Alan Govenar

by Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life;Blues

  During Lightnin’s sessions for Quinn in 1949 and 1950, he recorded more than twenty sides. Of these, “Unsuccessful Blues (Can’t Be Successful)” and “Zolo Go” were standouts. “Unsuccessful Blues,” Quinn told Chris Strachwitz, was not planned as part of the session, but was made after Lightnin’ found out that his wife had already collected money from Quinn as an advance payment for recording it. So, as an afterthought, he went back into the studio and made up this song on the spot, accompanied by the jazz band that was assembling for the next session.42

  Boy, you know, I went down to my boss man’s house

  That’s where everybody’s getting paid

  You know, my wife’s been down there

  Takin’ up all in this world that I’ve made

  You know I turned around and went back home

  With my mouth all poked out

  She had even nerve enough to go ask

  “Lightnin’, what is all this bull corn about?”

  And I told her, “Can’t be successful, no matter how I tried”

  In the curiously titled song “Zolo Go,” Lightnin’ made it clear that he was aware of the music of the growing Louisiana Creole population in Houston’s Fifth Ward. The word zologo was apparently Quinn’s misunderstanding of Lightnin’s pronunciation of the word zydeco, because in his introduction, which was omitted from the 78 rpm record but was included on the original acetate (and appears on the Arhoolie reissue of the song), Lightnin’ explained: “Let’s zydeco a little while for you folk / You know, young and old likes that.” “Zolo Go” is the only recording in which Lightnin’ mimicked the sound of the accordion, as he accompanied himself on an electric Hammond organ.

  Quinn’s recordings of Lightnin’ were remarkably well done, given the limitations of recording technology and duplication. Andy Bradley, a recording engineer and co-owner of SugarHill Studios43 (the current incarnation of Gold Star) speculates, “With the case of Lightnin’, Quinn parked one … omni-directional microphone in front of him to capture both the guitar and his voice. Probably a foot away from his mouth, and probably a few inches below it that would capture enough of the guitar.”44

  In 1947, “There was no reverb,” Bradley points out. “Quinn was recording direct to disk, cutting a master on a lacquer-coated metal disk. And the cutter had a cutting needle that cut grooves in the master acetate. After he cut one song at a time on the acetate disk, the acetate disk went into an electrolyte bath from which would emerge the stamper, which was a negative image of that acetate. [In order to get protection, many places would offer three-step processing, which included not only the master, which could be used as a stamper, but also a “mother” that could then produce any number of stampers.] And he made a stamper plate for each side, and each plate was then placed on either side of a record pressing machine, and a glob of a warm compound that included shellac [which was generally known as “biscuits”] and that would be placed between the two metal sheets together with the two labels. Basically, the press stamped out the disk and when it was removed, it was put on a turntable and the rough edges were trimmed before it was put in a sleeve.” 45 Quinn frequently did not use full three-step protection because it was costly. The complicated part of the process was not the stamping of the actual disks, and he told Chris Strachwitz that several times the acetate master was destroyed in the electrolyte bath. “That accounts for some missing catalogue numbers,” Strachwitz explains, “though Quinn said that he sometimes forgot the last release number and for safety would just jump a few numbers ahead.”46

  Quinn struggled to keep his business going, and by the late 1940s the competition between independent record labels in Houston was growing. Eddie’s, Macy’s, Freedom, and Peacock were all involved in recording local and regional blues musicians, such as Gatemouth Brown, Little Willie Littlefield, L. C. Williams, Goree Carter, Lester Williams, Peppermint Harris, and Big Walter Price.47 Of these, Don Robey’s Peacock label emerged as the most successful, and in time Robey acquired the Duke label and started the Back Beat and Songbird

