Alan Govenar (21 page)

Strachwitz recalls that when McCormick found out about the session with Bobby Robinson, he was furious, even more so after “Mojo Hand” became a hit when it was released as a single in 1961. “Mack called,” Strachwitz says, “and he asked me, ‘Chris, do you have any idea how and where that was made?' And I told him, ‘That's a New York label. Bobby Robinson runs that,' And so, he finally confronted Lightnin', ‘When did you … I hear you recorded for …' And Lightnin' said, ‘Well, lookie here, I needed to make me some money, and this boy come up and said, ‘We'll make you some records.'”

Lightnin's “Mojo Hand” built on the success of Muddy Waters's cover of the song “I've Got My Mojo Working,” written by Preston Foster, though it also may have taken its inspiration from the numerous blues songs that had used the line “I'm going to Louisiana to get me a Mojo hand.” These include Ida Cox's “Mojo Hand Blues” (1927), Texas Alexander's “Tell Me Woman Blues” (1928), Little Hat Jones's “Two Strings Blues” (1929), Tampa Red's “Anna Lou Blues” (1940), Muddy Waters's “Louisiana Blues” (1950), and Junior Wells's “Hoodoo Man Blues” (1953). Mojo hand refers to a magical charm used in hoodoo, but also to sexual potency. According to Strachwitz, “Lightnin' apparently believed it. His ‘wife' [Antoinette] was a Creole from southwest Louisiana and was probably very aware of those cultural traditions.”
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However, prior to “Mojo Hand,” Lightnin' had only recorded one song on the subject, “Black Cat Bone.”

Lightnin' had made a name for himself in New York, and judging from the response to “Mojo Hand,” he still had an audience among urban blacks to whom Robinson's Fire label was primarily marketed. But his appeal among the folk and blues revivalists was growing, and he was often featured with an eclectic mix of performing artists. On November 26, 1960, he appeared in a program called “Folk Songs, Country & Blues,” presented by Harold Leventhal, at the Ethical Society Auditorium. Leventhal advertised the show as Lightnin's “Last Performance in New York,” but also included the New Lost City Ramblers with John Cohen, Mike Seeger, Tom Paley, Cisco Houston, and Zarefah Story.

By the time Lightnin' returned to Houston, he had spent about six weeks in New York City. How he traveled to and from New York is unknown, though Strachwitz speculates that he probably went by train or bus, because Lightnin' hated to fly. However, Art D'Lugoff at the Village Gate remembers that he sometimes used to pick Lightnin' up at the airport and take him to his hotel, but he wasn't sure exactly when. Lightnin' played the Village Gate numerous times during the 1960s because he was paid well and one gig led to another.
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Lightnin' had stayed in Harlem the first time he traveled to New York in 1951 to record for Bobby Shad's Sittin' In With label and had seemed to like it, not only because of the money he made there. In one of his interviews with McCormick, he said, “That time I went to New York to make records … I stayed across the street from where Count Basie was. Count Basie, Joe Turner, Preacher Williams, they was all there. I had me some fun dancing there two–three nights.” But when Lightnin' got to New York City in 1960, the room that was booked for him was, according to Hentoff, in a “depressing, run-down Harlem hotel.” Hopkins asked to be moved and was taken to “an even grimmer, gloomier hotel in the Village.” Lightnin' told Hentoff, “There's no light down there,” and during his first morning in the room the darkness made it hard for him to wake up, and he was late for an appointment. “There's no sun,” Hopkins said, “so I didn't know what time it was. I just sat down on the bed and played my box a while.”
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Lightnin', however, didn't stay in that hotel very long. Hentoff reported that he moved into the apartment of Martha Ledbetter, the widow of Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, and that “was one warm place in the city.” How Lightnin' met Martha is unclear, though it's possible that she attended the Carnegie Hall concert. Leadbelly had performed on different occasions with Pete Seeger as part of hootenannies and labor union rallies. In any event, according to David Benson, who traveled as a road manager for Lightnin' in the 1970s, Martha Ledbetter gave Lightnin' a ring that he showed off to people he met—“A gold ring with a black face with a gold S on it. He wore it all the time.”
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After 1947, Lightnin' was far better known among black audiences than Leadbelly ever was.

