Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [73]
When Strachwitz recorded Hopkins, he wanted him to play the instrument of his choice. “The whole business of electric and acoustic never entered my head. People played what they had…. If I thought about it, I wanted the electric sound that he had on those later records…. The stuff being played on the radio then [the early to mid-1950s] were the Mercury and Herald records, especially the Herald ones. They got the ferocious electric guitar, also the Decca—‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy New Year’—That’s just gorgeous stuff. So that’s what I wanted.”85
In his contract with Lightnin’, Strachwitz agreed to pay “the total of $400 (“$300 to be paid … at the time of the session—$100 to be paid to Mr. Harold Leventhal [who was then acting as Hopkins’s “super-agent” in association with McCormick and as the representative of the music publishing company Sanga Music] for commission earnings as an advance royalty of 5 percent of the retail price of the records if in the LP form, 1 cent per side in the case of 45s or similar
singles.”86
Lightnin’ came to the session prepared. “He had the numbers kind of figured out of what he wanted to do,” Strachwitz says, “But he really wasn’t into this idea of making albums at all. He was still on the trip of making a couple of songs now and then. And that’s how he would make all his singles down there [in Texas]. Because ideas would come to him, a few at a time.” Strachwitz asked him to play some of his “older stuff” because he knew that was easier for him, and he did manage to record him playing the piano singing “Jesus, Won’t You Come By Here” (“Needy Time”), an old religious song that Lightnin’ recorded several times under different titles.
While Strachwitz was certainly a part of the folk revival, he was still trying, at that time, to reach an African American audience. “I was trying to make those 45s for the black market. [The DJ] Rockin’ Lucky would actually play them on KSAN-AM [in San Francisco] at that time. And he had a record shop, and you had to give him a hundred free ones otherwise he wouldn’t play them, because he sold them in the store. I was all for it. That’s the way that stuff got on the air. He was funny. He was from Orange, Texas, and he would have this little rap, ‘All right, baby, Come on, Say shake or break it. You want me to shake or break this damn thing.’” But after Lightnin’s first session, Strachwitz didn’t feel any of the songs were strong enough to stand alone as a single release. “I was working with the black distributor, Olin Harrison,” Strachwitz says. “He had the Acme Sales Company in San Francisco. It was difficult to get LPs distributed on the radio and the little mom and pop record shops. They wanted 45s with a big sound. That’s why I got the Bay Area drummer Victor Leonard for Lightnin’, but it wasn’t enough and I never released a 45 of any of those first recordings.”87
However, Strachwitz was not deterred in his efforts to reconnect Lightnin’ with a black audience. Lightnin’ had never had a black promoter in California, and Strachwitz wanted to get him booked into a couple of black venues: the Continental Club in West Oakland and the Savoy Club in North Richmond. Lightnin’ liked the idea of going to the Continental Club, and the people there definitely responded to his music. Many had bought his records, or heard them on jukeboxes in the 1950s. But after Lightnin’ got off stage, a well-known, local black R & B promoter approached Strachwitz, when Lightnin’ was in earshot, and said, “I could use that boy.” Lightnin’ recoiled. He left the club soon afterwards