  labels.48

  The differences between the Duke/Peacock sound and the music of Lightnin’ Hopkins not only underscored the breadth and complexity of the Houston black music scene, but was also indicative of the social stratification within the African American communities of Houston. Robey favored gospel music and the big band rhythm and blues sound that was popular among an upwardly mobile African American audience, who participated in the social scene of venues like the El Dorado Ballroom and the Club Matinee. For Robey, Lightnin’s blues lacked sophistication; there were no orchestrated arrangements. Lightnin’ played a gritty, improvised style of blues in the low-income dives of the Third Ward, and many of the people who listened to his music were poor rural blacks looking for work and trying to get a foothold in Houston—the factory workers and day laborers who struggled to support themselves and their families. Although there are no demographic studies about who bought Hopkins’s records, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that his blues did also appeal to some African American professionals, who had either moved to Houston from East Texas or who just simply liked Lightnin’s country flair. Dr. Cecil Harold, a respected surgeon in Houston who years later became Hopkins’s manager, says that he “always appreciated the way Lightnin’ could put into words the mood of the black community—especially a black community that was hit especially hard by the Great Depression.” 49

  Lightnin’s records were stacked into jukeboxes in cafes and bars in the Third Ward and the low-income black neighborhoods of Houston, but he did also get some airplay. Black groups had been broadcast in Houston since at least the mid 1930s, when Joe Pullum had a program on KTLC. Moreover, on February 3, 1935, a Houston Chronicle radio log dated showed both Red Calhoun and Giles Mitchell broadcasting on KXYZ that day. In 1941, the Informer mentioned that the gospel quartet the Dixie Four were featured on a local station, and in 1945 the Eddie Taylor Orchestra appeared regularly on KTHT. Lonnie Rochon was the first black disc jockey in Houston (on KNUZ in February 1948). By 1950, there were several black disc jockeys on the air in Texas: Dr. Hepcat on KVET in Austin, Trummie Cain on KLEE in Houston, Bill Harris on KRIC in Beaumont, among others, but white deejays were also starting to play blues and other styles of black music.

  Bill “Rascal” McCaskill, a white deejay on KCOH, says he played Lightnin’ on his show as early as 1952. “When I first started the ‘Harlem Boogie’ on KCOH in 1952,” McCaskill says, “Lightning Hopkins was one of my most requested singers. He was, in my opinion, a super talented artist who could really make a guitar talk. I also remember that when I was at KLEE that he was one of Trummie Cain’s favorite talents, too. Perhaps it was the advent of rhythm and blues and rock music that outdated his numbers as the requests for his songs dwindled down a great deal, but he was still one of the top music makers in the Houston area. I met him one time at the Club Matinee in late 1952.”50 In the summer of 1953 a group of black businessmen headed by Robert C. Meeker bought KCOH, making it the first black-owned station in Texas and the first station in Houston to target black listeners. KCOH was followed in late 1954 by KYOK. According to Texas Johnny Brown, once KCOH became a black-owned station, they rarely “aired any of Lightnin’s music. They were much more geared to the mainstream rhythm and blues of the day, which featured the Duke/Peacock sound.”51

  Despite the limited airplay that Lightnin’ got on Houston radio stations after the mid-1950s, he had already become well known, especially in the segregated Third Ward where he lived and worked most of the time. Lightnin’s music had an edge that he had honed in the gritty juke joints of the Third Ward, and he had built his reputation by giving voice to the downtrodden. In fact, his first song to make it to a national chart was a very unlikely hit. The Gold Star release of Hopkins’s song “Tim Moore’s Farm” on February 12, 1949, went to #13 for one week on Billboard magazine’s “Most Played Juke Box Race Records.”52 Within weeks, Quinn had leased the record, called “a sleeper in the South�
� by Billboard, to the Modern label for national distribution.53 His strategy worked, and in many ways its success was unprecedented. It was a protest song unique to Texas and was one of the only unambiguous black protest songs to ever become commercially viable. Like his decision to release “Jole Blon,” Quinn was not guided by the usual commercial ideas that drove the record business, and this unpredictability is what makes Gold Star and other small regional labels like it especially interesting. A more experienced A&R man may have rejected “Tim Moore’s Farm” on the basis that few would know who “Tim Moore” was, or what exactly Lightnin’ was singing about, making it unfit for commercial release. Quinn was unintentionally oblivious to such considerations.

