Alan Govenar (36 page)

“Bud Russell Blues” was a talking blues about a legendary lawman who worked as a transfer agent for the Texas prison system for thirty-nine years, beginning in 1905, and was known for his roughness and cruelty. When Russell retired in 1944, the
Dallas Morning News
reported that he had delivered 115,000 persons to prisons around the state and had handled many noted Texas criminals, including Clyde and Buck Barrow and Raymond Hamilton: “He told tough guys, ‘You're just forty years too late if you think you're tougher than I am.'”
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In “Bud Russell Blues” Lightnin's voice was filled with the disdain of a convict sentenced to a prison farm in 1910. “Sure is hot out here,” he began, punctuating his words with a piercing guitar run, “Bud Russell don't care…. You know, Bud Russell drove them pretty women just like he did them ugly men.” And in the end, he pleaded, “Please take care of my wife and child, I may not turn back to my home life,” warning, “You know, the next time the boss man hits me I'm gonna give him a big surprise, And I ain't jokin' neither.”

In contrast to the harshness of “Bud Russell Blues,” “Little Antoinette” was more sentimental as Lightnin' expressed his deep affection for the woman he loved, but it was also tainted with a sense of remorse once she was gone from his bed.

Carroll Peery, who had worked at the Cabale in Berkeley, recalls that when Lightnin' stayed with him, he'd talk about his wife Antoinette, but then bring “dates” back to his apartment: “Lightnin' liked his women, but he was cool. He never acted like low life. His style was if he met somebody, white or black, and he was attracted to her, he'd get to know her well before he'd bring her home. He was very careful; on one hand he totally understood white society, but on the other hand he was scared to death of it, especially when he was by himself. Antoinette didn't travel much with him, but one time she showed up when he wasn't expecting her. This was in 1967, after I had left the Cabale. I had arranged for him to perform at the Forum on Telegraph Avenue and the place was big and full of hippies and students who really liked folk and blues. So the darndest thing happened. He was on stage performing, and Antoinette walked through the door. Never gave him any warning. She wanted to catch him, and afterwards, they had a big flap about that, but when I saw it, I knew I better get a certain person [with whom Lightnin' was having a little fling] out of there. Antoinette and Lightnin' were shouting. But he didn't shout very much. She was doing most of the shouting. And he was criticizing her for showing up. Usually Antoinette was very careful with what she said and did. But there was a lot of fire in that woman.”
²⁰

At some point in 1968, Dr. Cecil Harold, an African American surgeon in Houston (who retired in 1994), started to act as Lightnin's manager. Harold, who was considerably younger than Lightnin', said he started to work with Hopkins because Lightnin' needed help. Having listened to his music for years, Harold wanted to meet Hopkins, and in 1967, he saw that Lightnin' was playing at the Jewish Community Center and went to see him. The two men met and talked and struck up a friendship.
²¹
About a year later, Lightnin' told Harold that he was getting ripped off by the people who were booking and recording him and that he needed help in keeping up with his scheduled dates. “He never was completely sure where he was supposed to play,” Harold said. “He'd tell someone he was to play at this place Saturday, and then he might tell someone else the same thing. I just organized things for him, took his calls and made sure he got a fair deal. I never got any money out of it. I did it because I loved his music and him.”
²²
The extent to which Harold was involved with Lightnin's bookings is unclear. As many have observed, Lightnin' was his own man, and as he became more well known, he was able to do essentially whatever he wanted and get paid. Still he often needed help in getting what was promised to him, and Harold was invaluable in his role as a buffer and manager of his business affairs.

During the first four months of 1968, Lightnin' had five sessions in rapid succession, but none compared to the intensity and focus of his
Texas Blues Man
album on Arhoolie. On January 3 and 4, Lightnin' recorded one of the strangest albums of his career that was given the pretentiously psychedelic title
Free Form Patterns
for the local International Artists label at the old Gold Star studios in Houston. For the session Lightnin' was accompanied by his longtime friend, Billy Bizor, on harmonica, as well as by Duke Davis on bass and Danny Thomas on drums, who were both members of the psychedelic rock band The 13th Floor Elevators. Overall, the recordings were raggedy and mixed badly: “Fox Chase” had a pop country beat with Billy Bizor on harmonica and vocals performing a sloppy version of a traditional tune; “Give Me Time to Think” had a fuller R & B sound; “Mr. Charlie” rehashed old material and rambled on. “Mini Skirt” was a humorous commentary on 1960s fashion, but the mixing muddies the song; when the piano comes in, it drowns out all the other instruments.

