Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [89]
Near the end of Lightnin’s set, Willie Dixon came up on stage and jammed with him and Lay. “Willie came up to bandstand and played bass,” Lay says, “and there was no stumbling around.” The response to Lightnin’ was enthusiastic, and his set was tight and dynamic, as evidenced by the recordings that were finally released on the Vanguard label in 2002.47 About Lay, Strachwitz commented, “He was a real pro. To him, Lightnin’ was a real, individualistic guy, but he knew what to do. It was a black community thing.”48 Lay knew how to follow Lightnin’s lead. He was more familiar with his music than most sidemen. Lay, like Hopkins, had southern roots. He had come to Chicago in 1960 with Little Walter, and decided to stay.
From Newport both Hopkins and Lay went to New York City, where Lightnin’ was booked solo at the Gaslight Cafe on August 4, 5, and 6, 1965, and Lay was appearing at the Village Gate. “We stayed in the same hotel,” Lay says. “It was the Hotel Albert. It wasn’t one of the big hotels. It was where a lot of us stayed. And went out in the daytime together, myself, him, and my wife. We’d go up me and him, and walk down through the park, Washington Square Park, down through the Village and go on to one of these places called Chicken in a Basket. We walk out there and get some chicken. He would pay for it.”49 After his gig, Lay would go over to the Gas Light to hang out with Hopkins. The Gaslight was a coffee house at 116 MacDougal Street, and Lightnin’ was on a bill that included the singer/songwriter Eric Andersen and the comedian Flip Wilson, and it was an easy walk from there to the hotel. The shows at the Gaslight were much like those at the Village Gate, and often featured an unexpected mix of performers, who alternated sets.
Lightnin’s travel schedule was intense; the offers were too good to turn down, and during the summer of 1965 he was in and out of California. On October 4 and 5, the Verve label, in association with Folkways, recorded him in Los Angeles for an LP called Lightnin’ Strikes.50 The sessions were tough, but Lightnin’ was actually to record three albums worth of material. The sidemen, Jimmy Bond on bass and Earl Palmer on drums, had some trouble keeping up with him, and the producers decided to overdub Don Crawford on harmonica to fill out the sound on yet another version of “Mojo Hand,” as well as on “Little Wail,” “Hurricane Betsy,” and “Shake Yourself.” Overall, the production was sloppy, and when Lightnin’ Strikes was released a year later, it mistakenly had a photograph of Reverend Gary Davis on the cover on the first pressing.
Lightnin’ wasn’t picky about his recordings. He accepted every opportunity that came his way, and when he was approached by Stan Lewis of the Jewel label, he was ready to go. Lewis, based in Shreveport, had been one of the biggest distributors of R & B records in the South since the 1940s and had started Jewel Records in 1963. He recorded such artists as John Fred and His Playboy Band, John Lee Hooker, Justin Wilson, Memphis Slim, and Little Johnny Taylor for Jewel and two subsidiary labels, Paula and Ronn. Bill Holford had told Lewis about Lightnin’ when he was recording Justin Wilson for him at his studio. “Bill said Lightnin’ came in there all the time,” Lewis recalled, “and asked me if I would like to do a session on him. I said, ‘Yeah.’”51 Lightnin’ was easy to work with: “He insisted being paid a flat fee at the date. In cash. He wouldn’t work any other way. He wouldn’t take a contract and didn’t want royalties. He’d say, ‘You pay me right now, and I’ll do one take.’”52
The first Jewel session included Elmore Nixon on piano and two unidentified sidemen on drums and bass. At one point, Lightnin’ stopped in the middle of a song, Lewis says, and scolded the drummer, “‘If you don’t get that beat right, I’m gonna fire your ass.’ But he never did that.”53 It isn’t clear where this session actually occurred, though it may have been