Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [115]
They picked me up right then and put me on that rock pile
Breakin’ rocks all day long, that’s the reason if you ever go to Arizona
You better leave them Indians alone
While “Sellin’ Wine in Arizona” had the character of many of Lightnin’s songs in which he cast himself as a victim, “Up On Telegraph” is both topical and funny as he commented on the hippies he encountered on a walk on that famous avenue:
I looked at them little pretty hippies
The dress so short, I says, “Whoo, look at that little girl walk”
I liked her a little better when I heard her, she begin to talk
She says, “Sam, ain’t this a pretty sight to see?”
I says, “Yeah,” She says, “Just lookie here, take a hip on me”
Clearly, Lightnin’ was enjoying himself, and his guitar playing was light and ironic to underscore the good-natured humor of the moment. Lightnin’ had made a number of friends in Berkeley, and he liked spending time there. He’d see Barbara Dane, or stay with relatives in Oakland, or visit with Carroll Peery from the Cabale, or go around town with Strachwitz. On this trip, from Berkeley he headed back to southern California to play in a show on May 30 that included the rock band Canned Heat and Albert Collins, who said his mother was “kin to all the Hopkins family.”42
When Lightnin’ got back to Houston, Stan Lewis contacted him again, and Don Logan took him to ACA studio (not Muscle Shoals, as has been written since the album was new) to record an LP called The Great Electric Show and Dance. During the session, Logan said he “got along all right” with Lightnin’ and the recording proceeded smoothly. “I knew that what would sell was Lightnin’ and his guitar,” Logan says, “but I had this weird idea that if I put some electric-type fuzz guitar in the background, we could reach the college kids. At that time, we were one of the few record companies sending out samples to the small-power college radio stations, and that was at Stan’s insistence. So Jewel came out with the album The Great Electric Show and Dance [which was in many ways like Muddy Waters’s Electric Mud LP] and the [Lightnin’] fans did not like it…. But it still got a lot of play on college campuses around the country…. And over the years, the fans have said that it would have been better if I’d taken out all that shit [overdubbed effects] I’d put in there and just came out with the album.”43
In the end, Logan recognized that Lightnin’s strength was not in the background accompaniment. “You just have Lightnin’ singing the song and you have him playing his guitar licks. He was an unorthodox singer, but musician-wise on the guitar, he played some licks that made all of the white groups buy his stuff…. So, every little band out there probably bought Lightnin’ Hopkins just to hear his licks, which were simple, but they made a lot of sense in his music.”44
Ultimately Lightnin’ was not a big seller for Jewel, but Logan worked hard on sales and promotion. “I pretty much did everything,” Logan says, “I’d even call the mom and pop shops and say, ‘Man, I got a great new blues.’ It wouldn’t be big orders, but it’d be small ones. That’s the kind of artist Lightnin’ was.”45
During the summer of 1969, Lightnin’ began to venture out and travel to festivals and cities where he had never been before. On August 3, at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in Michigan, Dan Morgenstern described Lightnin’s performance as “anything but eclectic. His style both vocally and on guitar, his demeanor, and his material (though he also dips into the traditional well) are genuinely original, and he was a joy to behold. Sharp from dark glasses to yellow shoes, he seemed determined to have a good time and take the audience with him. ‘It’s good out here in the prairie like this,’ he told them, launching into ‘Mojo Hand.’ Among the things that followed in a set that seemed to end too soon (Lightnin’ knows how to pace himself), the standouts were ‘Don’t Wanna Be Baptized’ and a long anecdote about a girl who stole his brand new Cadillac.”46
Backstage at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, writer and photographer