  “Tim Moore’s Farm” was about the infamous Tom Moore, who owned a plantation in Grimes County, Texas, and was known for his cruelty to the blacks who toiled there. The song itself was traditional with as many as twenty-seven distinct verses that were added by the different singers who performed it. According to Mack McCormick, the song originated in the mid-1930s with a field hand named Yank Thornton who worked on the Moore plantation. McCormick first collected the song with Chris Strachwitz in 1960 from Mance Lipscomb, who at the time wished to remain anonymous on record because he feared reprisal from Moore. Lipscomb sang: “Tom Moore’ll whip you, dare you not to tell.” He believed that if Moore found out that “I put out a song like that I couldn’t live here no more…. ‘Goddam, you put out a song about me and you made a record of it—I’m gonna kill you!’ Or if he didn’t do it, he’d have it done.”

  The song, McCormick wrote, was “a brutally truthful characterization of one particular hardened opportunist who has taken advantage and mistreated his laborers. It is a protest against ‘them bad farm’ where a farmer can get started with only a borrowed five or ten dollar bill, the ease of which dupes him into working against an ever increasing debt, his life circumscribed by fear of the big boss, and the bells which call him from the field to meals and then call him back to the field where the landlord stands with ‘spurs in his horse’s flank’ and ‘the whip in his hand.’”54

  Lightnin’ said he had heard Texas Alexander sing a version of the song, and when he recorded it, he thinly disguised the subject by changing the name from Tom to Tim. But anyone black in East Texas knew whom he was singing about.

  Yes, you know, I got a telegram this morning, boy,

  it say, “Your wife is dead.”

  I show it to Mr. Moore, he said, “Go ahead, nigger,

  you know you got to plow a ridge.”

  That white man said, “It’s been raining, yes, and I’m way behind

  I may let you bury that woman one of these dinner times”

  I told him, “No, Mr. Moore, somebody’s got to go”

  He says, “If you ain’t able to plow, Sam, stay up there and grab you a hoe”

  While Lightnin’ never worked for Tom Moore, he inserted himself into the song, personalizing it and identifying himself with the hardships of those who did. For listeners in 1949, many of whom had already migrated from the country to the city, “Tim Moore’s Farm” epitomized the plight of black sharecroppers and the inhumane conditions to which they were subjected.

  After the success of “Tim Moore’s Farm,” Lightnin’ wanted to get back in the studio at Gold Star as quickly as possible. On August 13, 1949, Billboard reviewed Lightnin’s recording of “Jail House Blues,” which was based on Bessie Smith’s song by the same title. He was accompanied on it by the steel guitar of Hop Wilson, not Frankie Lee Sims, as has been written for decades. The review doomed its potential by calling it “an old-style, sorrowful blues, warbled and guitared in the ancient manner. Staple fare for the Deep South market.” Still, on October 8, 1949, Lightnin’s song “’T’ Model Blues” made it to #8 on the Billboard R & B jukebox charts for one week, even though when it was reviewed with “Jail House Blues” it was called “a provocative double entendre slow blues in the same authentic manner.” 55

  A year later, in September 1950, Lightnin’s “Shotgun Blues,” which he had recorded for Aladdin in 1948, was a hit for four weeks on Billboard’s “Best-Selling Retail Race Records” chart and peaked at #5. Hopkins was more popular than ever, and Quinn, probably because “Shotgun Blues” had sold so well, thought he might be able to boost his revenues with the sales of Lightnin’s records. On December 16, 1950, Quinn entered into another contract with Lightnin’ that gave him a two-hundred-dollar advance at each recording session at which four sides are recorded and a royalty of one and a half cents for each side of the record used for recordings. 56

  A two-hundred-dollar advance at every recording session was generous of Quinn, particularly at a time when even bigger labels were paying less to similar blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, but it also points out how well Lightnin’s records were actually selling, or perhaps, how Quinn expected them to perform in the marketplace. In fact, it was highly unusual for a label to give an artist an advance on every single release, much less an advance of two hundred dollars. How much money Quinn ultimately made from these releases is unknown, and there are no records to indicate whether or not Lightnin’ was ever paid any royalties.

