Alan Govenar (6 page)

Texas Alexander's slow moaning style and his inability to sing in meter made it especially difficult for Johnson, who remarked, “He was liable to jump a bar, or five bars, or anything. You just had to be a fast thinker to play for Texas Alexander. When you been out there with him you done nine days work in one! Believe me, brother, he was hard to play for.”
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Despite the irregularities of his singing, Alexander's emotionally charged vocal style had great appeal, and the sales of his records were unexpectedly high. He was invited back to the OKeh studios, and between 1927 and 1930 he recorded fifty-two songs with a wide range of accompanists, from Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson, who were already established as two of the best guitarists of the era, to an ensemble that included the great King Oliver, Clarence Williams, and Eddie Heywood, to lesser-known regional guitarists like Carl Davis and Little Hat Jones, and even the legendary Mississippi Sheiks with Bo Chatman (Carter) on violin, Sam Chatman on guitar, and Walter Vinson on second guitar. Unlike his other accompanists, the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular and influential guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s, provided Alexander with a rare string band setting that was uncompromising, forcing him to discipline his singing into an uncharacteristic swing.
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By the mid-1930s, when Sam met him, Alexander's recording career had tapered off because of the Great Depression, but he was still highly regarded as a performer, and wherever he sang, he had a commanding presence. Hopkins recalled, as did others, that Texas Alexander carried a guitar with him so that anyone who wanted to accompany him could do so. Alexander didn't play the guitar himself, and Sam picked up the instrument and showed him what he could do. “He come … ready with that singing. He couldn't play no music,” Sam said. “Never played an instrument in his life. But he'd tote a guitar; he'd buy a guitar. But he'd tote it in case he'd run up on you or me or somebody could play, and he'd sing. And he kept a guitar because if he asked could you play a guitar and you say ‘Yeah.' Well, he got one, see. And then y'all tear it off.”
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Before long, Hopkins was traveling with Texas Alexander and accompanying, or following, him on guitar. Given that Alexander often broke time, Sam must have struggled at first to keep up, but was apparently able to eventually learn his songs sufficiently to play with him. Clearly, Alexander was not that particular when he showed up at a little juke joint or cafe in East and Central Texas ready to perform.

Texas Alexander showed Sam that he could make a living singing blues. By the 1930s, Sam was fed up with farm work. “I didn't make too much picking cotton,” he said. “I'm telling you the truth because they wasn't paying but fifty cents a hundred [pounds of cotton picked]. Man, I'd make me two dollars and something. I was picking four and five hundred [pounds]. But you know, man, I'm telling you the truth, if you just know what it takes to get two dollars out of that cotton patch…. But I wasn't on that farm much longer. I left.”
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While Sam was used to performing for tips, he was beginning to figure out how to get paid for his music. “I commenced to playing for dances,” he said. “See, when I got good, and when I went to finding them there places where they barrelhouse [drinking and dancing], I didn't know. I just had to run up on them places, see, around Jewett, Buffalo, and Crockett. And they had little old joints for Saturday nights, you know. But what you gonna do through the week? I found Mart and out there and around Coolidge and where they had one every night, man, I did all right for myself because that was my business. Those joints, cafe joints, you know, where they'd get back in this part and they'd do a little dancing in there, and they'd drink a little. And I was getting three and a half [$3.50] in Coolidge, Texas. Got pretty good, and so they raised it to around six dollars to go to Mart, making six dollars a night.”
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With Texas Alexander, Hopkins was able to even earn more. Alexander was known as a recording artist, so he tended to attract bigger audiences wherever he went. Hopkins followed Texas Alexander through the East and Central Texas towns of Crockett, Grapeland, Palestine, Oakwood, Buffalo, Centerville, Normangee, and Flynn. For Sam, Texas Alexander became a kind of mentor, who, like Blind Lemon Jefferson, who played novelty songs and country tunes, in addition to blues.

