Lightnin' Hopkins - Mojo Hand - Extended Liner Notes
Lightnin’ Hopkins - Mojo Hand
Texas blues guitar great Lightnin’ Hopkins officially transitioned from chasing R&B hits to standing in the folk-blues vanguard when he swapped his electric guitar for an acoustic model and recorded a 1959 solo album for musicologist Sam Charters that instantly catapulted him into the emerging demographic. Yet the title track of Lightnin’s subsequent Mojo Hand LP for Bobby Robinson’s Harlem-based Fire label, recorded in November of ‘60, turned out to be one of Lightnin’s bigger R&B sellers, a perfect hybrid of stripped-down Lone Star blues and an infectious groove that immediately earmarked it as a jukebox staple.
Lightnin’ spent six tumultuous weeks in New York that autumn, cutting four albums for various labels, appearing at a Carnegie Hall benefit for the folk music magazine Sing Out!, and guesting on CBS Television Workshop for an episode along with newcomer Joan Baez. Only a short time earlier, Hopkins’ popularity was limited to his adopted environs in Houston’s Third Ward as he eked out a living by gigging in local taverns. The Centerville, Texas native’s time in the national spotlight appeared at an end after being a recurring presence on the R&B hit parade from 1949 to ‘52 with hits on the Modern, Gold Star, Aladdin, and Sittin’ in With labels.
Although his labels were known for a string of R&B and doo-wop hits, Robinson was a dedicated blues fan whose Fire/Fury talent roster included Elmore James, Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, and whooping harpist Buster Brown. Robinson recalled paying Hopkins $400 in lieu of future royalties; upfront money was the dexterous guitarist’s usual demand when recording for a new client because longterm contracts meant nothing to him.
Lightnin’ laid down his entire magnificent Fire album during one marathon session at Beltone Studios in midtown Manhattan. Backed only by drummer Delmar Donnell, who admirably managed to stay out of Lightnin’s way (no easy task considering the guitarist’s eccentric sense of timing), and a very unobtrusive bassist, Hopkins rolled through 18 songs to earn those four C-notes. Robinson subsequently chose nine tracks for release on Mojo Hand, relegating the remainder to his archives for decades. Happily, they’re reunited on this collection.
Along with the romping title item and a similarly lively “Sometimes She Will,” “Coffee For Mama,” and “Black Mare Trot” (the latter an instrumental), Mojo Hand held its share of lonesome downbeat entries—“Awful Dream,” “Glory Be,” “Shine On, Moon!,” the Yuletide blues “Santa,” and “Have You Ever Loved A Woman,” the latter shifting Hopkins over to piano.
Robinson left several more off the LP that eased along in the same after-hours groove (“Houston Bound,” “Bring Me My Shotgun,” “Baby I Don’t Care”), along with the lowdown shuffle “How Long Has The Train Been Gone.” Excavated more recently from the Fire vaults are the rollicking charmer “Shake That Thing” (containing exceptionally stinging fretwork from Lightnin’); a mournful “Last Night” that opens quoting Little Walter’s after-hours blues of the same title but quickly goes its own way; a pair of boogie-based instrumentals, “Walk A Long Time” (a single sung chorus seems to inform Bobby that “this is the last” thing Hopkins was going to record that day) and a brief “Just Pickin’,” and a real rarity: Lightnin’ in the unfamiliar role of accompanist behind an unidentified female singer on the hard-bitten slow blues “I’m Leaving You Now.”
“Mojo Hand” reportedly cracked the Cash Box singles charts in early 1961, lingering there for five weeks and peaking at #26, though it somehow missed Billboard’s hit listings. Lightnin’s album of the same title stands with his very best and most enduring efforts. With the extra nine selections gracing Sunset Boulevard’s greatly expanded edition, it’s even better.
Born March 15, 1912 (probably, anyway: 1911 has also been cited, as has March 12) in Centerville, Texas, Sam Hopkins was the youngest member of a large family. He mostly grew up in Leona, Texas, developing an early fascination with the guitar after removing his older brother John Henry’s instrument from its position high on a wall and playing it without permission. Before that, eight-year-old Sam had made his own guitar out of a cigar box and screen wire. In 1920, his family traveled to Buffalo, Texas for a General Baptist Association camp meeting where still-unrecorded blues guitar pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson happened to be performing. Lemon heard Sam playing and declared that the young amateur would someday develop into a good guitar player. He was obviously correct in that prediction.
