• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 705 0

felt that “something was being lost” as he “turned out more and more records that were simply designed to sell to the teenage rhythm and blues audience. He was using a loud amplified guitar and there were usually a loud bass drummer and bass player to do away with the subtle rhythm that made his earlier records so memorable.” 9 At this point, Charters didn’t seem to understand that virtually all of Lightnin’s recordings had been made with an electric guitar, even those on Aladdin, Gold Star, Sittin’ In With, and Jax that he liked the most, because they didn’t have bass and drums. As Charters was writing his book The Country Blues, he started to feel that Lightnin’ was “perhaps the last of the great blues singers,” despite the fact that “his professional career was a series of clumsy mistakes.” Charters believed that “Lightnin’ was one of the roughest singers to come out of the South in years…. He was the last singer in the grand style. He sang with sweep and imagination, using his rough voice to reach out and touch someone who listened to him.”10

During the fall of 1958, Charters heard about McCormick from Frederic Ramsey at Folkways, who suggested that Charters contact McCormick in Houston and Asch in New York about recording Lightnin’. By then, Asch had already issued several blues LPs, featuring Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, and was in the process of producing others with Big Bill Broonzy, J. C. Burris, Sticks McGhee, and Memphis Slim.11

McCormick was interested in getting to know Charters and invited him to stay at his house in January 1959. Together they went looking for Lightnin’. One lead led to another, but they couldn’t find him the first time they went hunting around the Third Ward. “Everyone was very guarded all the time,” Charters says. “But you could feel safe. No one was going to do anything to this white boy wandering around. I wasn’t looking for drugs and I wasn’t looking for sex, and so this meant I wasn’t fitting into the categories in which I could easily be placed. I was just the right age and build to be a young cop. I was wearing a knit shirt and chinos. I was not prepossessing.”12

A pawnbroker who had two of Lightnin’s guitars had an address for him in his files. When they got to the house, he wasn’t home, though a young boy directed them to Lightnin’s sister, who suggested they check two or three bars that Lightnin’ was known to frequent, but he wasn’t there either. Frustrated, they went back to McCormick’s house, and the next morning, while McCormick was busy, Charters went to Dowling Street to look around. “And on that day, he found me,” Charters says. “Everyone was aware that I was moving around through the ghetto looking for Lightnin’, and everyone was reporting this to Lightnin’. The cab drivers were watching me, and I’m sure they all knew where he was. But who was I? And finally the word was passed onto Lightnin’. So I was stopped at a red light in my coupe and a car pulled up beside me and there was a man with sunglasses saying, ‘You lookin’ for me?’ And I said, ‘Are you Lightnin’ Hopkins?’ And Lightnin’ said, ‘Yeah.’ So he found me. I had been checked out and the decision was that I was safe.”13

They both pulled over, and Charters told Lightnin’ that he wanted to record him. Lightnin’ was interested, but he had pawned his guitars, a fact that implied that he wasn’t playing music at the time. “Lightnin’ was wearing Salvation Army clothes, baggy, grey, no color at all,” Charters says. “He was poor.”14 When they got to the pawnshop, Lightnin’ wanted his electric guitar, but Charters picked the acoustic because he knew that was what the white folk audience wanted to hear. As much as Lightnin’ may have preferred the electric, he didn’t object. He needed the money and certainly knew that he could play either instrument well. But the acoustic wasn’t in very good shape, and apparently Lightnin’ hadn’t played it in some time. “I had to get him some strings,” Charters recalls, “but as we passed some school kids, Lightnin’ began playing with the five strings, playing more guitar than I’d ever heard,