Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [16]
Deep Ellum was the area of Elm Street in Dallas, north of downtown, where immigrants to the city flocked. The spelling Ellum resulted from the mix of dialects of the people who settled there—African Americans displaced by the ravages of the boll weevil in East Texas and Eastern European Jews fleeing the pogroms and persecution in their homeland. The juncture of Elm Street and Central Avenue was where day laborers were picked up and dropped off, taken to the cotton fields of Collin County or to do other jobs. Many of the black businesses were strung out along Central Avenue, which ran alongside the railroad tracks. Black show business and musical activity flourished in Deep Ellum. As early as 1908, John “Fat Jack” Harris opened the Grand Central Theater there and featured local and touring acts. The Grand Central was followed by the Swiss Airdome, the Star, the Circle, and the Palace. The Park Theater was operated by vaudevillians Chintz and Ella B. Moore and offered “high class vaudeville and moving pictures.” Black vaudeville entertainment took various forms, including the “tab” or “tabloid” musical comedy show, as well as touring minstrel and stock companies; novelty acts such as the five-hundred-pound Cleo-Cleo and Jack Rabbit, the hoop contortionist; comedians such as Little Jimmie Cox, a Charlie Chaplin imitator; high-kicking dancers; duos such as Butterbeans and Susie; and musicians and singers.2 In 1920, Chintz Moore and about thirty other black Southern and Midwestern theater owners established the premier black vaudeville circuit, the Theater Owners Booking Association (TOBA), which grew to more than eighty theaters and eventually became known as the “Chitlin’ Circuit.” Performers often joked that the acronym stood for “Tough on Black Asses” because contracts heavily favored management and the conditions of work were often harsh.
Pianist Sam Price, who worked at R. T. Ashford’s shine parlor and record shop on Central Avenue in Dallas and was instrumental in the discovery of Blind Lemon Jefferson, was looking for new talent when he heard Texas Alexander singing on the street. “Texas Alexander had an uncanny voice,” Price said, “but he couldn’t keep time. That was one of the things I had to teach him.” 3 With Ashford’s help, arrangements were made for Alexander to go to New York to record in August 1927 and for Lonnie Johnson to accompany him.
Texas Alexander’s slow moaning style and his inability to sing in meter made it especially difficult for Johnson, who remarked, “He was liable to jump a bar, or five bars, or anything. You just had to be a fast thinker to play for Texas Alexander. When you been out there with him you done nine days work in one! Believe me, brother, he was hard to play for.” 4
Despite the irregularities of his singing, Alexander’s emotionally charged vocal style had great appeal, and the sales of his records were unexpectedly high. He was invited back to the OKeh studios, and between 1927 and 1930 he recorded fifty-two songs with a wide range of accompanists, from Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson, who were already established as two of the best guitarists of the era, to an ensemble that included the great King Oliver, Clarence Williams, and Eddie Heywood, to lesser-known regional guitarists like Carl Davis and Little Hat Jones, and even the legendary Mississippi Sheiks with Bo Chatman (Carter) on violin, Sam Chatman on guitar, and Walter Vinson on second guitar. Unlike his other accompanists, the Mississippi Sheiks, a popular and influential guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s, provided Alexander with a rare string band setting that was uncompromising, forcing him to discipline his singing into an uncharacteristic swing.5
By the mid-1930s, when Sam met him, Alexander’s recording career had tapered off because of the Great Depression, but he was still highly regarded as a performer, and wherever he sang, he had a commanding presence. Hopkins recalled, as did others, that Texas Alexander carried a guitar with him so that anyone who wanted