Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [35]
Yes, you know, I got a telegram this morning, boy,
it say, “Your wife is dead.”
I show it to Mr. Moore, he said, “Go ahead, nigger,
you know you got to plow a ridge.”
That white man said, “It’s been raining, yes, and I’m way behind
I may let you bury that woman one of these dinner times”
I told him, “No, Mr. Moore, somebody’s got to go”
He says, “If you ain’t able to plow, Sam, stay up there and grab you a hoe”
While Lightnin’ never worked for Tom Moore, he inserted himself into the song, personalizing it and identifying himself with the hardships of those who did. For listeners in 1949, many of whom had already migrated from the country to the city, “Tim Moore’s Farm” epitomized the plight of black sharecroppers and the inhumane conditions to which they were subjected.
After the success of “Tim Moore’s Farm,” Lightnin’ wanted to get back in the studio at Gold Star as quickly as possible. On August 13, 1949, Billboard reviewed Lightnin’s recording of “Jail House Blues,” which was based on Bessie Smith’s song by the same title. He was accompanied on it by the steel guitar of Hop Wilson, not Frankie Lee Sims, as has been written for decades. The review doomed its potential by calling it “an old-style, sorrowful blues, warbled and guitared in the ancient manner. Staple fare for the Deep South market.” Still, on October 8, 1949, Lightnin’s song “’T’ Model Blues” made it to #8 on the Billboard R & B jukebox charts for one week, even though when it was reviewed with “Jail House Blues” it was called “a provocative double entendre slow blues in the same authentic manner.” 55
A year later, in September 1950, Lightnin’s “Shotgun Blues,” which he had recorded for Aladdin in 1948, was a hit for four weeks on Billboard’s “Best-Selling Retail Race Records” chart and peaked at #5. Hopkins was more popular than ever, and Quinn, probably because “Shotgun Blues” had sold so well, thought he might be able to boost his revenues with the sales of Lightnin’s records. On December 16, 1950, Quinn entered into another contract with Lightnin’ that gave him a two-hundred-dollar advance at each recording session at which four sides are recorded and a royalty of one and a half cents for each side of the record used for recordings. 56
A two-hundred-dollar advance at every recording session was generous of Quinn, particularly at a time when even bigger labels were paying less to similar blues artists, such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, but it also points out how well Lightnin’s records were actually selling, or perhaps, how Quinn expected them to perform in the marketplace. In fact, it was highly unusual for a label to give an artist an advance on every single release, much less an advance of two hundred dollars. How much money Quinn ultimately made from these releases is unknown, and there are no records to indicate whether or not Lightnin’ was ever paid any royalties.
By the early 1950s, Lightnin’ was nationally known and was firmly part of the R & B mainstream that updated older styles of down-home country blues. In many ways, Hopkins’s career paralleled many of his contemporaries. In Texas, Frankie Lee Sims, one of Lightnin’s cousins, had two acoustic releases on Blue Bonnet around 1948, but then was discovered in Dallas in 1953 by Specialty, which recorded him with electric guitar, bass, and drums. L. C. Williams, Lightnin’s friend in Houston, who was sometimes billed as Lightnin’ Jr. on his Gold Star releases, had a national hit with “Ethel Mae” on Freedom. Lil’ Son Jackson, who probably had little or no direct contact with Lightnin’, was also recorded by Gold Star and then Imperial. Decca discovered Andrew “Smokey” Hogg with B. K. “Black Ace” Turner and brought him to Chicago to record in 1937, and during or right after World War II, he recorded for Modern: his rendition of Big Bill Broonzy’s “Little School Girl” went to #9 on the Billboard R & B charts in 1950. Lightnin’, however, was the most successful of his generation of down-home