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shoes to reflect his broad grin … to sing some folk songs of today’s woes and smiles. Unlike the others in the ‘Hootenanny’ program, Lightnin’ concentrated on his own anxieties in life—the trouble with a short-haired woman [“Short Haired Woman”] and the miseries of tornados [“That Mean Old Twister”] sweeping into East Texas. His personality electrified the overflow audience … which had thought it was going to hear only songs which detailed the bitter laughter and travail of the past. But Hopkins’s surprise was only one of the many given by members of the Houston Folklore Group.”32 Byers praised Ben Ramey, who narrated the evening program, “as a relaxed comfortable storyteller, with the authority of a friendly professor and the warmth of a good friend … introducing chapters from American history to be told in song.” Each of the performers received positive notice, as did the entire event: “The audience particularly enjoyed the times when it was asked to sing, and often joined in when Ramey least expected. It’s hoped it won’t be long before the Alley stages another ‘Hootenanny’ so more people can participate in the spirit and fun found in this one.”

For his performance, the Folklore Group paid Hopkins twenty dollars, which was his share of the $425 box office take.33 While twenty dollars doesn’t seem like much pay, McCormick reassured him that he could make more money doing these type of shows. McCormick became the point person for queries about Hopkins and began negotiating performance dates on his behalf as his manager.

In August 1959, Charters’s recordings of Lightnin’ were released on the Folkways label. In John S. Wilson’s three-column review in the New York Times, McCormick was never mentioned because, apparently, Charters did not talk about him in the interview, though he did acknowledge him in his liner notes to the LP. Wilson reported that Charters had “gained pre-eminence for his invaluable series of disks for the Folkways label called ‘The Music of New Orleans.’” In his praise of Charters’s recordings of Hopkins, Wilson wrote that they were “technically … the best of his disks and in some ways, one of his most important,” documenting “some stirring examples of undiluted, close-to-the-earth blues by an unusually talented and balanced singer.”34 However, Wilson’s article perpetuated a myth of “rediscovery” in the way he described how Charters “rescued from obscurity a singer who seemed to have committed professional suicide by trying to adapt to rock ‘n’ roll standards…. He attempted to shift his ground, and by changing from unamplified guitar to a clangorously amplified one and supplementing its heavy beat with a loud drum and bass … he not only failed to catch on in rock ‘n’ roll but also lost his blues following and soon dropped out of sight…. On the basis of these recordings, Mr. Hopkins must be counted as one of the best (possibly the best) of unalloyed country blues men still singing.” While Wilson’s review in the New York Times was a major boost to Lightnin’s career, it also demonstrated a gross misunderstanding of Lightnin’s work up to that point. Lightnin’, in his mid-1950s recordings, was not “trying to adapt to rock ‘n’ roll standards.” Blues was the lifeblood of rock ‘n’ roll, and Lightnin’ was trying to sustain his own popularity with black audiences.

On the same day that Wilson’s article appeared in the New York Times—August 23, 1959—Charlotte Phelan published an article in the Houston Post that never mentioned Charters’s recordings. Aside from the fact that Phelan’s knowledge of Hopkins’s career prior to his involvement with McCormick was very limited, her interview with Lightnin’ was revealing. Lightnin’ told her that playing at the Alley was “wonderful,” and that he “wouldn’t mind doing that again. A lot of people see those faces, turn around, and go back. I just love people. I don’t care if it’s 50,000. I ain’t never scared, but I’m just kind of particular.”

Phelan noted that Hopkins, when he wasn’t performing, was a “quiet, self-contained man with deep-seated dignity,” but that he could also