Lightnin' had now firmly established himself on the folk and blues revival scene, but to say that he had been “rediscovered,” as John S. Wilson did in the
New York Times
in 1959, is misleading. His career was continuous, and to some extent he straddled both white and black audiences, though his popularity ebbed and swelled on the
Billboard
and
Cashbox
jukebox and retail charts. He may have stopped recording between 1954 and 1959, but his music was not only available, it was also re-packaged and promoted during those years. Herald issued 45 rpm singles of Lightnin's recordings every year from 1955 to 1960, and the Mesners produced a compilation of Aladdin singles intended for the growing LP market on the Score label in 1958.
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However, for the Score LP, called
Lightnin' Hopkins Strums the Blues,
their marketing strategy catered to the folk audience. The unsigned liner notes on the back of the LP reads: “Lightnin' Hopkins is a true folk singer. His songs are the heart of the South, the very essence of his people, their joys, their triumphs, their difficulties, their oppression. But Lightnin's music too, like that of every great artist, has a universal quality…. Like all great folk artists … Hopkins improvises easily…. All turn his talent into a quick, fluent, outpouring of feeling.”
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Twelve years earlier, in 1946, many of the songs—like the hit “Katie Mae Blues”—on this LP were released for the “race” market, but with the burgeoning folk revival, the Mesners recognized a new opportunity.

In 1960, Herald also compiled twelve of Lightnin's recordings from 1954, which had been released only as singles over the years, and issued them on an LP titled
Lightnin' and the Blues,
though rather than trying to appeal to the folk audience, “J.S.” in the liner notes tried to exploit Lightnin's mystique by stating that “nothing much is known about Sam Hopkins, and he is not one to venture any information…. The session and two bottles of gin were finished and Lightnin' just shuffled away counting his money. We have not seen or heard from him since, but every time the phone rings we somehow hope we'll hear his voice sayin', ‘Man, I wrote a mess o' new tunes for you.'”
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The response to
Lightnin' and the Blues
among jazz and blues purists was negative. In the
Saturday Review,
critic (and coauthor of the book
Jazzmen)
Charles Edward Smith wrote: “No doubt he could do something with the electric guitar; he uses one here sometimes with deftness, though the overall impression is one of blatant sound. This impression is reinforced by added bass and drums and a souped-up juke box sound, leaving little room to hear what Lightnin' could do, assuming he wanted to.”
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Also in 1960, Bobby Shad decided to issue recordings he made with Lightnin' during the period from 1951 to 1953 on the Time label, including two of his biggest hits, “Hello Central” and “Coffee Blues.” But Shad decided to take a much more intellectual approach to contextualizing Hopkins's music and was able to get Nat Hentoff, who was then coeditor of the
Jazz Review,
to write the liner notes. The LP, taking its title from Sam Charters's book
The Country Blues,
is called
Lightning Hopkins: Last of the Great Blues Singers.
Shad, like the Mesners, was trying to capitalize on the new folk market and wanted to appeal to a young white audience looking to understand the blues.

Hentoff quoted heavily from McCormick's article on Hopkins in the
Jazz Review,
in which he explained: “The essence of Lightning's art is a specialized form of autobiography…. A line can have the blunt stab of T. S. Elliot [as McCormick pointed out] … ‘you ever see a one-eyed woman cry.'”
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But to McCormick's assessment of Hopkins, Hentoff added, “It's not all tragedy though. Lightning continues the blues tradition using irony as a weapon of survival as well as getting whatever peace of mind is possible under the circumstances…. In addition to the warm but cutting quality of his voice … is the extent to which he talk-sings his music. The result is the impression of completely spontaneous autobiography—a man talking about what he feels so that the natural phrasing of his speech blends easily and flowingly into his singing.”
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Then, in describing Lightnin' performance style, Hentoff quoted from the Belgian critic Yannick Bruynoghe, who wrote that Hopkins's guitar playing “is adapted to his speech as intimately as a second voice would be…. When he starts a chorus one can never tell where he's aiming, how the phrases will be developed, and what sudden and abrupt changes he may introduce and bring to their logical conclusion.”
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The growing interest in Lightnin's music made him reassess his attitude toward traveling. He liked playing for white audiences because he was getting paid more than he ever could in the Third Ward. Lomax Jr. had set a high standard for what Lightnin' began to expect. He wanted someone to make his airplane arrangements, carry his guitar and suitcase, get him checked into the hotel, take him to the gig, take him back to the hotel, and make sure he had the beer and booze that he wanted. When he played the white club dates, there were always young, white guitar players, among others, who wanted to follow him around, buy him drinks, and provide for his needs and wishes.

