Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [111]
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