Lightnin' Hopkins - Double Blues - 1973/1989

Lightnin' Hopkins' plaintive, soft-rolling blues style is exemplified on "Let's Go Sit on the Lawn," "Just a Wristwatch on My Arm," "I'm a Crawling Black Snake," Willie Dixon's "My Babe," and others. Accompanied only by himself on guitar (and oh what a guitar he plays), Leonard Gaskin (bass), and Herb Lovelle (drums), Hopkins' seductive, intricate guitar picks and strums will dance around in your head long after this CD has played. His voice, which sounds like it's aged in Camels and Jim Beam, conveys his heartfelt sagas to the fullest. A prolific songwriter, Hopkins wrote every song except the Dixon tune.-- by Andrew Hamilton


Tracklist

1. Let's Go Sit On the Lawn 4:17 2. I'm Taking A Devil of a Chance 3:56 3. I Got Tired 4:40 4. I Asked The Bossman 6:46 5. Just A Wristwatch On My Arm 3:38 6. I Woke Up This Morning 5:55 7. I Was Standing on 75 Highway 5:14 8. I'm Going To Build Me a Heaven of My Own 5:59 9. My Babe 3:23 10. Too Many Drivers 3:32 11. I'm A Crawling Black Snake 4:51 12. Rocky Mountain Blues 3:54 13. I Mean Goodbye 3:03 14. The Howling Wolf 3:57 15. Black Ghost Blues 3:34 16. Darling, Do You Remember Me? 3:43 17. Lonesome Graveyard 5:30

All Selections Recorded May4-5,1964

Personnel:
Lightnin' Hopkins - Guitar,Vocals
Leonard Gaskin - Bass
Herbie Lovelle - Drums

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Lightnin' Hopkins - Goin' Away - 1963.

Review:

For the 1963 album Goin' Away Lightnin' Hopkins was backed by a spare rhythm section -- bassist Leonard Gaskin and drummer Herb Lovelle -- who managed to follow his ramshackle, instinctual sense of rhythm quite dexterously, giving Hopkins' skeletal guitar playing some muscle. Still, the spotlight remains  Hopkins, who is in fine form here. There are no real classics here, but everything is solid, particularly "Stranger Here" and "You Better Stop Her," making it worth investigation by serious fans of Hopkins' classic material.

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Lightnin' Hopkins - Dirty's Triple Set : Hootin' the Blues (1965) , How Many More Years I Got (1962) and Flash Lightnin' (1988).

 Review

The most important part of Lightnin' Hopkins' career was spent in juke joints in Houston, but during the early 1960s, he also became a star along the folk circuit, playing clubs that catered mostly to college students eager to hear authentic acoustic blues. Several of those shows were recorded over the years to capitalize, and while the albums don't have the same importance as Hopkins' classic blues sides of the 1940s and 1950s, they do show another side of the man, and one he seemed to take to very naturally. Hootin' The Blues is one of Hopkins' better folk club concerts, capturing him in an intense performance on acoustic guitar, rapping (in the sense of talking) about the blues and what it means as he introduces some powerful songs: "Blues Is a Feeling," "In the Evenin'," and "Meet Me in the Bottom," among others. The best moment, though, is his reinvention of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" as an acoustic guitar number (trust me, it works), which displays the kind of fingering that must've made a young Eric Clapton want to sit down and cry. 

 Review

Though he had been performing since the 1920s, Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins was a fresh face to the majority of the young folk audiences of the 1960s. On the verge of drifting into obscurity, the singer had been rediscovered by enthusiast Mack McCormick and promoted to college crowds as a singer/guitarist in the folk-blues mold. What followed was a series of albums cut both solo and with session musicians for a variety of labels. How Many More Years I Got was one of the earliest. The players here are extremely loose, betraying a casual interest in the task at hand. They sound like a group of borrowed session men, but were in fact a small combo familiar both with each other and Hopkins himself. Bassist Donald Cooks, pianist Buster Pickens, drummer "Spider" Kilpatrick, and Hopkins' harp-playing cousin, Billy Bizor, all played on a number of the guitarist's dates during the early '60s. Hopkins was apparently reluctant to do second takes, however, and these recordings show it. The singer leads the group with his relaxed lines and Kilpatrick follows, further defining the tempo with the light, stiff patter of his drums. Bizor occasionally plays the role of catalyst, though his moans, hollers, and vocal/harmonica dialogues do little to increase the interest of his partners. Things pick up slightly during the album's second half, though even then the performances hardly approach the level of Hopkins' solo sides from the period, let alone his best work.

Dirty:

Again Allmusic gives 4.5 star rate and no review... This is another great collection.

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Sonny Terry - Sonny Is King - 1962.

Review

Although their styles were regions apart and they'd never performed together previously, Georgia harmonica ace Sonny Terry and Texas guitar titan Lightnin' Hopkins fit like foot in sock when producer Kenneth S. Goldstein paired them at Rudy Van Gelder's studio on October 26, 1960. As LeRoi Jones observed in the original album notes, "There is a meeting of ways, where the light and the sad seem to come together simply as blues." Selections six through 10 were recorded the following year, and Terry was back in the more familiar company of another great guitarist, his longtime partner Brownie McGhee.

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Lightnin' Hopkins - Texas Blues Giant - 2010.

Review

There was nobody quite like Lightnin’ Hopkins. John Lee Hooker may have made more records but even he couldn’t match the consistently high level of Hopkins’ creativity. He and his vast repertoire represented the epitome of Texas country blues. No question. He came from a musical family and his unique guitar style was fashioned from the traditions he learned in the presence of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Texas Alexander, a distant cousin. His guitar both underscored and complemented the songs he drew from his own life and the lives of those around him. His recording career began in 1946 and hardly paused for the next three decades.

