Alan Govenar (12 page)

In the session that Brown described, Lightnin' and Shad were clearly trying to emulate John Lee Hooker and his foot-tapping records, which were making the
Billboard
charts. Lightnin' was in his prime, and he knew what he needed to do to compete. He was eager to record so long as he got his money up front. He refused to be paid on a royalty basis. “Itinerant blues singers like Lightning Hopkins,” Shad told Arnold Shaw, “used to hop on buses, perform, and then walk around with a cup. When we picked him up and talked a recording date, he wouldn't sign a contract. He wouldn't accept a royalty deal. He had to be paid cash. Not only that, he had to be paid after each cut…. Before he started a new one, I'd pay him a hundred dollars. He did another, I gave him another hundred. He refused to work in any other way.”
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Lightnin' had no management; he knew that he was selling his songs outright, but didn't consider the consequences. Certainly, if one of his records was a hit, it would have made him a lot more than one hundred dollars. As owner of the songs Lightnin' recorded, Shad is listed as the songwriter on most of his recordings, though he often used a pseudonym. While such a practice is, by today's standards, unethical and evidence of scams that record companies foisted on their artists, in the 1950s it was common practice. It was by no means unique to blues singers or to black musicians. Songs were sold as a commodity, and any future revenues that resulted from them were usually unforeseen. Certainly, whether or not musicians sold their songs outright often depended on how stable their financial situation was, or how much they understood the workings of the music business, or how much they trusted the person or company they recorded for. To somebody like Lightnin', who could barely support himself and lived literally from song to song, it made much more sense to simply sell all rights to a particular composition for $100 than wait four to six months for the possibility of a royalty check. In 1951, one hundred dollars, adjusted to inflation, is the equivalent of about eight hundred dollars today.

Shad, in his liner notes to a 1971 reissue of some of Lightnin's 1950s recordings, wrote, “Our finances were completed at the end of every session.”
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Moreover, he said that Hopkins “would carry his money in his shoes or some hidden pocket,” and when he came to New York “once to do some sessions, he left the same night for home as the big city scared the devil out of him.” At that point in his life, Lightnin' didn't know anyone in New York, and the city was no doubt overwhelming.

Shad, like his contemporaries—the Mesners at Aladdin, the Chesses at Chess, and the Biharis at Modern—marketed his records exclusively for an African American audience, and the competition among them was fierce. For a brief period in the early 1950s, down-home blues was steadily selling on the
Billboard
charts, prompting columnist Hal Webman, on February 2, 1952, to write: “For the first time in many months, the down-home Southern-style blues appears to have taken a solid hold in the current market. Down-home blues had been taking a back seat to the big city blues, good rocking novelties and vocal quartet ballads for quite a good while. However, the Southern blues appears to have opened up to its widest extent in some time, and the lowdown stuff has been cropping up as bestselling of late…. Such artists as … Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin' Hopkins … Muddy Waters, etc., have taken fast hold in such market areas as New Orleans, Dallas, Los Angeles, etc. Even the sophisticated big towns, like New York and Chicago, have felt the Southern blues influence in wax tastes.”
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Within weeks of Webman's “Rhythm and Blues Notes” column, Bobby Shad released Lightnin's “Give Me Central 209” on his Sittin' In With label, and it quickly rose to the
Billboard
charts, where it stayed for six weeks and peaked at #6. “Give Me Central 209” expressed the down-home message of longing and despair that was also found in the music of John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, among others, but Lightnin's performance style was distinctive in the marketplace. The words rung out with a deep sincerity that underscored the resonance of his country-tinged electric guitar and that pathos at that moment had great appeal.

“Give Me Central 209” had its origins in “Hello Central, Give Me Heaven,” which, according to McCormick, dated back to 1901 and was a sentimental song that “represented a child innocently trying to reach her deceased father.” McCormick pointed out that by 1909 Leadbelly was singing ‘Hello, Central, Give Me Long Distance ‘Phone” around Tell, Texas, and “the telephone idea was becoming a traditional opening gambit with which to link various leavingblues verses. (Tin Pan Alley returned during World War I with ‘Hello, Central, Give Me No Man's Land' and King Oliver produced ‘Hello, Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz.') The number most often called is 209, just as in train-blues it is most often 219 that figures.”
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In Lightnin's version, he was trying to reach out to his “baby,” but to no avail.

What was not said was amplified in the emotions of the stinging call and response he evoked in the plucking of the strings of his amplified guitar with his bare index finger.

Five weeks after “Give Me Central 209” hit the
Billboard
charts, Bobby Shad released Lightnin's “Coffee Blues,” which also made it to #6, but was only on the chart for two weeks. The strength of “Coffee Blues” was that it characterized the mundane tension of the day-to-day life of the average worker. It was at once ironic and caustic in the way it described “papa” being mad at “mama” because she didn't bring any coffee home. But the song was probably also helped by the popular familiarity of the chorus, which Lightnin' lifted from the Buddy Johnson Orchestra's early hit “I Ain't Mad With You.”

