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Ward, the oldest Negro area, located west of downtown; the Fifth Ward in the north part of town; and the Third Ward, south of the downtown area.”47 Of these, Mousner noted that the Fourth Ward, “the poorest of the three areas economically, is touched by every segment of the city’s freeway system, making it a highly unstable place to live.” The Third Ward, Mousner observed, was the middle-class residential area for Houston’s African American population and afforded a “more desirable environment except in the north portion [where Lightnin’ lived] where a heavy traffic flow and a 65 per cent increase in small businesses in the last decade have contributed to instability.” Moreover, statistics gathered by Dr. Henry Allen Bullock, director of graduate research at Texas Southern University, showed that “these blighted areas with their decaying buildings, unsanitary living conditions and drab atmosphere produce a high mortality rate, crime and juvenile delinquency. Most of Houston’s homicides, two-thirds of which involve Negroes, occur in or near these areas.” But “profound changes,” Mousner maintained, were being made, as Carter Wesley, an attorney and publisher of the African American newspaper the Houston Informer pointed out: “Ten years ago we couldn’t have had a headline about a Negro woman being elected to the school board. Mrs. White was not elected by Negroes but all of the Houston community. The Negro has won the right to serve on juries. The Negro has won a Supreme Court decision on schools…. Changes are going on but we need a new approach.”

The 1960s were turbulent years, and while there weren’t riots in Houston, there were sit-ins and protest marches that confronted racism and discrimination.48 Desegregation in Houston proceeded slowly and came as a result of bitterly fought legal battles. Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights leaders came to the city and helped to propel civic change.

In Lightin’ Hopkins’s blues, there were few direct references to social protest, though his “Tim Moore’s Farm” was a scathing indictment of plantation owner Tom Moore and his cruelty to sharecroppers. Throughout his career Lightnin’ largely stayed away from racial themes, which made his recording of “Tim Moore’s Farm” even more striking, considering it was released in 1949.

While McCormick was impressed by Lightnin’s commercial recording of “Tim Moore’s Farm,” he wanted to probe deeper into Lightnin’s repertory in his own recordings to establish the roots of his blues. He carefully constructed field sessions that were relaxed and imposed no time limits. Lightnin’ was free to essentially do as he wished, talking and singing, so long as he played acoustic guitar and restrained from the rocking material he’d recorded for Herald. The resulting blues were both personal and reflective. McCormick’s recordings, when first released in 1960 (or late 1959) helped to establish Lightnin’s credibility as a living connection to the work songs that were a basis of country blues and to the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Texas Alexander, Leadbelly, and others. Though production values were low, and the overall sound quality was poor, given the technical limitations of the microphone and tape recorder that he used, McCormick was able to get Lightnin’ to open up and to perform some of the oldest songs that he remembered.

In early 1960, Doug Dobell, who had a record shop in London and operated a small label, issued some of McCormick’s field recordings on the LP titled The Rooster Crowed in England.49 This may have been the first album from the McCormick sessions to hit the market—but only in the United Kingdom, as it probably coincided with the release of the LP Country Blues in the United States. The strongest selections on the The Rooster Crowed in England LP are the intensely autobiographical “Beggin’ Up and Down the Streets,” the highly emotive “Have You Ever Seen a One-Eyed Woman Cry?” and “Children’s Boogie,” about which McCormick wrote, “His imagination chuckles to itself.”50 In “Back to Arkansas,” Lightnin’ alluded