In that time, he created an amazing miscellany of original blues, starting with "Katie Mae Blues", through "Shotgun Blues", "Automobile Blues", "Long Way From Texas", "Dirty House Blues", "Sad News From Korea" and "Ain’t It A Shame" to his last major commercial sessions for the New York-based Herald label in April 1954, which make up the entire third disc here. Songs like "Don’t Think ’Cause You’re Pretty", "Nothin’ But The Blues", "Lonesome In Your Home", "Sittin’ Down Thinkin’" and "Lightnin’ Don’t Feel Well" showed that the wellspring of his inspiration hadn’t dried up. Nor was he always serious, as "Lightnin’s Boogie", "Grandma’s Boogie" and "Hopkins Sky Hop" proved.

Lightnin’ Hopkins went on from these recordings to become an international blues star before his death in January 1982. He may have travelled in foreign climes but his heart was always in Houston’s Dowling Street, amongst the friends and neighbours whose lives he memorialised in his songs

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FLAC - 542 Mb
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Lightnin' Hopkins - The Complete Prestige/Bluesville Recordings - 1991.

Review

This is a seven-CD box set that repackages all 11 LPs that Lightnin' Hopkins recorded for Bluesville and Prestige during the first half of the 1960s: Last Night Blues, Lightnin', Blues in My Bottle, Walkin' This Road By Myself, Lightnin' and Co., Smokes Like Lightning, Hootin' the Blues, Goin' Away, Down Home Blues, Soul Blues and My Life in the Blues. The very prolific Hopkins (who was never loyal to any one label) also recorded for Candid, Arhoolie, Fire and Vee Jay during the period! The bulk of My Life in the Blues is actually a lengthy and rather historic interview that Samuel Charters conducted with Hopkins. A special bonus of the set is 13 often exciting tracks from a previously unissued concert at the Swarthmore College Folk Festival. The music throughout the box covers quite a variety of moods and subject matter (with Hopkins being unaccompanied on 34 of the tracks) and definitively sums up the veteran bluesman's later period.

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Lightnin' Hopkins - Mojo Hand - 1962.

Review

This album, recorded for Fire Records, is especially interesting because it casts Hopkins in a more R&B-flavored environment. This obvious effort to get a hit makes for some excellent blues; moody and powerful performances play throughout. There's even a charming novelty Christmas blues, "Santa."

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Lightnin' Hopkins - Broken Hearted Blues (2003)

Review

These are the 1950-52 recordings done for "Sittin In With" and "Jax" labels. Strong song selection and excellent sound. Compiled and remastering was done by Steve Hoffman. 

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FLAC - 222 Mb
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Lightnin' Hopkins - Lightnin' And The Blues (The Herald Sessions) - 2001.

Review

Lightnin' Hopkins' many albums are remarkably consistent (or all of them sound the same, depending on the way you want to phrase it), featuring his semi-improvised autobiographical lyrics sung over a stock set of slow blues riffs, with the occasional speeded-up boogie tossed in, and now and then a turn at the piano. Whether Hopkins played acoustic or electric guitar really didn't make much difference in his sound, Lightnin' was Lightnin' either way. While this set of recordings he made for New York-based Herald Records (the actual sessions were held in Houston) in 1954 with drummer Ben Turner and bassist Donald Cooks doesn't deviate much from the stock Hopkins template, it is particularly sharp, featuring some of the best electric guitar he ever played. The songs themselves are short, sweet, and to the point, often trailing off after a couple of verses, which gives sides like "Life I Used to Live" an added poignancy while adding an intangible sincerity to cuts like "Don't Think Cause You're Pretty." Hopkins also amps up on guitar more than usual, particularly with the blistering "Hopkins' Sky Hop," making the Herald recordings essential for Hopkins fans. Lightnin' cut 26 tracks at the sessions, 12 of which were originally released on LP as Lightnin' and the Blues in 1960, and then reissued in that sequence numerous times under different titles, including My Baby's Gone in 2005 by Fruit Tree Records, and simply as Lightnin' Hopkins by Dressed to Kill in 2001. Buddha released Lightnin' and the Blues in 2001 with four bonus tracks from the sessions added, while London's Ember Records collected all 26 Herald sides on one disc as Remember Me in 2000. Whatever the version, these are some of the best and most focused tracks Lightnin' Hopkins ever cut.

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Lightnin' Hopkins - Texas Bles Man - 1969.

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The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins (1969)

Review


The great Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins is captured brilliantly in this deeply moving film. Blank reveals Lightnin's inspiration, and features a generous helping of classic blues. Includes performances at an outdoor barbeque and a black rodeo; and a visit to his boyhood town of Centerville, Texas. This powerful portrait is among Blank's special masterworks.


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Lightnin' Hopkins -1959.

Review

Originally released as The Roots of Lightnin' Hopkins, Smithsonian/Folkways' Lightnin' Hopkins was recorded in 1959. Upon its initial release, it was a pivotal part of the blues revival and helped re-spark interest in Hopkins. Before it was recorded, the bluesman had disappeared from sight; after a great deal of searching, Sam Charters found Hopkins in a rented one-room apartment in Houston. Persuading Lightnin' with a bottle of gin, Charters convinced Hopkins to record ten songs in that room, using only one microphone. The resulting record was one of the greatest albums in Hopkins' catalog, a skeletal record that is absolutely naked in its loneliness and haunting in its despair. These unvarnished performances arguably capture the essence of Lightnin' Hopkins better than any of his other recordings, and it is certainly one of the landmarks of the late-'50s/early-'60s blues revival.

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