The booming voice of Sam’s first cousin Alger “Texas” Alexander was first featured on shellac in 1927, when the singer traveled to New York to record for OKeh with guitar master Lonnie Johnson backing him up. Sam and the considerably older Texas joined forces to ramble around East Texas together once Hopkins had fully learned his way around a guitar (Alexander required an accompanist, since he didn’t play). Although he did his share of farm work as a young man, Hopkins avoided the backbreaking chore of sharecropping as much as he could, primarily relying on his favorite pastimes of gambling and playing blues to make ends meet.
The bright lights of Houston’s Third Ward eventually proved an irresistible draw to Hopkins, who relocated there during the mid-1940s. It didn’t take him long to get noticed while playing his lonesome, supremely informal brand of blues on swinging Dowling Street. Local talent scout Lola Ann Cullum tracked Hopkins down in 1946 while he was shooting dice at his home. After a quick audition, she offered to accompany Sam to Los Angeles in a quest to secure a recording deal, just as she had recently done for Houston piano pounder Amos Milburn, who she managed.
Alexander was originally slated to make the long jaunt west as well, but Cullum wasn’t entirely convinced of his potential and nixed his participation. Hopkins asked her to bring along pianist Wilson Smith instead, threatening to stay home altogether if she didn’t agree to his demand. Cullum wasn’t overly thrilled about that plan either, but ultimately acquiesced.
“She was a damn good manager. She was just like a mom. If you didn’t have the right sort of clothing and everything, well, she’d see that you got it. She was that kind of person,” recalled the late guitarist Texas Johnny Brown, who got his professional start working as a sideman with Milburn. “I got the name of Texas Johnny Brown from Mrs. Cullum.”
Since Cullum had landed a pact for Milburn with the Mesner brothers’ Aladdin label, she made a beeline for the same firm when she arrived in L.A. with her latest protégés in tow. The duo cut their first shared session for Aladdin in November of 1946, either Cullum or the label dreaming up clever new nicknames for both unknown musicians. Two-fisted 88s ace Smith was christened Thunder, while fleet-fingered Hopkins was logically dubbed Lightnin’. The distinctive sobriquet would stick with Sam for the rest of his life.
Hopkins waxed some genuine classics for Aladdin between 1946 and ‘48: “Katie Mae Blues,” “Short-Haired Woman,” “Play With Your Poodle,” “Shotgun Blues” (precursor to his Fire recording “Bring Me My Shotgun”). Thunder fell by the wayside, but Lightnin’ kept on flashing and crashing, inaugurating a level of prolific studio activity only matched by one other postwar blues guitarist: John Lee Hooker.
Even before he was done with Aladdin, Hopkins was recording for Houston recording engineer Bill Quinn’s Gold Star label. His first national R&B hit in early 1949, “Tim Moore’s Farm,” initially emerged on Gold Star before Quinn sent it to the Bihari brothers’ Modern label in L.A. for national consumption. Hopkins raised the ire of real-life Navasota, Texas plantation owner Tom Moore with his pointed narrative about wretched conditions on Moore’s land, but that didn’t stop the record from making an unlikely national splash. “‘T’ Model Blues,” Lightnin’s next R&B hit later that year, actually dented the national charts on regionally minded Gold Star.
Hopkins found writing fresh material for his sessions so easy that sometimes he found his currently recorded 78 competing on sales sheets with material he’d left behind in other firms’ vaults. Case in point: his 1950 Aladdin release “Shotgun Blues,” which climbed higher at #5 on Billboard’s R&B listings than any of his other releases, was more than two years old by the time the Mesners got around to pressing it up (by that time, Lightnin’ was long gone from their operation). When Gold Star was on the verge of folding in 1951, it sold 32 of its Hopkins masters to the Biharis, who muddied the waters further by issuing most of them as 78s on their RPM subsidiary.
