Alan Govenar
Page 38
36. E-mail correspondence from Andrew Brown, June 3, 2009.
37. Mack McCormick, liner notes to Lightnin’ Hopkins: Autobiography in Blues, Tradition LP 1040.
38. The exact chronology of Lightnin’s releases in 1947 cannot be definitively established; this section relies on a probable chronology established by researcher Andrew Brown. It has long been assumed that Hopkins recorded “Short Haired Woman” for Aladdin first, then rerecorded it for Gold Star. (Strachwitz, liner notes to Lightnin’ Hopkins, The Gold Star Sessions, Vol. 1 [CD 330], 1990). But surviving paperwork from Bill Quinn’s files (Meaux Papers, Center for American History, UT-Austin) supports the claim for Gold Star as the original label. No paperwork relating directly to Hopkins’ sessions exists; however, a Quinn Recording Company contract for his cohort L. C. Williams does survive, upon which Quinn handwrote “Session 6/19/47.” This almost certainly dates Williams’s debut on the label, “Trying, Trying” b/w “You Never Miss the Water” (Gold Star 614) to a session on June 19, 1947. Lightnin’ plays piano and guitar on this single, which, if recorded on June 19, puts him in Quinn’s studio almost two months before the August 15, 1947 Aladdin session. Lightnin’s single “Shining Moon” (Gold Star 613) would then logically predate the Williams single, and “Short Haired Woman” (which prefigured the start of the 600 series) would predate both of them. Lightnin’s May 7, 1948, “Option on Contract” with Quinn, referencing an earlier (now lost) contract set to expire on May 21, provides further evidence of a probable May 1947 session date for his first session for Gold Star. (Fellow blues artists Andy Thomas and Luther Stoneham signed contracts with Quinn dated June 19, 1947, and Curtis Amy’s contract is dated July 18, 1947. None of this paperwork was available to earlier researchers, hence the long-standing confusion over the dating of Gold Star’s blues series.) Internal evidence on the flipside, “Big Mama Jump,” also supports the chronology. During the song Lightnin’ yells out, “Are you listenin’, Mr. Crowe?” a reference to Houston record distributor H. M. Crowe (who was involved with Lightnin’s career as late as the Herald sessions). In an interview years later with Chris Strachwitz, Lightnin’ reminisced, “Now, he [Crowe] was sittin’ there [in the studio]. He wanted me to do that. [Crowe] was the man runnin’ with Quinn … Quinn’s partner. He was a good fella.” (“Mr. Crow [sic] and Mr. Quinn,” on The Best of Lightnin’ Hopkins [Arhoolie CD 499], 2001.) Lightnin’ repeats the aside to Crowe on the Aladdin session, almost certainly in an effort to mimic his Gold Star version word for word rather than a personal acknowledgement of Crowe sitting in a Los Angeles recording studio. Finally, Quinn would have had no discernible reason to release a record that would have been readily available locally on the Aladdin label, yet Aladdin would have every reason to rerecord a breaking hit that a contracted artist of theirs had recorded, without their knowledge, for another label.
39. By 1950, after the recording ban was history, the local union’s rules had relaxed to the point that country musicians who couldn’t read music were now admitted. Houston’s African Americans would charter their own, segregated local of the AFM. The small labels continued on as before, however, with the tacit understanding between them, the AFM locals, and the union musicians that records made cheaply, and against union rules, were preferable to no records made at all.
40. Gold Star 646.
41. Brown, July 22, 2008.
42. Chris Strachwitz, interview by Alan Govenar, May 20, 2009.
43. SugarHill studios now occupies the Quinn’s old residence and the second Gold Star building, not the one on Telephone Road where Lightnin’ did most of his recording.
44. Andy Bradley, interview by Alan Govenar, August 11, 2008.
45. Ibid.
46. Strachwitz, May 20, 2009. Strachwitz also recalled that Quinn told him that he had difficulty finding out how records were pressed. He tried to contact the pressing plants of several major labels, but they refused to help him. He checked encyclopedias, but didn’t find much information and apparently learned the process on his own.
