Customer Reviews

Blue Lightnin'

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This is one of the best sounding CDs I've picked up in a long time. Instruments are crisp, clear and the work is just plain amazing. You get to hear some of Hopkins and the engineer talking, here, which is pretty interesting. It gives a real personal feel like you're sitting there listening to this live--and yes, this is just about as good. I didn't get the extended liner notes the label advertises, which is the only reason for the gig. Hopefully, the label will still have a set when I write.

Favorites:

"Back Door Friend" just another cheating song, but from the husband's point of view.

"Daddy was a Preacher" talking about forgiveness here.

Rebecca Kyle, August 2008

A welcome reissue of the great late Sixties disc, in expanded form with bonus tracks. Originally released on Jewel-Paula records, this captures Lightnin' performing with a great young band, giving the compositions a more razor sharp edge when compared to other Hopkins recordings of the period. Includes the classic BACK DOOR FRIEND.

This review has been used to cover several Lightning Hopkins CDs and a DVD review of an instructional film, "The Guitar Of Lightnin' Hopkins", directed and taught by Ernie Hopkins, Stephan Grossman Studio Workshop, 2004, on learning his guitar style. I might add that this film makes abundantly clear that learning Lightning's eccentric style is definitely not for beginners. Go to the Willie Dixon song book for that.

Lightnin'!, Lightning Hopkins, Arhoolie Records, 1993

Free Form Patterns, Lightning Hopkins, Fuel 2000 Records, 2003

Blue Lightning, Lightning Hopkins, Paula Records, 1995

Lightning Hopkins & The Blues Summit, Lightning Hopkins, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Big Joe Williams, EMI-Capitol Records, 2001

I have spilled plenty of ink in this space tracing the main line of the blues from its acoustic origins down in the plantation South, up river through the way station of Memphis, and then to the electric "Mecca of Chicago. Along the way I have occasionally mentioned some of the other branches of the blues line like the North Carolina pick. I have not spent nearly enough time on some of the other important branches of the blues expansion, especially in the post World II period such as the West Coast blues and, as will be noted here, Texas blues.

If the blues is synonymous with the black struggle to get by day to day, to make ends meet and to make it to Saturday night and some relieve then the very big locale of Texas and its harsh hard scrabble life and strict Jim Crow laws hardly seems out of place as a key blues outpost. From the days, in the 1920's and 1930's, of Blind Lemon Jefferson working the streets of rural small town Texas, cup in hand, up to the artist under review, Lightning Hopkins, working the small black clubs and "juke joints" of the cities (like Houston) and beyond to the sounds of blues revivalists like Stevie Ray Vaughn and his brother there has been more than enough misery to create a separate Texas blues tradition.

Moreover, Brother Hopkins brings a distinctive guitar pick of his own to the "dance". He is famous, above all, for what is called the E shuffle sound as he works the guitar to create a sound that is a little "happier" than the forlorn one of the Delta or the "amped up" one of Chicago. I, unfortunately, did not get a chance to hears Lightning live until late in his career in the early 1970's when he had lost a little of his fine-toned edge. One can recapture some of that though through some of these earlier recordings from a tie when he was in full blown Lightning form. Listen up if you want to learn a different way to run a guitar from that of Muddy Waters, Bukka White, B.B. King or, for that matter, Eric Clapton

Needless to say Lightning had covered most of the known blues classics of his time as well as his own material. The borderlines of what is one's own material and what one has reworked from the blues pool is not always clear but you need to hear, for starters, "Mojo Hand", "Hello Central", "Little Girl" and "Rock Me Baby" to get a feel for his sound. Add on such classics as "Wig Wearing Woman", "Lonesome Dog Blues" (with an eerie dog bark included free), "Back Door Friend" and you are ready to become an aficionado. Throw in the talking blues-styled "Mr. Charlie", "Baby Child" and "Cooking Done" for good measure. Finally, team up Lightning with the likes of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and the amazing Big Joe Williams (especially on Hopkins' "Ain't Nothing Like Whiskey" and "Chain Gang Blues") at the famous 1960 "blues summit" and you are ready for the graduate course.