Bobby Shad’s New York-based Sittin’ in With logo was the next company to recruit Lightnin’ as an artist. The nimble guitarist scored a pair of national R&B hits for Shad’s enterprise in 1952: “Give Me Central 209” and “Coffee Blues” (the same theme that Hopkins later revived for Fire). After a slew of singles on Sittin’ in With and its Jax and Harlem sister imprints, Hopkins ascended to major label status in 1952, cutting four platters for Chicago’s Mercury Records and four more the next year for Decca (all done in Houston). If Hopkins didn’t enter a studio by his lonesome, he was usually accompanied by bassist Donald Cooks and a drummer (he used Connie Kroll quite a bit).
Like his Lone Star compatriot T-Bone Walker, Hopkins made outsized impressions on a small batallion of up-and-coming Texas blues guitarists, including Houston’s Albert Collins, whose icy, reverb-laced licks were seemingly pretty far removed from Lightnin’s rural boogies and lowdown blues. “I was influenced by Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker when I first started out learning how to play guitar,” confirmed the late Collins. “Lightnin’ Hopkins was a cousin of mine. I used to watch him when I was a kid.”
The Master of the Telecaster wasn’t the only young Texas blues guitarist enamored of Hopkins’ singular style. Johnny Copeland had easy proximity to Lightnin’ and several other Houston legends and took full advantage of it as he matured. “Elmore Nixon lived a block away. Lightnin’ Hopkins lived three blocks away. Hop Wilson lived maybe three blocks away,” recalled the late guitarist. “We could hear these guys every night, so you=d just go around.”
“I used to see him when I was a kid, Lightnin’ and T-Bone. I’d see more of them than I did anybody,” said the late Tomcat Courtney. “Lightnin’ was a cool cat, man. Well, he drank, you know what I mean? He drank. T-Bone drank too, but not as much as Lightnin’. But they both liked to shoot--including B.B. King--they all at that time liked to shoot dice. So I was very young then, but I used to see them in crap games, especially T-Bone. T-Bone loved to shoot dice. I’ve been in several craps games with him. Lightnin’ was the same way. But Lightnin’ drank more.
“Lightnin’ used to come up there and play, you know, like the fall of the year, in them little joints. He would play all out in West Texas, Albuquerque, he played all out in them places. He liked gin, is what he really liked!”
Electric guitar was blazing in the commercial blues arena by 1954. Hopkins laid down 28 torrid masters in Houston for New York-based Herald Records, his axe cranked up past the boiling point as he peeled off one sizzling boogie after another in front of Cooks and drummer Ben Turner. The 42-year-old Lightnin’ anticipated the outbreak of rock and roll on the hurtling instrumental “Hopkins’ Sky Hop,” taken at a breakneck pace. Once again, the guitarist knocked off so many masters in a short time that Herald continued to issue them as fresh singles nearly six years later.
Apart from a couple of releases on Bob Tanner’s TNT label out of San Antonio and one-offs for Johnny Vincent’s Ace logo and Henry Stone’s Chart imprint (all during the mid-‘50s), that concluded Lightnin’s first torrent of recording for African American blues lovers. He receded into the woodwork around Houston’s Third Ward, playing local gin joints and house parties. His days as an R&B hitmaker appeared to be long over.
Then Charters tracked Lightnin’ down—no easy task for a white outsider in the insular Houston ghetto, inaugurating the next chapter of Hopkins’ amazing career. Using a hand-held mic plugged into a portable tape recorder, Charters recorded enough material for an entire album in Lightnin’s boarding house room on Hadley Street in January of ‘59. Charters sold the results to Moe Asch’s Folkways Records in New York, and the same ultra-cool bluesman who had pumped his boogies through a wide-open amplifier half a decade prior went full circle and embraced acoustic folk-blues anew for a different but no less appreciative crowd. Houston musicologist Mack McCormick got involved too, recording Lightnin’ for Tradition and various European concerns as well as serving as his manager.
Hopkins may not have cut any 78s during the pre-war era (though he was certainly old enough to have done so), but he was hotfooting it around Texas back then and could reminisce about those days at length for eager young interviewers. Of course, perhaps he embroidered the truth a bit when he brought up his alleged sentence to serve on a chain gang during his rambling days. Hopkins began touring the country, heading to Los Angeles in the summer of 1960 for some high-profile gigs and a unique recording session with Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Big Joe Williams that sounded more like four old friends informally making music in someone’s living room than a formal studio session.
