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approach,” Dane says. “Ed was very sophisticated about these things and had plenty of the old timers, like Reverend Gary Davis, Jesse Fuller, a whole range of people coming to sing there. So it was not necessary to go through this charade.”12 Finally, after watching Lightnin’ from afar, Dane moved closer to him. “I could see that he was uncomfortable,” Dane recalls, “so I wanted to give him a chance to be a little more relaxed, and just walk around with him a little bit in a blues manner. And he kind of let his hair down to me about the whole situation. He said, ‘You know, Mr. Lomax wanted me to dress like this.’ And then he said he wasn’t going to have his electric box, he was going to have a natural box. He was very uncomfortable in all of that, and so having said that to me, I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. He [Ed] will see it through. He knows quality when he sees it and relax.’ And he was fine with all that. And Ed did; he would have booked him sight unseen because, the thing is, Lightnin’ had actually been very popular in the black cultural arena in years past…. So it was ridiculous to think you had to present him in some other way.”13

The afternoon before the show at the Ash Grove, Lightnin’ got in touch with his old friend Luke “Long Gone” Miles, who was then in Los Angeles with his wife, Hazel.14 “Luke Miles was somebody who appeared on Lightnin’s doorstep some time a long while back in Houston,” Pearl says. “He was very tall and very skinny and very gangly. And he just appeared on Lightnin’s doorstep, and Lightnin’ wanted to close the door on him, and Luke proceeded to just go to sleep on the door stoop. And he just stayed around. He was a real country guy. So, finally, Lightnin’ took a fancy to him and let him hang around…. He was a good singer. And he’d do anything for Lightnin’. He’d carry his guitar if he needed it.”15

In the dressing room of the Ash Grove, Lightnin’ was uncomfortable, not so much because of the clothes Lomax Jr. had provided for him but because his hair was a mess. He wanted to get his hair conked (processed and straightened), and Pearl didn’t know where to find the chemicals. Lightnin’ and Long Gone piled into Pearl’s car and drove around Los Angeles, stopping at different drug stores, but they couldn’t find the right product. Finally Pearl remembered that beneath his mother’s apartment on West Adams was a black beauty salon. When he went inside, the beautician remembered him and gave him the chemicals. From the beauty salon, Long Gone took them to the home of Joe Chambers (of the gospel group the Chambers Brothers) and he conked Lightnin’s hair. Lightnin’ was pleased, and the show at the Ash Grove was a hit.

In a radio interview with Dane, Lomax talked about what he was hoping to accomplish by taking Lightnin’ to California. While he didn’t explain why he dressed him as he did, he was well intentioned, even if he didn’t fully understand the expectations of the audience. Clearly he had been influenced by his father, John Lomax Sr., who had dressed Leadbelly for one of his first concerts on January 4, 1935, in a rough blue work shirt over a yellow one, and old-fashioned high-bib overalls and red bandanna around his neck.16 To Dane, Lomax Jr. said, “I was very happy to have made this trip. Lightnin’ has been with me all the time. I just want to say that I’ve had a lot of personal enjoyment out of it, from my own singin’ in a small part, and from helpin’ Lightnin’ to make this trip. I thought that he would be of great interest to all the people he could sing to and that could hear him because he has a big appeal to me. I felt that certainly … he was bound to find some spark with anybody who would take time and be quiet enough to hear him here.”17

At the Ash Grove on July 6 and 7, Lightnin’ performed as part a program that included Big Joe Williams, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee. “Lightnin’ simply created a sensation,” Pearl says, “because the audience seemed so ready for it. I had had Brownie and Sonny and a couple of other traditional blues players before Lightnin’. But Brownie and Sonny