Mansel Rubinstein, who had the pawnshop in the Third Ward that Lightnin' frequented, proposed the idea for an LP to Lelan Rogers, who was the chief A&R man at International Artists.
²³
“Lelan and I would see each other at different places around town,” Rubenstein says, “and one conversation led to another. So Lelan came by to see me one day, and I told Lightnin' about it and he said okay so long as he was paid his one hundred dollars a song in cash.”
²⁴
Davis and Thomas were already quite familiar with Lightnin' and were excited by the idea. “We were thrilled,” Davis recalled, and after Rogers presented the terms to Noble Ginther, one of the owners of International Artists, the session was planned.

The stories surrounding the session are legendary but muddled, and much of what's been published or told about the session is false: from Johnny Winter sitting in and Paul McCartney and John Lennon calling and asking if they could come to the studio to Lightnin' being paid one thousand dollars a song. Lightnin' was never interviewed about what actually transpired, but during the session, Davis and Thomas were doing psychedelic drugs, and by all accounts, Lightnin' was drinking heavily.

John David Bartlett, who had been signed by International Artists right out of high school, says he picked Lightnin' up at his apartment on Gray Street in the Third Ward to take him to the session. “Noble Ginther asked me,” Bartlett says, “and I told him sure, ‘Absolutely wonderful, I'd love to do it.' He gave me an address and I went over there to the Third Ward … with a bottle of whiskey that he handed me to take to Lightnin'…. And I knocked on the door and went into the house … it was a very tense, very weird atmosphere. It felt like I was definitely not the most welcome human in the world. Lightnin' was in the kitchen, and he was trying to decide whether or not he wanted to go or not, and finally I talked him into going along.”
²⁵

Thomas, however, said he went with Lightnin' to pick up Billy Bizor “in the ghetto from a one-room apartment with a cot and basin hanging off the wall. And there were lots of people [at the studio], many of whom were musicians, and the scene was at times chaotic. Danny and I were the rhythm section on all the tracks on
Free Form Patterns.
The other players were Billy Bizor on harmonica and Elmo [Elmore Nixon] on piano. Lelan was there for most of the session and Fred Carroll engineered. Lelan was in his usual state and most interestingly, Danny and I both were on psychedelics of some sort, but Lightnin' made a comment, ‘I don't have nothin' against playin' with white boys but we're gonna drink first!' Whereupon he pulled out some homemade ‘shine' and we passed the bottle. Interesting mix with drugs, to say the least. Fred would put a roll of tape on and we'd just play. Lightnin' would say, ‘Here's one that goes like this' and just kick it off. No explanation of key or arrangement, just play the blues. It was mostly 16-bar blues but occasionally it would be 15-bar, or 17-bar and no one would know it was comin'. That was just the way Lightnin' did it. Lightnin' wouldn't say, ‘Here's what happens here,' or anything like that, he'd just say, ‘Well, here's one that goes like this' and kick off another song instead of trying to explain the previous debacle. Fred actually left the control booth periodically since there wasn't much engineering to do. He'd come in now and then and just throw on a clean roll of tape and we'd keep pickin'.”
²⁶

Despite the unevenness of the recordings, Lightnin' liked Thomas and Davis and asked them to accompany him on other gigs over the next two months, when they weren't touring with the Elevators. “Lightnin' used Duke and me for live performances,” Thomas said, “at Love Street Light Circus in Houston and at Vulcan Gas Co. in Austin.
²⁷
I spent about the next two months as his drummer for live shows because the Elevators were doing studio work and weren't doing live gigs. There was a soup kitchen/cafe in the Montrose/Westheimer area where we all used to hang out for good soul food and jam sessions at night called Cleveland's. Lightnin' would bring his wife [Antoinette]. They were stylishly dressed and Lightnin' was always a gentleman.”
²⁸
Lightnin' even appeared in a show with the 13th Floor Elevators at Rice University on March 7, 1968.