The historic New York trip that autumn resulted in a couple of albums for Prestige’s Bluesville subsidiary (Lightnin’ was backed by local session aces Leonard Gaskin on bass and drummer Belton Evans) and another for Candid in addition to the seminal Fire masters presented on this collection. Hopkins continued his association with Bluesville and its Prestige parent logo all the way through 1964, spawning a slew of LPs. That didn’t deter him from making more albums for Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie Records in northern California. Unlike Bobby Robinson at Fire, these companies aimed their product primarily at folk-blues aficionados that flocked to see Lightnin’ at prestigious festivals but likely wouldn’t have set foot in the hole-in-the-wall Houston taverns where the veteran bluesman felt more comfortable (traveling wasn’t his bag).
Verve-Folkways captured two albums’ worth of Hopkins performances on tape in the autumn of 1965. Lightnin’ commenced one of his longest-running recording affiliations that same year with Stan Lewis’ Shreveport-based Jewel Records. Lewis strongly believed that an audience remained for traditional blues within the Southern community that nurtured it and was eager to provide new Hopkins product to fill that void. By that time, Lightnin’ had established a set of strictly enforced studio rules that he rigidly enforced, demanding payment upon delivery rather than awaiting royalties that might never arrive in his mailbox.
Hopkins had no use for fussy producers. “He wouldn’t give you but one take,” marveled the late Lewis. “We tried to conserve tape in those days, but we should have let it keep on rollin’. The outtakes on some of that stuff is so great today, it’s worth as much as a song is!”
Studio sites for Hopkins’ Jewel output varied. Lewis produced his first album for the company at Bill Holford’s Houston studio, then dispatched him to Robin Hood Brians’ facility in Tyler, Texas for another session and allowed him to venture to Muscle Shoals in 1969 to cut The Great Electric Show and Dance. That modern-sounding LP forced Lightnin’ to deal with a new generation of young white backing musicians who weren’t altogether accustomed to his eccentric sense of timing, resulting in a few tentative moments along the way.
Along the same newfangled lines, producer Lelan Rogers coupled Hopkins with the rocked-out rhythm section from the 13th Floor Elevators for his 1968 album Freeform Patterns on Rogers’ International Artists label. As always, the intractable Lightnin’ pulled off his flirtation with the rock world as adroitly as he did on every other session he ever cut.
Hopkins stood well apart from his country blues peers in a variety of ways. Equally conversant on electric and acoustic guitar, given to rapid-fire bursts during his boogie numbers and uncommonly sparse accompaniment on his dirge-like downbeat pieces, Lightnin’s conversational vocal approach (he often improvised lyrics on the spot, interacting with his audience one-on-one or wryly commenting on the day’s news events) gave an intimate tone to his presentation. His hair processed into a decidedly urban conk, Hopkins hit the stage in crisp suits, sizing up his crowd from behind a pair of shades while always projecting an ultra-cool air.
Lightnin’ had little patience for sidemen unable to follow his unpredictable chord changes onstage. He sent a hapless bassist home mid-set during an otherwise mesmerizing early ‘80s show at Chicagofest, an annual musical extravaganza on the city’s lakefront; decked out in a blinding white suit that contrasted starkly with the pitch-black water directly behind him, he was every inch a blues legend who had the assembled throng in the palm of his hand from first note to last. And he was right--subtracting the bassist from the equation made him sound even better.
Sam Hopkins kept playing until shortly prior to his January 30, 1982 passing in his beloved Houston stomping grounds. Electric or acoustic, there was no mistaking Lightnin’s introspective, atmospheric approach: he epitomized Texas blues at its finest. And there’s no better starting point to appreciate his genius than the Fire masters comprising this glorious collection.
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
Mojo Hand—The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins, by Timothy J. O’Brien and David Ensminger (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2013)
Blues Records 1943-70: A Selective Discography, Vol. 1, A to K, by Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven (London: Record Information Services, 1987)
Both Sides Now website: www.bsnpubs.com
Discogs website: www.discogs.com
45cat website: www.45cat.com
Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles 1942-1988, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1991)
Wikipedia website: www.wikipedia.org
YouTube website: www.youtube.com