Once Prohibition ended in 1933, juke joints and barrelhouses on the outskirts of little towns, which had essentially functioned as speakeasies, became more public. However, the laws related to the sale and consumption of liquor varied from county to county, and bootlegging was still rampant. The little joints where Sam and Texas Alexander performed were likely not licensed to sell liquor and probably served booze illegally. They were places where sharecroppers and day laborers alike found some reprieve from the hardships and suffering of the Great Depression, proffering booze, women, music, dancing, and gambling. It was in these gritty, smoke-filled shacks that Sam honed his skills as a guitarist and singer, composing and performing the blues that gave voice to what those around him were feeling and experiencing. While he ventured off on his own at times, he often played with Texas Alexander.

While Sam never recorded with Alexander, he was influenced by his songs, which not only evoked a poignant sense of what life and work must have been like at that time, but also expressed a bitter sense of irony. In “Levee Camp Moan,” Texas Alexander's extended hums and moans drawn out over unevenly spaced measures punctuated the lyrics. “Section Gang Blues” combined elements of a traditional work song that might have been shouted by gandydancers lining out railroad track with a sarcastic commentary: “Nigger lick molasses and the white man likes it too/Lord, I wonder what in the world is the Mexican gonna do.” In “Boe Hog Blues,” [a mistitling of “Boar Hog Blues”] a sexual explicitness underscored the song's strident sense of humor:

From Texas Alexander, Hopkins learned to emphasize lyrics and the need to rhyme, often at the expense of meter. Alexander rarely sang in meter, though he could turn a phrase and extend his lyrics into a looser, more sprawling structure that might have an extra measure, or thirteen or fourteen bars instead of twelve. By taking this approach, Alexander demonstrated to Sam the power of improvisation, and how ordinary speech could become the fodder of a song lyric.

Moreover, Texas Alexander gave Hopkins a tangible sense of the benefits that making records might bring. Alexander drove a Cadillac, and it made Sam realize that even a black musician from a small town in Texas could be successful in the music business. “First Cadillac that I was known to be,” Hopkins said, “one them expensive cars, you know, he went somewhere and he showed up in Normangee and that was longest and most ugly car. Long Cadillac—one of those the first made, you know. Cuz colored people they didn't have even T-Model Fords then. He come in a Cadillac. Texas was doing all right for hisself.”
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To own a Cadillac at the onset of the Great Depression was impressive, but apparently Texas Alexander's records had sold quite well in the late 1920s to rural audiences, as well as among people who had started moving to the city but still enjoyed a taste of the older country styles.

In his song “Deceitful Blues” he sang, “I'm gonna trade this Lincoln, get me a Cadillac eight.” In these 1934 recordings, Texas Alexander was trying to keep up with the times, most significantly by adding a small jazz combo, but in the end, his efforts were in vain: his lyrics and singing remained as rural as before. In “Blues in My Mind” the lyrics had more conventional, and even sentimental lines, such as “I'm crying, with tears in my eyes.” But he still retained his irreverent edge in “Polo Blues,” in which he sang:

In “Prairie Dog Hole” he took pride in his irreligious life: “Lord, My Father, Lord Thy Kingdom come/Send me back my baby and my will be done,” and then declared, “I went to church and the people called on me to pray/I set down on my knees and forgot just what to say.”
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According to Sam, some time in 1934, probably after Texas Alexander's second session for the Vocalion label in Fort Worth, they made it to Houston to audition for a radio station. They were joined by harmonica player Billy Bizor, another of Sam's purported cousins, but it's unclear whether or not they were actually given a radio spot. “First time into Houston,” Sam said, “I just went to

Houston because I heard the name of Houston, and what a town it was…. Texas

and I worked on West Dallas Street [in the thriving Fourth Ward]…. Texas an' I'd work up and down the street, him and me.”
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The city piqued his interest, but he didn't go back for nearly five years. At this point in his life, Sam wasn't ready to leave the country. Life was tough in Leon County, but he knew his way around. “Big cities,” he said, “I hadn't been used to ‘em. I'd been used to little three or four stores, and they call it Centerville and Leona.”
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By the late 1930s, Hopkins and Texas Alexander had gone their separate ways. Sam was in and out of jail. He was still hell-bent on pursuing his own music career, though working the juke joints wasn't easy. He ended up getting in fights over booze, women, and gambling that got him arrested and sent back to the chain gang. “I was getting cooped up and knocked around pretty good,” Sam said, “I always somehow or another, I'd be lucky and manage to get out. And one time, I run away.”