As much as McCormick wanted to manage his career, Lighntin' often resisted. However, on May 19, 1961, Lightnin' signed a contract with Prestige, negotiated by McCormick, for “a minimum of 10 LPs,” for which he was to be paid an advance of five hundred dollars for each album and a royalty of twenty cents “per doubled faced 12” LP record.” In this agreement Lightnin' also appointed McCormick, “according to the terms of a pre-existing agreement … as his sole authorized agent … to collect and receive all monies due him.”
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On July 26, 1961, Lightnin' recorded a solo LP for Prestige/Bluesville, titled
Blues in My Bottle
and produced by the folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein and McCormick at ACA Studios in Houston. Surprisingly the guitar is poorly recorded, but Lightnin' seemed completely at ease in the studio, judging from the way he was joking around at the session in his version of Stick McGhee's 1949 R & B hit “Drinkin' Wine Spodee-O-Dee,” calling out the names of his friends who were there: “Why if you a got a nickel, Mary, I got a dime/ ‘Nette [Antoinette], let's get together, Mack, and bring a little wine.” In “Buddy Brown's Blues,” he ended with an old melody he learned from Texas Alexander, and in “DC-7” he sang about the crash of a Braniff Airline DC-7 that exploded in the air above his mother's home in Centerville in 1959.

This particular plane crash haunted Lightnin', especially since his mother and others he knew in Centerville were witnesses to the disaster. According to Joe Kessler, who years later acquired three of Lightnin's guitars, Antoinette said that Lightnin' kept a mental record of airplane disasters. “If someone asked him to travel somewhere,” Kessler says, “he often refused by saying on such and such a day, airline ‘x' crashed.”
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Carroll Peery, an African American who managed the kitchen and bar at the Ash Grove in the early 1960s, recalls that Lightnin' talked often about how much he hated flying. “He only flew if he had to,” Peery says, “and then he'd have to get drunk to do that. He liked to take the train. I met him at the train station several times. I was kind of amazed about how little, or how small his suitcases were, because he really packed a lot in them.”
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Peery and Lightnin' became good friends at the Ash Grove and spent a lot of time together not only in Los Angeles, but also in the Bay Area, where Peery later moved to work at the Cabale. “The more we talked the more we saw how much we had common ground,” Peery says. “He was an extremely complicated man. He had very little formal education, but he had what they call ‘mother wit' to a great degree. I remember laughing a lot. He could really turn a phrase.”
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One night, when Lightnin' wasn't working, Peery told him he wanted to take him to a quiet place, where everything would be relaxed so he could enjoy his time off. But as it turned out, the evening was anything but relaxed: “I took him to this coffee house called the Xanadu and … there was a big fight…. I was trying to keep everybody away from Lightnin' and his guitar and so on.

And this one guy started cursing at Lightnin'. So I had to grab him and take him outside, and we got into a fight. And the guy had a knife and cut me, but I didn't know it. He was a black guy. And Lightnin' just sat there, and I'm really glad he did. But I didn't know I had been cut until later when somebody asked, ‘Is that blood on the back of your pants?' So I had to go to the emergency room and they fixed me up there. And when I came back, Lightnin' says, ‘Little as you are, you don't need but one ass hole.' He could come up with things like that all the time.”
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On another occasion, Peery says he and Lightnin' stayed up after hours with an Israeli dance group: “They were at UCLA, and Lightnin' was at the Ash Grove. And so they thought, ‘Soon as we get off the show, we got to get over to the Ash Grove to see if we can see this guy,' because they had all of his recordings back in Israel. So they came over there. I was just locking the Ash Grove up and me and Lightnin' were the only two people there, and this huge limousine pulled up and all of these half-naked girls get out. I says to Lightnin', ‘Do you think you might wanna give them a private concert?' And he says, ‘Well, it looks like I ought to.' So I took some wine and stuff from the cooler and we went across the street to where he was stayin' at the time … and he sang and they danced all night long. Next thing you knew the sun was comin' up.”
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