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also a “mother” that could then produce any number of stampers.] And he made a stamper plate for each side, and each plate was then placed on either side of a record pressing machine, and a glob of a warm compound that included shellac [which was generally known as “biscuits”] and that would be placed between the two metal sheets together with the two labels. Basically, the press stamped out the disk and when it was removed, it was put on a turntable and the rough edges were trimmed before it was put in a sleeve.” 45 Quinn frequently did not use full three-step protection because it was costly. The complicated part of the process was not the stamping of the actual disks, and he told Chris Strachwitz that several times the acetate master was destroyed in the electrolyte bath. “That accounts for some missing catalogue numbers,” Strachwitz explains, “though Quinn said that he sometimes forgot the last release number and for safety would just jump a few numbers ahead.”46

Quinn struggled to keep his business going, and by the late 1940s the competition between independent record labels in Houston was growing. Eddie’s, Macy’s, Freedom, and Peacock were all involved in recording local and regional blues musicians, such as Gatemouth Brown, Little Willie Littlefield, L. C. Williams, Goree Carter, Lester Williams, Peppermint Harris, and Big Walter Price.47 Of these, Don Robey’s Peacock label emerged as the most successful, and in time Robey acquired the Duke label and started the Back Beat and Songbird

labels.48

The differences between the Duke/Peacock sound and the music of Lightnin’ Hopkins not only underscored the breadth and complexity of the Houston black music scene, but was also indicative of the social stratification within the African American communities of Houston. Robey favored gospel music and the big band rhythm and blues sound that was popular among an upwardly mobile African American audience, who participated in the social scene of venues like the El Dorado Ballroom and the Club Matinee. For Robey, Lightnin’s blues lacked sophistication; there were no orchestrated arrangements. Lightnin’ played a gritty, improvised style of blues in the low-income dives of the Third Ward, and many of the people who listened to his music were poor rural blacks looking for work and trying to get a foothold in Houston—the factory workers and day laborers who struggled to support themselves and their families. Although there are no demographic studies about who bought Hopkins’s records, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that his blues did also appeal to some African American professionals, who had either moved to Houston from East Texas or who just simply liked Lightnin’s country flair. Dr. Cecil Harold, a respected surgeon in Houston who years later became Hopkins’s manager, says that he “always appreciated the way Lightnin’ could put into words the mood of the black community—especially a black community that was hit especially hard by the Great Depression.” 49

Lightnin’s records were stacked into jukeboxes in cafes and bars in the Third Ward and the low-income black neighborhoods of Houston, but he did also get some airplay. Black groups had been broadcast in Houston since at least the mid 1930s, when Joe Pullum had a program on KTLC. Moreover, on February 3, 1935, a Houston Chronicle radio log dated showed both Red Calhoun and Giles Mitchell broadcasting on KXYZ that day. In 1941, the Informer mentioned that the gospel quartet the Dixie Four were featured on a local station, and in 1945 the Eddie Taylor Orchestra appeared regularly on KTHT. Lonnie Rochon was the first black disc jockey in Houston (on KNUZ in February 1948). By 1950, there were several black disc jockeys on the air in Texas: Dr. Hepcat on KVET in Austin, Trummie Cain on KLEE in Houston, Bill Harris on KRIC in Beaumont, among others, but white deejays were also starting to play blues and other styles of black music.

Bill “Rascal” McCaskill, a white deejay on KCOH, says he played Lightnin’ on his show as early as 1952. “When I first started the ‘Harlem Boogie