LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS
Prestige Profiles Vol. 8

 

Lightnin’ Hopkins had already carved out a career as a musician and seen his star rise and fall by the time he recorded the material heard on this sampler, which covers the period from 1960 to 1964 when he recorded for the Prestige Bluesville imprint, though he still did some moonlighting for labels such as Arhoolie and Vee-Jay. This was also the time when a number of blues performers—both country blues performers like Hopkins and Skip James and electric ‘Chicago’ style performers like Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf—found their careers revitalized by the interest in their music due to the folk music movement, which considered the blues to be black American folk music. A few years later the most popular British rock musicians began to tell the world that their main influences had been these same American blues performers, and those that survived, including Hopkins, were back on the road, being offered festival gigs and recording work.

So several of the tracks here—“Katie Mae,” “Automobile Blues,” and the successful rocker “Mojo Hand” are remakes of original versions cut for other labels, but they are no less interesting for that. After all, what blues artist hasn’t cut many versions of his greatest songs? In addition there are versions of traditional blues that Hopkins adapted, as all the great performers so, and these versions add yet another layer to the music’s history: “Back to New Orleans” (actually the Big Joe Williams staple “Baby Please Don’t Go”), “Mean Old Frisco” (adapted from Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup), and “good Morning Little Schoolgirl” (Sonny Boy Williamson).

As Lee Hildebrand brilliantly points out in his liner notes, Hopkins considered each song to be the document of a moment in his life or in time, and once he was paid, he moved on to the next song, the next gig. Prestige (or possibly Folkways, for which he recorded immediately prior) was the first label to pay Hopkins royalties. These sixteen tracks, culled from a dozen or so recordings made for the Prestige Bluesville label, provide a good idea of the work of Lightnin’ Hopkins, as songwriter, singer, guitarist, and important part of the blues tradition.

Also of interest—perhaps even worth the price of admission in itself—is the bonus disc, which includes performances by Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Willie Dixon & Memphis Slim, Homesick James, Jimmy Witherspoon, Otis Spann, Rev. Gary Davis, Big Joe Williams, Memphis Willie B., Blind Willie McTell, and Roosevelt Sykes.