47. In 1948, Eddie Henry, who owned record shops on Dowling Street in the Third Ward and on Lyons Avenue in the Fifth Ward and was, according to the Informer, one of the larger record distributors in the Southwest, started his own label. He put out releases by such local musicians as Conrad Johnson, Little Willie Littlefield, and Clarence Green, but never had any hits and shut down his label a year later. Sol Kahal, a doughnut shop operator and musician from Vermont, moved to Houston in 1948 and started the Freedom label, first acquiring some of Eddie’s masters, and then producing a blues, country, and gospel series, which lasted until late 1951 or early 1952. Goree Carter, Sammy Harris, L. C. Williams, Lonnie Lyons, Big Joe Turner, and even Texas Alexander recorded for Freedom. Around 1947, Macy Lela Henry and her husband, Charlie, got their start as record distributors, but then started the Macy’s label in 1949, probably the first to be run by a woman in the South. Over the next two years, Macy’s had about sixty country releases, and twenty blues, but with two significant regional hits, Lester Williams’s “Wintertime Blues” and Clarence Garlow’s “Bon Ton Roulet.”
48. For more information see Alan Govenar, The Early Years of Rhythm and Blues (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, 2004) and Galen Gart and Roy C. Ames, Duke/Peacock Records: An Illustrated History and Discography (Milford, New Hampshire: Nickel Publications, 1990.
49. Bill Minutaglio, “Saying Goodbye,” Houston Chronicle, February 2, 1982.
50. E-mail correspondence from Bill “Rascal” McCaskill, September 1, 2008.
51. Johnny Brown, July 22, 2008.
52. The “Race Records” chart was introduced by Billboard in 1945 as a catchall for all African American recordings to replace the chart called “Harlem Hit Parade,” which had been in use since 1942. In 1949 the “Race Records” chart was renamed “Rhythm and Blues.”
53. Billboard, February 25, 1949.
54. Mack McCormick, liner notes to A Treasury of Field Recordings, Vol. 2, pp. 37. For more information see Bruce Jackson, Wake Up Dead Man: Afro-American Worksongs from Texas Prisons (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972). Also, Joseph “Chinaman” Johnson’s recording of “Three Moore Brothers” appears on Bruce Jackson’s 1966 LP “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” Elektra EKL-296.
55. Billboard, August 13, 1949.
56. Huey P. Meaux Papers, 1940–1994, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, box 96-384/23.
57. For more information see Alan B. Govenar and Jay F. Brakefield, Deep Ellum and Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds Converged (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998), p. 26.
58. “The government excise tax on discs calls for a 10 percent fee at the first level of sale.” Billboard, February 7, 1948, p. 19. Also, “House Comm. Exempts Penny Machines From Excise Tax; See Other Levies Remaining,” Billboard, May 6, 1950, p. 107. E-mail correspondence from Andrew Brown, June 6, 2009.
59. “When the US Government slapped a $26,000 fine and penalty on Gold Star Records, Bill (Quinn) quit record production and went back to operating a custom studio …” (Chris Strachwitz, liner notes to Texas Blues: Bill Quinn’s Gold Star Recordings [Arhoolie CD 352], 1992.) In this account Strachwitz explains that Quinn “was under the impression that the pressing plants were paying this tax but apparently not so.” Since Quinn was pressing his own records, this doesn’t make sense; it is far more likely that the twenty-six-thousand-dollar penalty was based upon the cumulative total sale and distribution of Gold Star records since the label’s formation in 1946, and Quinn had simply never paid the tax. According to Strachwitz, the fine was eventually settled at a mere $250. E-mail correspondence from Andrew Brown, June 6, 2009.
60. Billboard, September 22, 1951.
61. Quinn never gave a reason why he discontinued the 600 blues series long before he discontinued the Gold Star label itself. Frustrations with Lightnin’ and Lil’ Son Jackson may have contributed to its demise. Other Houston labels like F
reedom, Peacock, and Macy’s were now recording black music in earnest and driving musicians away from Quinn. Perhaps more importantly, his talent scout for blues artists, distributor and record store owner Eddie Henry, moved away from Houston in or around 1950. E-mail correspondence from Andrew Brown, June 6, 2009.
62. Bob Shad, liner notes to Lightning Hopkins Dirty Blues, Mainstream MRL 326.
63. Johnny Brown in Roger Wood, Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003) p. 18.
64. Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters (New York: Collier Books 1986) p. 142–143.
65. Bob Shad, liner notes to Lightning Hopkins Dirty Blues, Mainstream MRL 326.
66. Hal Webman, “Rhythm and Blues Notes,” Billboard, February 9, 1952.
67. Mack McCormick, liner notes to A Treasury of Field Recordings, Vol. 2, p. 51.
68. Johnny Brown, July 22, 2008.
69. Policy originated, according to blues historian Paul Oliver, among racketeers in Chicago around 1885 and was especially popular among poor African Americans because of the possibility of a large return for a small stake. Over time, policy became a traditional subject in blues, and songs about the game were recorded by musicians as diverse as Papa Charlie Jackson, Yodeling Kid Brown, Kokomo Arnold, Tommy Griffin, and Cripple Clarence Lofton.
