he said didn’t I tell you not to bother that guitar? His name was John Henry. My brother, oldest brother, so he said you can have it. So that’s how good the music sounded to him.”
Joel, Lightnin' and John Henry
His unique style developed after spending many hours playing informally without a backing band. In fact his distinctive style often included playing, in effect, bass, rhythm, lead, percussion, and vocals, all at the same time. His musical phrasing would often include a long low note at the beginning, the rhythm played in the middle range, then the lead in the high range. By playing this quickly - with occasional slaps of the guitar - the effect of bass, rhythm, percussion and lead would be created.
In the mid-1930s, Hopkins was sent to Houston County Prison Farm; the offence for which he was imprisoned is unknown. On release he settled in Houston but failed to make an impression and returned to Centerville
He tried again in Houston in 1946 and while he and Alexander were playing there in 1946, he was discovered by Lola Anne Cullum of Los Angeles', Aladdin Records (although Alexander would actually not make it out to L.A.). She in fact convinced Hopkins to travel to Los Angeles, where he accompanied the pianist Wilson Smith. The duo recorded twelve tracks in their first sessions in 1946. An Aladdin executive decided the pair needed more dynamism in their names and dubbed Hopkins "Lightnin'" and Wilson "Thunder". In fact Hopkins' fast finger style is very distinct.
In 1959, the blues researcher Mack McCormick contacted Hopkins, hoping to bring him to the attention of a broader musical audience engaged in the folk revival. McCormack presented Hopkins to integrated audiences first in Houston and then in California. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall on October 14, 1960, alongside Joan Baez and Pete Seeger, performing the spiritual "Mary Don't You Weep".
1959
In 1960, he signed with Tradition Records. The recordings which followed included his song "Mojo Hand" in 1960.
In 1968, Hopkins recorded the album Free Form Patterns, backed by the rhythm section of the psychedelic rock band 13th Floor Elevators. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, he released one or sometimes two albums a year and toured, playing at major folk music festivals and at folk clubs and on college campuses in the U.S. and internationally. He toured extensively in the United States and played a six-city tour of Japan in 1978.
In regard to life partners, Hopkins actually had a total of three wives. It appears his first marriage was around 1928. In fact when Hopkins married Anna Mae Box, he and his first wife hired themselves out to Tom Moore, a farmer whose callousness Hopkins immortalized in the song, “Tom Moore’s Blues.” “You know,” he sang, “I got a telegram this morning/It say your wife is dead/I showed it to Mr. Moore he says/‘Go ahead nigger, you know you gotta plow a ridge’/That white man said ‘It’s been rainin’/Yes sir I’m way behind/I may let you bury that woman/On your dinner time.”
I'll discuss that track later in this review.
Hopkins was certainly one for the ladies, and claimed he had a total of 10 common-in-law wives, but it appears as though he may have only married three and according to his heirs, they never found any records of formal divorces.
In 1943 Hopkins married his third wife, Antoinette Charles, and moved to a large farm north of Dallas, where he worked for a time as a sharecropper. Around 1946, he was given a new guitar by a family friend, “Uncle” Lucian Hopkins. That inspired Sam to move back to Houston where he teamed up with his old partner Tex Alexander to play the local beer joints.
Lightnin' and Antoinette
There are so many half-told stories about him, but what is indisputable is that Hopkins was Houston's poet-in-residence for 35 years and that he recorded more albums than any other bluesman. Numbers vary from publication to publication but it appears he recorded no less than:
- 87 albums
- 91 singles and EPs
- 134 compilations
Hopkins was also great influence on many local musicians around Houston and Austin, Texas in the 1950s and 1960s. He was an influence on Jimmie Vaughan's work and, more significantly, on the vocals and blues style of Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, the keyboardist of the Grateful Dead until 1972. He was also an important influence on Townes Van Zandt, the Texan folk/blues songwriter and performer, who often performed Hopkins numbers in his live performances.
