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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 Freedom, 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,