Free Alan Govenar by Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life, Blues Page A

Lightnin’ sessions for the New York–based Herald label (owned by Al Silver, Jack Braverman, and Jack Angel) in or around April 1954. It’s quite possible that Holford and Crowe, who had just started their own music publishing company (CHS Music, BMI), recorded these and then shopped them around to different labels.
    The twenty-six sides that Lightnin’ issued on Herald took his music to a new level. While little is known of what actually transpired during these sessions, the results were phenomenal. Lightnin’s amplified guitar had an explosiveness that had not been heard before, but note for note, Donald Cooks on bass and Ben Turner on drums—two session players in Houston—were completely in synch with his every lick. It was the most rehearsed Lightnin’ had ever sounded, not necessarily because he had actually practiced the tunes in advance, but more as a result of a sense of familiarity among the players. They were ready, and the chemistry was just right. Not only did Lightnin’ update some of his older songs, like “Ida Mae” (which became “Don’t Think ‘Cause You’re Pretty”) and “Shine on Moon” (which took on the name “Shining Moon”), but he also introduced powerful new material such as “Sick Feeling Blues (I’m Aching),” “Don’t Need No Job,” “My Little Kewpie Doll,” “Had a Gal Called Sal,” and the “Life I Used to Live.” He may have repeated riffs from earlier instrumentals, but his attack on “Move On Out Boogie” and “Hopkins’ Sky Hop” was faster, louder, and played with more finesse.
Billboard
described “Sky Hop” as a “rompin’ instrumental blues played by guitar with rhythm. Could do business in country as well as r & b market, if it gets exposed.” 71
    The Herald sessions contain Lightnin’s usual mix of boogies, instrumentals, and down-home blues with the recurring themes of unrequited love, longing, and abandonment, but the ferocious drive, flair, and subtlety of his performance on electric guitar surpasses any of his earlier or later recordings. In two of the songs, it sounded as if Lightnin’ was still very much stuck on Ida Mae. In “Nothin’ But the Blues,” after a piercing instrumental introduction, Lightnin’ sang:
    I don’t see why the blues come in my house every morning before day
Every time it come in there, just about time it get there
My little girl, she done gone away, and her name was Ida Mae
    And in “Don’t Think ‘Cause You’re Pretty,” which is an updated version of his earlier song “Ida Mae,” he once again calls out to her after she’s left him.
    Well, don’t think because you’re pretty woman, got every man in town
You know the blues is a mighty bad feeling
When you have them ‘long about the break of day
When you look over on the bed where your baby used to lay
    The Herald sessions were a watershed in Lightnin’s career. The intensity of his singing and the fierceness of his electric guitar single-string runs had never been greater. Whatever he did in his day-to-day life, when he stepped into that studio, he was on fire.
    The Herald sessions were almost certainly done at ACA, but the only Hopkins recordings noted by Holford were the mastering for the Ace label of two songs with new titles from the 1954 Herald sessions. “Lightnin’ Don’t Feel Well” is an edited version of “Wonder What Is Wrong With Me” and “Bad Boogie” is the same as “My Little Kewpie Doll.” 72 Clearly the producers wanted to disguise the fact that they were issuing the same songs on different labels.
    By the time Lightnin’ recorded for Herald in 1954, his records were on jukeboxes across the country, and for a brief period, perhaps unbeknownst to him, he was named “President of the Blues” by