Doyle Bramhall II is another Texas artist who was influenced by Hopkins, as evidenced by a tattoo of lightning on his upper left arm. Jimi Hendrix reportedly became interested in blues music listening to Lightning Hopkins records with his father. Finally, a song named after him was recorded by R.E.M. on their album Document.
The Houston Chronicle included Hopkins in their list of "100 Tall Texans"; 100 important Texans that influenced the world. The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum included Hopkins in a 100 Tall Texans exhibit that opened in September 2006. The display includes Lightning's Guild Starfire electric guitar and a performance video.
Lightnin' Hopkins playing in the Sputnik bar, Houston Texas - 1961
Hopkins' Gibson J-160e guitar is now on display at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
So we come to this CD - which in fact consists of original recordings by Bill Quinn at Gold Star Studios in Houston, Texas between 1947 and 1950.
Personnel: Lightnin' Hopkins - vocals, guitar and organ; Frankie Lee Sims & Joel Hopkins (Lightnin's brother) both on guitar
Track Listing
| 1. | Short Haired Woman |
| 2. | Baby Please Don't Go |
| 3. | Going Home Blues (Going Back And Talk To Mama) |
| 4. | Automobile Blues |
| 5. | Big Mama Jump |
| 6. | Loretta Blues |
| 7. | Seems Funny Baby |
| 8. | Thunder And Lightning Blues (Coolin' Board Blues) |
| 9. | Grosebeck Blues |
| 10. | Tim Moore's Farm |
| 11. | Lightning Boogie |
| 12. | Traveler's Blues |
| 13. | Goodbye Blues |
| 14. | Unkind Blues |
| 15. | Fast Life Woman |
| 16. | Zolo Go (Zydeco) |
| 17. | You Don't Know |
| 18. | Treat Me Kind |
| 19. | Somebody Got To Go |
| 20. | Death Bells |
| 21. | Mad With You |
| 22. | Airplane Blues |
| 23. | Racetrack Blues |
| 24. | Unsuccessful Blues |
There are so many great tracks on this album, and certainly sometimes the surface noise is noticeable, but we need to remember many of the older blues tracks no longer existed on recording tape, and so are lifted from 78 rpm records.
In the case of the Arhoolie production, they claim that all the selections on this CD were recorded directly onto an acetate coated 16" metal based master, but the actual source of much of the material is a little unclear as the producers have noted where a track was taken directly from an original acetate OT or an LP, but not differentiating between them.
What is noteworthy is that the royalties from these tracks are paid to Hopkins widow,
We will kick off with track 2 - itself an absolute blues classic. Baby Please Don't Go is often credited to Big Joe Williams and while it is in fact one of those tracks that writers say the origins are long lost, in fact the label of the original 78rpm record shows the composer as J. Williams. Mind you it is not unusual for blues singers to adapt and adopt old slave songs and folk songs whose origins are unknown, as their own.
What can be said definitively is that It IS a "blues standard" with such notable artists, other than Hopkins, having recorded it including John Lee Hooker, Charlie McCoy and Big Bill Broonzy. Of course when the 1960's came and the British drew inspiration from the American Blues standards, Baby Please Don't Go became the staple of many white bands of which Them, probably put out the best version.
But here with Lightnin' Hopkins we get a wonderfully clean recording of this blues track sung with the passion and intonation by of one of the greatest blues singers ever. Check out his fingering style which is putting it simply - brilliant!
Baby, please don't go
Baby, please don't go
Baby, please don't go, down to New Orleans
You know I love you so
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
I get you way'd out here, and let you walk alone
Turn your lamp down low
Turn your lamp down low
Turn your lamp down low
I beg you all night long, baby, please don't go
You brought me way down here
You brought me way down here
You brought me way down here
'Bout to Rolling Forks, you treat me like a dog
Baby, please don't go
Baby, please don't go
Baby, please don't go, back the New Orleans
I beg you all night long
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
Before I be your dog
I get you way'd out here, and let you walk alone
You know your man down gone
You know your man down gone
You know your man down gone
To the country farm
With all the shackles on