For Bartlett, Lightnin' was a major influence. “He even taught me songs,” Bartlett says. “I was particularly drawn to the song ‘Mr. Charlie.' He showed me an E minor thing that he did, and I played ‘Mr. Charlie' for him, and he said, ‘You played that pretty good, and you have my permission to sing that song.' And I made it part of my repertory.”
²⁹

Within weeks after Lightnin' recorded for International Artists, Stan Lewis decided to bring him back into the studio for his Jewel label. He made the necessary arrangements with Lightnin' and sent Don Logan, who had previously worked as a deejay on KEEL-AM, a top forty station in Shreveport, to produce the LP in Houston at Bill Holford's studio on January 17, 1968. Logan had started work that year as vice president of Lewis's recording company, which by then included three different labels: Jewel Records, Paula Records, and Ronn Records.

“Stan set the session [with Lightnin'] up,” Logan says, “As far as I know, Lightnin' did not have a phone number that he gave out to anybody to where they could just call him. As far as I know, there was just a pay phone number that Stan would call…. Lightnin' liked to handle his own business.” But when Logan got to Houston, finding Lightnin' was more complicated than he anticipated. “It was one of the largest ghettos that I had ever seen,” Logan recalls, “and I'd been to Washington and Detroit…. I flew down to Houston by myself and got a rental car. And then a guy named Wild Child Butler, he was a blues singer and harp player who had recorded for Jewel, he was one of our artists; he helped me locate Lightnin'. I spent two days looking and finally we saw him in his Chrysler with his big whip CB antenna on the back, waved at him. Wild Child and I had been to every dive in the ghetto there. ‘Hey have you seen Lightnin'?' Finally Wild Child went into a grocery store and asked if anyone had seen Lightnin' around … and the people there knew him.”
³⁰

For the session, Lightnin' put together a small band with Butler on harmonica, Elmore Nixon on piano, and two other sidemen on bass and drums, whose names were not written down. However, once the session was underway, Logan realized that the drummer was a problem. “He would slow up and get fast, and then slow down and get fast. And I said, ‘Well, Lightnin' this is never going to see the light of day, and I got money in my pocket and I'm not going to give it to you if we don't get a good cut on these things.' And I told him the drummer would have to go.”
³¹

Finally Lightnin' gave in; he dismissed the drummer who was there and called another one. While they waited for him to arrive, Holford said, “You know, I'm going to have to charge you for the time while we're waitin' for the drummer to get here.” So Logan tried to get Lightnin' to record a song he had written, but he wouldn't do that and Logan decided to record an interview with him. The interview has never been released and, according to Lewis, it's “buried away” in an off-site storage facility he rented. In the interview, Lightnin' rambled on about playing at Carnegie Hall years before and retold the stories he'd been telling interviewers for years. “He even talked about playing for the Queen [of England],” Logan says, unaware that this was yet another “myth” that Lightnin' sought to perpetuate. Interestingly enough, he had told the same story to Lelan Rogers during the International Artists session, and it appeared on the back cover notes of
Free Form Patterns.

When the new drummer arrived, the session proceeded quickly; Lightnin' recorded eleven songs and was finished in about four hours. Overall, however, the recordings were rough; the band was unrehearsed, and the recordings rehashed old material. The stand-out on this LP is “Vietnam War,” which he had never recorded before and had an ominous, though enigmatic, tone.

Logan was relieved to finish the session, though he realized he might need to do some overdubbing before the LP was released. But when he prepared to leave the studio, he saw the drummer who had been fired waiting near the door. “We were standing shoulder to shoulder, and Lightnin' stepped in between us … and Wild Child said later, ‘Man, you almost bought the farm there because the guy had a knife.' I never saw a knife … but Lightnin' soothed him over.”
³²
In addition to the problems getting the drummer right, Logan also had difficulty getting Lightnin' to sign a contract. “I had publishing contracts and recording contracts for Lightnin' to sign,” Logan remembers, “and I said, ‘Look, man, I got the money, but I'm not going to give it to you unless you're going to sign this contract.' So what he did, he gave me the contract and he signed it with an X. Well I knew what to do when somebody signed it with an X, I had my witnesses sign and say that's his signature.” But then Logan noticed that he carried a notebook around with him. “He had a list of songs written down, and in there he told me was every song that he had ever recorded since he first started recording. And who he recorded it for. And he had everything that he had recorded for us.”
³³
While Lightnin' may have written down his songs in the notebook he was carrying, it seems likely that someone else, perhaps Antoinette or Harold, had helped him. He certainly was able to sign his name if he wanted to, as evidenced by other documents that exist from years earlier. By signing with an
X
he was simply expressing his refusal to abide by any contracts presented to him.