Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [166]
28. Frank X. Tolbert, “In Remembrance of Texas Bluesmen,” Dallas Morning News, March 1, 1982.
29. Doyle Bramhall, interview by Alan Govenar, December 4, 2008.
30. Ray Dawkins, interview by Alan Govenar, March 14, 2008.
31. Brown, July 22, 2008.
32. Ibid.
33. Peppermint Harris to Hank Davis, liner notes to “I Got Loaded,” Route 66 KIX 23.
34. Mack McCormick, quoted in Andrew Brown’s liner notes to “Harry Choates, Devil in the Bayou,” Bear Family BCD 16355 BH, 2002.
35. Advertisement for the “New Gulf Records,” Billboard, September 8, 1945.
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