Sam made his way to Mississippi. “I went to Clarksdale. That's right, hoboing with one dime in my pocket.”
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The details of what happened next are not entirely clear. In Clarksdale, Sam recalled that he met up with his “wife” and her brother, though it's unknown whether or not it was the same wife [Elamer] he had left in Texas. But he didn't stay in Clarksdale very long. He found a job “picking up those pecans. They was getting nice money … dollar and a half a hundred [pounds].” When he wasn't gathering pecans, he went off to a place called the Bullpen near the place where his “wife” and her brother were living. The Bullpen was, Sam said, “a hobo jungle…. It was under a shed, like…. So, I'd go down there. They'd gamble and pick guitars and drink. They had plenty to drink. So, I'd go down and play that guitar for them and make me three or four dollars and sometimes [get] women, twelve, fifteen of them. I done good … [and] walked away.”

When Sam got back to Texas, he wanted to see his mother, but he was only in Centerville for a short time. He continued to ramble around. “I caught a freight train in Crockett going to Palestine, Texas,” Sam said, “but I had a little weak string on my guitar around my neck, and that wind hit that guitar, and I ain't seen that guitar since. But that's the only time I got a freight train; that's right. I taken my sister with me. She was sitting up there with me when that guitar said, ‘Whoop!' Gone, man. I ain't joking.”
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Frank Robinson recalls meeting Hopkins when he came to his hometown of Crockett, Texas around 1935. “My uncle [Clyde Robinson] was running around with him,” Robinson says, “and he had a daughter, which is Anna Mae Box [who lived in Crockett]. We grew up together, and he would always come and visit. My uncle, he couldn't play, but he loved guitar music, so whenever a guitar picker would come to town, he would always bring them by the house. My family loved to hear guitar music, and I grew up knowing him…. Well, they drank and gambled together, but my uncle, he couldn't play. He could sing, but he couldn't play at all.”
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Robinson recalled that Hopkins had a deep voice and that “he was real friendly, but he liked to drink, and when he'd get to drinking, well, he was quite outspoken…. But other than that, he was really nice. Me and him, we talked. He said never a hard word to me the whole time I knowed him. And I looked up to him just like I did my daddy and my uncle, surely.”

In 1939, when Robinson's family went to Arizona to pick cotton, Hopkins went along, but he didn't spend much time picking cotton. “He liked to gamble,” Robinson remembers. “Gambling was legal at that time, out there, and they would all go gambling. We'd peep at them and go on about our business. And at last one day, we didn't see Sam no more.”

Where Sam went after leaving Arizona is uncertain, but it's likely that he went back to Texas to stay with his mother in Centerville and play on the street for tips and in little joints and cafes. He may have gone looking for Texas Alexander, but around 1939, Texas Alexander got into trouble. According to bluesman Frankie Lee Sims, Texas Alexander committed a double murder and was sentenced to prison. Pianist Buster Pickens maintained that Texas Alexander served time in the Ramsey State Farm around 1942. However, there are no prison records to substantiate either Sims's or Pickens's claims.

Guitarist Lowell Fulson said Texas Alexander had told him that he had been sentenced to life in Huntsville Penitentiary, but said that he was only incarcerated “three months and twenty-one days” because “he sung his way out of there. They run him off, telling him, ‘Come back down here again, and we'll kill you.' He said what happened was that they couldn't stop him singing. He sang that old mourning-type stuff. Nobody wanted to be in the place where he was. He just got next to them all, so they let him go. They run him out of there.”
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