Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [70]
In 1960, Herald also compiled twelve of Lightnin’s recordings from 1954, which had been released only as singles over the years, and issued them on an LP titled Lightnin’ and the Blues, though rather than trying to appeal to the folk audience, “J.S.” in the liner notes tried to exploit Lightnin’s mystique by stating that “nothing much is known about Sam Hopkins, and he is not one to venture any information…. The session and two bottles of gin were finished and Lightnin’ just shuffled away counting his money. We have not seen or heard from him since, but every time the phone rings we somehow hope we’ll hear his voice sayin’, ‘Man, I wrote a mess o’ new tunes for you.’”70
The response to Lightnin’ and the Blues among jazz and blues purists was negative. In the Saturday Review, critic (and coauthor of the book Jazzmen) Charles Edward Smith wrote: “No doubt he could do something with the electric guitar; he uses one here sometimes with deftness, though the overall impression is one of blatant sound. This impression is reinforced by added bass and drums and a souped-up juke box sound, leaving little room to hear what Lightnin’ could do, assuming he wanted to.”71
Also in 1960, Bobby Shad decided to issue recordings he made with Lightnin’ during the period from 1951 to 1953 on the Time label, including two of his biggest hits, “Hello Central” and “Coffee Blues.” But Shad decided to take a much more intellectual approach to contextualizing Hopkins’s music and was able to get Nat Hentoff, who was then coeditor of the Jazz Review, to write the liner notes. The LP, taking its title from Sam Charters’s book The Country Blues, is called Lightning Hopkins: Last of the Great Blues Singers. Shad, like the Mesners, was trying to capitalize on the new folk market and wanted to appeal to a young white audience looking to understand the blues.
Hentoff quoted heavily from McCormick’s article on Hopkins in the Jazz Review, in which he explained: “The essence of Lightning’s art is a specialized form of autobiography…. A line can have the blunt stab of T. S. Elliot [as McCormick pointed out] … ‘you ever see a one-eyed woman cry.’”72 But to McCormick’s assessment of Hopkins, Hentoff added, “It’s not all tragedy though. Lightning continues the blues tradition using irony as a weapon of survival as well as getting whatever peace of mind is possible under the circumstances…. In addition to the warm but cutting quality of his voice … is the extent to which he talk-sings his music. The result is the impression of completely spontaneous autobiography—a man talking about what he feels so that the natural phrasing of his speech blends easily and flowingly into his singing.”73 Then, in describing Lightnin’ performance style, Hentoff quoted from the Belgian critic Yannick Bruynoghe, who wrote that Hopkins’s guitar playing “is adapted to his speech as intimately as a second voice would be…. When he starts a chorus one can never tell where he’s aiming, how the phrases will be developed, and what sudden and abrupt changes he may introduce and bring to their logical conclusion.”74
The growing interest in Lightnin’s music made him reassess his attitude toward traveling. He liked playing for white audiences because he was getting paid more than he ever could in the Third Ward. Lomax Jr. had set a high standard for what Lightnin’ began to expect. He wanted someone to make his airplane arrangements, carry his guitar and suitcase, get him checked into the hotel, take him to the gig, take him back to the hotel, and make sure he had the beer and booze that he wanted. When he played the white club dates, there were always young, white guitar players, among others, who wanted to follow him around, buy him drinks, and provide for his needs and wishes.
As much as McCormick wanted to manage his