70. Billboard, January 16, 1954.
71. Billboard, February 4, 1956.
72. Herald 520.
73. The headquarters for the Royal Amalgamated Association of Chitterling Eaters of America, Incorporated for the Preservation of Good Country Blues was in Town Creek, Alabama, where the Grand National Convention was each August.
74. Tri-State Defender, August 21, 1954, p. 15.
75. Louis Cantor, Wheelin’ on Beale (Pharos Books, New York, 1992), pp. 121–123.
76. Cantor, p. 123, 154–168.
77. Hunter Hancock, “Huntin’ With Hunter: The Story of the West Coast R&B Disc Jockey,” Blues & Rhythm, No. 166, February 2002, pp. 12–14.
78. Charles Shaar Murray, Boogie Man: The Adventures of John Lee Hooker in the American Twentieth Century, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002).
79. Wood, p. 16.
80. Mack McCormick, “A Conversation with Lightnin’ Hopkins, Part 3” Jazz Journal 14, no. 2 (February 1961), pp. 18–19.
4. Rediscovery
1. Allan Turner, “History as Close as a Turntable,” Houston Chronicle, Section 7, November 16, 1986.
2. John A. Lomax Jr., “The Life and Times of John Lomax, Jr.,” Houston Folklore Bulletin, 5:5, John Avery Lomax Family Powers, 1842, 1853–1986, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin, Box 3D 218. Others involved in founding the Houston Folklore Group include Ed Badeaux, Chester Bower, and Harold Belikoff. “Hootenanny at the Alley, July 20, 1959” program. Lomax Family Papers Box 3D 215.
3. Richard Carlin, Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), pp. 28–31.
4. Samuel Barclay Charters IV, Jazz: New Orleans 1885–1957, Jazz Monographs No. 2, February 1958 (Bellville, NJ: Walter C. Allen). This monograph is not a book per se. It was privately published and was an index to “the Negro musicians of New Orleans.”
5. Sam Charters, interview by Alan Govenar, March 13, 2008.
6. Samuel B. Charters, liner notes to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Folkways LP 3822.
7. Chris Strachwitz, interview by Alan Govenar, July 12, 2009.
8. Ibid.
9. Charters, Folkways LP 3822.
10. Samuel B. Charters, The Country Blues (New York: Da Capo, 1975), pp. 254–261.
11. Carlin, pp. 111–133.
12. Sam Charters, March 13, 2008.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Undated correspondence from Sam Charters to Moses Asch. Moses and Frances Asch Collection, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Lightning Hopkins file.
18. Sam Charters, interview by Alan Govenar, March 13, 2008.
19. Strachwitz, July 12, 2009.
20. Mack McCormick, in Chris Strachwitz’s, “Lightnin’ Hopkins Discography, Pt. 2,” Jazz Monthly, no.10 (December 1959), p. 14.
21. Strachwitz, July 12, 2009.
22. Ibid.
23. In the early twentieth century, hootenanny referred to things whose names were forgotten or unknown and was synonymous with thingamajig or whatchamacallit. It was also an old-country word for party. In various interviews, Seeger said that he first heard the word hootenanny in the late 1930s in Seattle, Washington, where Hugh DeLacy’s New Deal political club used it as a name for their monthly music fundraisers. In New York City, Seeger and the Almanac Singers (1940–41) adopted the word hootenanny to describe their folk music events, as did other groups focused on traditional music, including People’s Songs (1946–1949), People’s Artists (1949–1956), and Sing Out! magazine (1957).
24. Kyla Bynum, interview by Alan Govenar, August 30, 2008.
25. Ibid.
26. Mack McCormick, Liner notes to The Rooster Crowed in England, 77 (UK) LP 12/1.
27. Ibid.
28. Timothy O’Brien, MA thesis, p. 64.
29. This show was in the original Alley Theatre location that only held about two hundred people, not the existing Alley Theatre, built in 1968, which seats eight hundred.
30. Interview with McCormick, Timothy O’Brien, MA thesis, p. 65.
31. “Hootenanny Scores Hit,” Houston Post. Arhoolie Records clipping file.
