Customer Reviews

Lightnin Hopkins

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4 star:		(1)
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This magnificent recording is in my top five blues albums of all time. That's saying something. While it is not necessarily the most representative Lightnin' Hopkins, it might be the best. Here is Lightnin' bursting with energy after having vanished from the recording scene for four years, and the emotional, joyful, painful, gorgeously human blues he gives vent to are staggering to hear. Just Lightnin', close-miked in a hotel room, playing from his soul, with no clue that he was igniting his career anew with this album. Sound is outstanding, songs are less personal than usual for him (many are traditional) but absolutely riveting. Buy this and look into the soul of country blues. Buy it, and smile.

This is a marvellous CD--no-frills, honest, straight-from-the-heart acoustic blues from a true master. I actually felt as if I were in the same room with this legendary artist.

I'm not sure where the dividing line is between blues and folk--in the case of Lightnin' Hopkins maybe there isn't one. This is surely American music at its purest, undistilled best !

No more hype--if you want to add a very special disc to your collection, look no further.

This is just lightin and his acoustic guitar recorded in a hotel room, just before the 60's blues revival.This is my personal favorite of lightin, better than any other compilation. If you have seen any video of lightin performing live, maybe you wondered why he wasnt captured like that on record. Well, listen to this one, its a great live performance, with lightnin taking all the decisions.

I love this for all of its intimate, raw, uncomplicated feel. It's like Lightnin is sitting in your own front room with his chair pulled up opposite yours, maybe a bottle of liquor is present, and he's playing and singing just for you. Enjoy.

Did you ever have one album by one artist change your life? It happened to me and it was Lightnin' Hopkins.

Back in 1962 I was listening to pop like Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell and one day my sister Anne hands me an album and says, more or less, "you should listen to this. you might like it." It was Lightnin, came out on Folkways, and it had been recorded by Sam Charters in Lightnin's rooming house, in the kitchen on January 15, 1959. He was drinking gin out of the bottle cap, playing his guitar and singing music that I'd never heard the like of. The first cut was Penitentiary Blues.

Well. That album changed my life and started a lifelong interest in the blues. About the first thing I did when I grabbed Anne's classic guitar that she'd gotten for King Korn stamps was to try and figure out how he'd done it.

The cool thing is, you can still buy this album on Amazon and you can listen to some snippets. Imagine this 12 year old white kid from New Jersey hearing this for the first time.

Sam Hopkins, born March 15, 1912 in Centerville, Texas had his first hit single at age 37 early in 1949 when Tim Moore's Farm, originally released on Gold Star 640, but picked up and released on Modern 673, made it to # 13 on what then passed for the R&B charts (Most Played Juke Box Race Records) with You Don't Know on the flip-side. Later that year Gold Star released another cut made for them, "T" Model Blues, which got as high as # 8 on what had evolved into the Most-Played Juke Box Rhythm & Blues Records charts. The B-side was Jail House Blues by Frankie Lee Sims.

Towards the end of 1950 his recording for Aladdin, Shotgun Blues, became his best hit when it peaked at # 5 on those same charts b/w Rollin' Blues. It would be two years before he returned to the charts, this time with the quaintly-named Sittin' In With label, as the wonderful Give Me Central 209 (sometimes listed as Hello Central) topped out at # 6 b/w New York Boogie in March, followed in April by another # 6, Coffee Blues, which had New Short Haired Woman as the B-side. It was also released that year on the JAX label.

And that was it insofar as hit singles were concerned, following which Hopkins disappeared from view, until sought out in 1959 by Sam Charters. Details of that search are contained in the two pages of liner notes written in 1990 by Charters. And this album, originally released in 1959 by Folkways, was the result of that meeting. As Charters says in the notes "We recorded it (0n January 16, 1959) in the shabby room he was renting (at 2803 Hadley Street in Houston), and I held the microphone in my hand so I could move it down toward the guitar when he playing a solo, and then move it close enough to his lips for his singing, but not too close when he started to edge up on it."

The result is Blues Magic, including the not-to-be-missed track 7 where Lightnin' reminisces about "Blind" Lemon Jefferson, one of the most influential blues singer and guitarist ever and a fellow Texan who was popular in the 1920's. The photo of Lightnin' on the cover of this CD was taken by Charters at the time of the recording. Hopkins, whose cousins Smokey Hogg and Albert Collins were also noted blues singers/musicians, died after a bout with cancer on January 30, 1982, two years after being inducted into the Blues Hall Of Fame in its inaugural year.

An absolute little jewel that should form part of any serious early Blues collection.

As raw, as earthy, as real as the blues can get. If you like blues, you need to hear this recording.

Lightnin' is the best, I buy all his stuff, I love him man, you gott'a ad him to your CD collection if you call yourself a blues fan!