Listening to Prestige 535: Lightnin' Hopkins

LISTEN TO ONE: Happy Blues for
John Glenn

 A month after his January session, Lightnin' Hopkins was back in the studio for two more dates with Mack McCormick,now with an amplified guitar and different members of the band that he customarily used for club dates around Houston for each session. They were:

Buster Pickens on piano (second session). He was one of the west Texas piano players who had roots going back to the 1920s and were known as the "Santa Fe group," but not because they had any connection with that New Mexico tourist mecca. They used to travel to gigs around Houston, Galveston, Richmond and other southwest Texas destinations by hopping freights on the Santa Fe railroad line. He recorded with many blues singers, including Texas Alexander, Hopkins' mentor and perhaps his cousin. Pickens recorded an album of his own in 1960

Billy Bizor on harmonica (first session). After playing on several Hopkins recordings in the early 1960s, he got to do two recording sessions on his his own in 1968 and 1969, but they weren't released for a couple of decades, or long after Bizor's death.

Donald Cooks on bass (second session). He was the go-to bass player for a number of Texas bluesmen, recording with Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Smoky Hogg, Goree Carter and others. 

Spider Kilpatrick on drums (both sessions). He was raised in the same New Orleans orphanage that Louis Armstrong sprang from him, worked with Hopkins for many years, and was praised in the liner notes to an Arhoolie recording:

Finally here was a musician who could follow Hopkins wherever he went, plus one providing a snappier beat that the guitarist could hang phrases of a bit more aggressive nature than usual on.

One of the reasons Hopkins had such a long and prolific recording career is that he had a vast repertoire. Of course he did repeat himself from time to time, but he also knew a whole lot of songs. had written a whole lot of songs, and was able to extemporize a whole lot of songs. One such, on this album, is "Happy Blues for John Glenn, about which Mack McCormick says in his notes:

Most of them...are lost as the impulse and the circumstances which occasioned them fade away. That "Happy Blues for John Glenn" was caught in a recording session is an accident resulting entirely from the flight having fallen on the date for which studio time had been booked...Ordinarily, he would have forgotten it in a night or two, and as a matter of fact at this writing Lightnin' says he can't remember the song.

Walkin' This Road by Myself was a Bluesville release, producer credit to Kenneth S. Goldstein and Mack McCormick, although McCormick was the only one with actual hands on down in Houston. Three 45 RPM singles were released from the session. "My Baby Don't Stand No Cheating" / "Katie Mae" came out on Bluesville.