32. Bill Byers, “‘Hootenanny’ Singers Win Applause at Alley Program,” Houston Chronicle, July 21, 1959.
33. Mack McCormick, undated letter to John Lomax Jr. papers. Op cited. Box 3D folder 318.
34. John S. Wilson, “Lightnin’ Hopkins Rediscovered,” New York Times, August 23, 1959.
35. Kyla Bynum, interview by Alan Govenar August 30, 2008.
36. Charlotte Phelan, “Song Maker,” Houston Post, August 23, 1959.
37. Mack McCormick, liner notes to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Country Blues, Tradition LP 1035. What McCormick apparently didn’t understand at the time was that a good portion of Lightnin’s repertoire was probably gleaned from phonograph records.
38. Mack McCormick, liner notes to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Country Blues, Tradition LP 1035.
39. Patrick B. Mullen, The Man Who Adores the Negro: Race and American Folklore (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 122.
40. Benjamin Filene, p. 116.
41. Sam Charters, The Country Blues, New York: Da Capo Press, 1975, p. 266.
42. Mack McCormick, “Lightnin’ Hopkins: Blues,” The Jazz Review, Vol. 3, no. 1 (January, 1960). Reprinted in Jazz Panorama: From the Pages of Jazz Review, edited by Martin Williams, New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1962, p. 313.
43. Isabelle Ganz, interview by Alan Govenar, August 28, 2008.
44. Kyla Bynum, interview by Alan Govenar, August 30, 2008.
45. For more information on Sweatt v. Painter, see Robert D. Bullard, Invisible Houston: The Black Experience in Boom and Bust (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1986), pp. 126–129.
46. Benny Joseph, interview by Alan Govenar, 16, 1989. For more information, see Houston Post, March 9, 1960, Section 1, p. 1, Houston Post, March 17, 1960, and Houston Informer, March 19, 1960.
47. Jim Mousner, “Houston Negroes: Despite Problems Their Life is Sunnier,” Houston Post, April 24, 1960.
48. For more information, see Alwyn Barr, Black Texans: A History of Negroes in Texas, 1528–1971 (Austin: Jenkins, 1973). Howard Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, eds., Black Dixie: Afro-Texan History and Culture in Houston (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1992).
49. The Rooster Crowed in England, 77 (UK) LP 12/1.
50. Mack McCormick, liner notes to The Rooster Crowed in England, 77 (UK) LP 12/1.
51. Ibid.
52. Phelan, August 23, 1959.
53. Country Blues, Tradition LP 1035 and Autobiography in
Blues, Tradition LP 1040. Diane Guggenheim (a.k.a. Diane Hamilton) founded (and funded) the Tradition label, after signing the Clancy Brothers, the company began to earn profits. When the Clancy Brothers were signed by Columbia in 1961, the label ceased to be viable, and the catalogue was sold, possibly to Translantic, and then to Everest Records in the 1980s.
54. Robert Shelton, “An Earthy Shirt-Sleeve Type of Folk Art,” New York Times, January 30, 1960.
55. Mack McCormick, in Chris Strachwitz, “Lightnin’ Hopkins Discography, Pt. 2,” Jazz Monthly, no. 10 (December 1959), p. 14.
56. The Unexpurgated Folk Songs of Men, USFOM, a label created by McCormick and Strachwitz and released in December 1963, and later reissued by them on Raglan LP 51.
57. Mack McCormick, liner notes to The Unexpurgated Folk Songs of Men, Raglan LP 51.
58. “The Dirty Dozens,” from The Unexpurgated Folk Songs of Men, Raglan LP 51.
59. A Treasury of Field Recordings Vols. 1 and 2, 77 LA-12-3; Dobell’s Jazz Record Shop, 77 Charing Cross Road, London; and D.K. Wilgus, “Record Reviews,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 79, No. 314 (October–December, 1966), 632–633.
60. Lightning Hopkins, letter to Ed and Folkways Records, November 26, 1959, Moses and Frances Asch Collection, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Lightning Hopkins file.
61. Memo, February 10, 1960, Ibid.
62. Moses Asch, letter to Ed and Folkways Records, November 26, 1959, Ibid.
63. Lightning Hopkins, letter to Moses Asch, December 12, 1959, Ibid.
64. In an interview with Timothy O’Brien, McCormick claimed that he had in fact written to Folkways to produce a record with Hopkins, and the Sam Charters “showed up.” O’Brien, p. 70.
65. John A. Lomax, Jr. Sings American Folk Songs, Folkways LP 3508, 1956; Mack McCormick, letter to Ed Badeaux, Moses and Frances Asch Collection, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Lightning Hopkins file.
66. Sam Charters letter to Moses Asch, January 13, 1960, Ibid.
67. Ibid.
68. It was reissued in 1967 under the new title The Roots of Lightnin’ Hopkins and is still available as a CD today.