Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [30]
Lightnin’s debut release on the Gold Star label ushered in a new sound for him and simultaneously helped lead the direction that country blues would take after World War II. In a significant departure from his Aladdin session, his guitar was now amplified—a novelty that Quinn seized upon by printing ELECTRIC GUITAR in bold capital letters on the label, hoping it would catch the fleeting attention of retailers and jukebox operators. Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup had enjoyed some recent country blues hits featuring electric guitar, but his popularity was fading. Muddy Waters had cut an amplified session for Columbia in 1946, but it was left unissued, and he was still months away from recording his debut for Aristocrat Records. John Lee Hooker would not put out his first record for another year and a half. The country-born bluesman with an electric guitar, still finding his way during these immediate postwar years, was about to blend the old with the new into an alchemy that would force the record industry—and eventually the world—to take notice.36
The record Lightnin’ made was “Short Haired Woman” backed with (b/w) “Big Mama Jump,” for which Quinn gave the catalog number 3131, reversing the numbers 1313. “Short Haired Woman” immediately staked a presence on the jukebox with its unexpectedly bold and direct opening riff—barely amplified by modern standards, but commanding enough at the time when heard through large jukebox speakers. It was basically the same riff he had used on “Rocky Mountain Blues” and “Katie Mae Blues,” and had probably been playing for years. But amplification and the absence of a distracting piano now brought it starkly into focus.
Lightnin’ cut his usual twelve-to-sixteen bar introduction in half so he could declare:
I don’t want no woman if her hair ain’t no longer’n mine (x2)
Yes, you know she ain’t no good for nothin’ but trouble
That keep you buying rats all the time
As a white producer with little familiarity with African American slang or diction, Quinn had no idea what Lightnin’ was singing about, but black record buyers immediately appreciated the sly humor and directness of “Short Haired Woman”: a vain woman, familiar in the black community and a subject of its ridicule, she was liable to spend so much time and money forcing her man to purchase “rats” (artificial hair pieces) and wigs as to make her essentially “nothin’ but trouble.”
“Few people outside (Lightnin’s) race … readily grasp the song’s deep significance for Negroes,” McCormick wrote years later. “A glance at the popular Negro magazines advertising hair straighteners, hair grease, wigs, rats, hair pads, and so on, gives some idea of the energy devoted to overcoming the characteristics of short, kinky hair … the pampering attention to hair becomes a ritual in which the men are inevitably caught up and yet manage to regard with disdain. It is a touchy subject, and Lightnin’s song has become, for the race itself, the classic comment. The private humor and mockery of ‘Short Haired Woman’ speaks to the Negro as intimately as does ‘Go Down Moses.’”37
“Short Haired Woman” must have been a strong regional seller. The Bihari brothers at Modern Records (who had helped make “Jole Blon” a national hit) were quick to reissue it through their better distribution network, but it didn’t make the Billboard “race” charts (a catchall for African American recordings) on either label. It certainly sold well enough to convince Quinn that he could tap into the market for blues, and while the record was still hot, he started what he called his new 600 series that would be devoted to black music (separate numerical series for different