• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 647 0

whether it was by choice, fear of flying, or a saturated market. On March 18, Strachwitz recorded Lightnin’ in Houston, accompanied by drummer Harold “Frenchy” Joseph, whom he had heard play with Lightnin’ in the Third Ward. “He was a tough drummer,” Strachwitz says, “and he really grooved with Lightnin’. Spider [Kilpatrick, one of Lightnin’s primary Houston drummers] was always sort of raggedy. He didn’t put that solid beat behind him. Spider drummed in the Holiness Church and was Lightnin’s usual cat because he would play for very little, I think. He was from Houston. Frenchy was also in Houston…. He was a total wine head, but he could sure play drums. That’s when we did ‘Money Taker’ and ‘My Little Woman,’ which has got a sort of racist tone: ‘My little woman, she ain’t no Mexican. You better believe she ain’t no Jew, but she’s my Frenchman little girl.’”41

In April, Lightnin’ traveled to Chicago, where Willie Dixon had helped to arrange some dates for him. Dixon and Hopkins had become friends during the American Folk Blues Festival tour. “Dixon was a great diplomat,” Strachwitz says. “He always talking…. He helped Lippmann and Rau get all these musicians for the festival tour. And when Lightnin’ came to Chicago, he would have arranged for him to stay some place, or maybe with him.”42

Lightnin’ stayed in Chicago and played Western Hall on April 17, Peppers Lounge on April 18, and then went to Gary, Indiana, before returning to Western Hall on April 24 and 25, and a club in Joliet, Illinois, on April 26. While he was playing largely for white audiences in other cities, all of his Chicago dates were in black venues, except for perhaps the booking in Joliet. “The black world still loved him,” Strachwitz recalls. “The black world finally met him. He had never gone anywhere, because he didn’t travel in those days [in the 1950s]. He was a country boy, and when he was in the big city, he found his way around there by knowing these people, you know, that came from the country.”43

In July, Strachwitz took Lightnin’ to the Newport Folk Festival, which by then was well known for presenting legendary blues singers from around the country, including Reverend Gary Davis, Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Mississippi John Hurt, John Lee Hooker, Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes, Son House, and Skip James, among others.44 Strachwitz was excited to bring Lightnin’ to Newport, but it was more chaotic than he had expected. “I remember staying in this dormitory, kind of a bunk house,” Strachwitz recalled, “it was like army barracks, and we were sleeping in these double bunks. Anyway, I was driving around, and Lightnin’ said, ‘I got to get something to drink,’ and so he got his little gin and I decided to get some plum brandy. I got fuckin’ drunk on that shit, and the next day, I remember, they all left, Dixon and everybody. ‘We got to go to work. C’mon, Chris.’ I said, ‘Man, I can’t get out of bed,’ and I just laid there sick as a dog. And I remember them coming back. Willie Dixon said, ‘Chris, you missed a big fight’ [he used to be a boxer]. Oh, man, this guy [Alan] Lomax, him and this Dylan manager [Albert Grossman], they got into a fistfight. Dylan had plugged in [July 25, 1965], and Mr. Lomax didn’t like it. Grossman had said, ‘No, that boy stays plugged in.’ I forget exactly what they said, but he said they had an all-out fight there. God, I felt so bad missing that fight. That was my entire memory of the festival.”45

On stage, Lightnin’—who appeared July 24, the day before Dylan—played an amplified acoustic guitar and was backed by drummer Sam Lay on four of eleven songs.46 Lay, who toured with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, remembered that Hopkins had already heard of him, and “they [the festival organizers] knew I was capable of following any kind of traditional blues like that, that is my kind of music. And he stated that he’d never heard a drummer could play like that, and follow his timing and all. It was just that simple to me. That type of stuff I’ve heard so much on recordings and things. There really wasn’t any time [for rehearsing],