  By the early 1950s, Lightnin’ was nationally known and was firmly part of the R & B mainstream that updated older styles of down-home country blues. In many ways, Hopkins’s career paralleled many of his contemporaries. In Texas, Frankie Lee Sims, one of Lightnin’s cousins, had two acoustic releases on Blue Bonnet around 1948, but then was discovered in Dallas in 1953 by Specialty, which recorded him with electric guitar, bass, and drums. L. C. Williams, Lightnin’s friend in Houston, who was sometimes billed as Lightnin’ Jr. on his Gold Star releases, had a national hit with “Ethel Mae” on Freedom. Lil’ Son Jackson, who probably had little or no direct contact with Lightnin’, was also recorded by Gold Star and then Imperial. Decca discovered Andrew “Smokey” Hogg with B. K. “Black Ace” Turner and brought him to Chicago to record in 1937, and during or right after World War II, he recorded for Modern: his rendition of Big Bill Broonzy’s “Little School Girl” went to #9 on the Billboard R & B charts in 1950. Lightnin’, however, was the most successful of his generation of down-home blues singers from Texas, and the arc of his achievement was comparable to those of both Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker.

  Like Hopkins, Waters and Hooker came from rural farming backgrounds in the South and had ambiguous dates of birth; Waters was born in 1913, but always told people it was 1915, and Hooker’s birth has been variously reported as 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923. All three had limited educations and moved to the city as soon as they were able. All three switched from acoustic guitar to electric, and in time, put together small bands that included bass and drums. Waters, of course, added the harmonica, and Hooker the saxophone, and their fuller and tighter band sounds certainly propelled them forward. However, during the late 1940s Hopkins was getting paid more than twice the union rate ($82.50) per session that Waters was likely earning, making him almost certainly the best-paid country blues singer of that era. By the early 1950s, Hopkins, Waters, and Hooker were competing with each other on the Billboard charts, and Waters ultimately became more famous, with sixteen charting hits between 1948 and 1958.

  What hurt Lightnin’ the most during the early years of his career with Gold Star was that he didn’t want to go out on the road with the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit tours. These concerts at black-owned venues were organized by the Theater Owners Booking Association and promoted the records of those blues artists who were part of the touring package shows.57 Lightnin’ wanted to stay close to home and didn’t seem to understand that touring with his records would have made him considerably more money. Consequently, his records did not sell as well as they might have to the people who listened to them on jukeboxes and radios around the country. The early 1950s were the beginning of one of the most lucrative eras for blues, if the performers were willing and able to travel and promote their records.

  By late 1950,
Quinn was finding it increasingly difficult to sustain his label. His wife was dying of cancer. Harry Choates had left him for his rival Macy’s early in the year, and his country and blues series were selling poorly. Despite several national hits, Quinn had refused to aggressively market his label, and it remained, by all appearances, more of a personal hobby than a commercial firm. It must have come as a shock to him, then, when he received a fine from the Internal Revenue Service in early 1951 totaling an astonishing twenty-six thousand dollars. A 10 percent federal excise tax had long been established on the sale of records, but Quinn either didn’t know about the tax or had ignored it on his tax returns since forming the label five years earlier.58 The penalty probably represented the government’s account of the taxable percentage on the total number of records sold on Gold Star from 1946 to 1950. Quinn couldn’t pay the fine, and Gold Star was soon to be another casualty in the indie record business.59

  On September 22, 1951, Billboard reported that the Modern label had “shelled out $2,500 for 32 unreleased Lightning Hopkins and L’il Son Jackson masters and the disk contract of the former. Deal was made thru’ Bill Quinn, Gold Star Records’ topper, who this week shut down his Houston diskery. Hopkins’ sides will be issued on Modern’s subsidiary…. Diskery will release two sides on each artist 1 October.”60

  Relatively speaking, $2,500 was a fair sum to pay for thirty-two masters in 1951; Lightnin’ was still perceived as having commercial potential. Modern was quick to release Lightnin’s unissued masters on its subsidiary RPM label, including “Begging You to Stay,” “Jake Head Boogie,” and “Some Day Baby.” A standout in the RPM releases was the single “Black Cat,” for which Lightnin’ took the guts out of the Memphis Minnie and Little Son Joe 1942 hit “Black Rat Swing” and transformed the male “rat” in the original song into a female “cat” in his version.

  Well I took you in my home, you ate up all my bread