Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [36]
Like Hopkins, Waters and Hooker came from rural farming backgrounds in the South and had ambiguous dates of birth; Waters was born in 1913, but always told people it was 1915, and Hooker’s birth has been variously reported as 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923. All three had limited educations and moved to the city as soon as they were able. All three switched from acoustic guitar to electric, and in time, put together small bands that included bass and drums. Waters, of course, added the harmonica, and Hooker the saxophone, and their fuller and tighter band sounds certainly propelled them forward. However, during the late 1940s Hopkins was getting paid more than twice the union rate ($82.50) per session that Waters was likely earning, making him almost certainly the best-paid country blues singer of that era. By the early 1950s, Hopkins, Waters, and Hooker were competing with each other on the Billboard charts, and Waters ultimately became more famous, with sixteen charting hits between 1948 and 1958.
What hurt Lightnin’ the most during the early years of his career with Gold Star was that he didn’t want to go out on the road with the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit tours. These concerts at black-owned venues were organized by the Theater Owners Booking Association and promoted the records of those blues artists who were part of the touring package shows.57 Lightnin’ wanted to stay close to home and didn’t seem to understand that touring with his records would have made him considerably more money. Consequently, his records did not sell as well as they might have to the people who listened to them on jukeboxes and radios around the country. The early 1950s were the beginning of one of the most lucrative eras for blues, if the performers were willing and able to travel and promote their records.
By late 1950, Quinn was finding it increasingly difficult to sustain his label. His wife was dying of cancer. Harry Choates had left him for his rival Macy’s early in the year, and his country and blues series were selling poorly. Despite several national hits, Quinn had refused to aggressively market his label, and it remained, by all appearances, more of a personal hobby than a commercial firm. It must have come as a shock to him, then, when he received a fine from the Internal Revenue Service in early 1951 totaling an astonishing twenty-six thousand dollars. A 10 percent federal excise tax had long been established on the sale of records, but Quinn either didn’t know about the tax or had ignored it on his tax returns since forming the label five years earlier.58 The penalty probably represented the government’s account of the taxable percentage on the total number of records sold on Gold Star from 1946 to 1950. Quinn couldn’t pay the fine, and Gold Star was soon to be another casualty in the indie record business.59
On September 22, 1951, Billboard reported that the Modern label had “shelled out $2,500 for 32 unreleased Lightning Hopkins and L’il Son Jackson masters and the disk contract of the former. Deal was made thru’ Bill Quinn, Gold Star Records’ topper, who this week shut down his Houston diskery. Hopkins’ sides will be issued on Modern’s subsidiary…. Diskery will release two sides on each artist 1 October.”60
Relatively speaking, $2,500 was a fair sum to pay for thirty-two masters in 1951; Lightnin’ was still perceived as having commercial potential. Modern was quick to release Lightnin’s unissued masters on its subsidiary RPM label, including “Begging You to Stay,” “Jake Head Boogie,” and “Some Day Baby.” A standout in the RPM releases was the single “Black Cat,” for which Lightnin’ took the guts out of the Memphis Minnie and Little Son Joe 1942 hit “Black Rat Swing” and transformed the male “rat” in the original song into a female “cat” in his version.
Well I took you in my home, you ate up all my bread
I left there this mornin’, you tried to mess up in my bed
Well you’re one black cat, some day you’ll