Texas Johnny Brown recalled that after he returned from military service in 1953, he spent more time with Lightnin' and could tell that Lightnin' was more savvy about the record business. He sensed that the record companies were ripping him off, but he didn't trust them to pay him any royalties. Consequently, he demanded his money up front. “He'd be playing places here in Houston,” Brown says, “and I'd be playing in different clubs. We had kind of a nighttime thing together. I used to get off my gig and go by his at night on weekends. And afterwards we'd sit there … and we'd share a gin bottle together and talk over business, who was playing where and who was getting what. We'd go to a little bar on the corner of Cleburne and Dowling. He didn't talk about one thing in particular. We just be discussin' how gigs went and where we going to be playing next…. He played out in The Heights, and then he played out in Acres Homes, and in a place in the Fifth Ward, they used to call Pearl Harbor [so named for the violence that occurred there], and it was just about like they said, Pearl Harbor.”
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Between 1951 and 1953, Lightnin' recorded ten sides for Mercury, followed by another eight for Decca, and four for TNT. The Mercury and Decca sessions were done for Shad, who worked for both companies in addition to running the Sittin' In With and Jax labels. Lightnin' played acoustic guitar and was accompanied by Donald Cooks on bass for not only the Sittin' In With and Mercury sessions in 1951, but for the Decca session in 1953. Several of the songs Lightnin' recorded during this period were original compositions, and the topical “Sad News from Korea” was especially poignant.

For the Decca session on July 29, 1953, Lightnin' was once again accompanied by Donald Cooks on bass, but Connie Kroll was added on drums. The trio sounded tight, suggesting they had been playing together for a while and were not simply thrown together in the studio. Lightnin's song choices were also carefully selected. “The War Is Over” was a topical song at the end of the Korean War. “Policy Game” was the only song Lightnin' ever recorded about policy, or “the numbers,” which was essentially an illegal lottery in which individuals bought a betting slip in a cafe or other small business and picked the amount they wanted to gamble and the combination of numbers that they thought would come up when the policy wheel was turned.
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In Lightnin's song, he reflected on the futility of policy, but also on how the game was a metaphor.

In the end, Lightnin' was determined to win, but didn't know when to pull back and quit.

“I'm Wild About You Baby,” “Merry Christmas,” “Happy New Year,” and “Highway Blues” are all strong, up-tempo numbers that Lightnin' sang and played with a much brighter tone and an enthusiasm rarely heard on his later recordings. “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” were in the great tradition of holiday blues numbers and were likely suggested by the producer because such songs were “evergreens” that could be sold each holiday season.

In “Highway Blues,” Lightnin' is exuberant about hitting the road:

About “Highway Blues,”
Billboard
wrote, “Another good blues reading from the chanter—and in his usually effective style,” and also praised “Cemetery Blues,” which backed it on Decca 48312: “Hopkins' tale of Grandpa's death is told via his guitar, singing, and talking passages for a mighty effective side with lots of folk quality. The gimmick of a crying voice thruout [sic] adds appeal.”
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There's no indication of how well the Mercury sides sold; none ever charted.

The next sides Lightnin' recorded were for TNT, a new San Antonio label as small as Decca was large. They were produced by H. M. Crowe in Houston around November 1953, and for these, an amazingly distorted amplifier added to the brooding intensity of the four songs he recorded that were reminiscent of his earlier work: “Late in the Evening,” “Lightnin' Jump,” “Leaving Blues,” and “Moanin' Blues.”

It's likely that the Mercury, Decca, and TNT sessions occurred at Bill Holford's ACA studio, but there is nothing in the Holford's logbooks that would provide definitive evidence. The logbooks only document the master discs that ACA made. They do not document sessions, unless ACA mastered them. This is also true for the Lightnin' sessions for the New York–based Herald label (owned by Al Silver, Jack Braverman, and Jack Angel) in or around April 1954. It's quite possible that Holford and Crowe, who had just started their own music publishing company (CHS Music, BMI), recorded these and then shopped them around to different labels.

The twenty-six sides that Lightnin' issued on Herald took his music to a new level. While little is known of what actually transpired during these sessions, the results were phenomenal. Lightnin's amplified guitar had an explosiveness that had not been heard before, but note for note, Donald Cooks on bass and Ben Turner on drums—two session players in Houston—were completely in synch with his every lick. It was the most rehearsed Lightnin' had ever sounded, not necessarily because he had actually practiced the tunes in advance, but more as a result of a sense of familiarity among the players. They were ready, and the chemistry was just right. Not only did Lightnin' update some of his older songs, like “Ida Mae” (which became “Don't Think ‘Cause You're Pretty”) and “Shine on Moon” (which took on the name “Shining Moon”), but he also introduced powerful new material such as “Sick Feeling Blues (I'm Aching),” “Don't Need No Job,” “My Little Kewpie Doll,” “Had a Gal Called Sal,” and the “Life I Used to Live.” He may have repeated riffs from earlier instrumentals, but his attack on “Move On Out Boogie” and “Hopkins' Sky Hop” was faster, louder, and played with more finesse.
Billboard
described “Sky Hop” as a “rompin' instrumental blues played by guitar with rhythm. Could do business in country as well as r & b market, if it gets exposed.”
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The Herald sessions contain Lightnin's usual mix of boogies, instrumentals, and down-home blues with the recurring themes of unrequited love, longing, and abandonment, but the ferocious drive, flair, and subtlety of his performance on electric guitar surpasses any of his earlier or later recordings. In two of the songs, it sounded as if Lightnin' was still very much stuck on Ida Mae. In “Nothin' But the Blues,” after a piercing instrumental introduction, Lightnin' sang:

And in “Don't Think ‘Cause You're Pretty,” which is an updated version of his earlier song “Ida Mae,” he once again calls out to her after she's left him.

The Herald sessions were a watershed in Lightnin's career. The intensity of his singing and the fierceness of his electric guitar single-string runs had never been greater. Whatever he did in his day-to-day life, when he stepped into that studio, he was on fire.