Listening to Prestige 476: Lightnin' Hopkins

This short session of four songs, reminiscent of the old 78 RPM days, was recorded in Houston by Texas folklorist Mack McCormick and Kenneth S. Goldstein. Lightnin' Hopkins's path may have crossed with Chis Strachwitz as he headed for California while the latter was heading for Texas, but the Lone Star state was home ground for Hopkins, and he returned.

These four songs would be added to a longer 1962 session to make the Bluesville album Walkin' This Road by Myself, and I'll write more about it when we get to that second session.

Three of the songs are credited to Hopkins, but "Baby Don't You Tear My Clothes," a cheerfully bawdy number in the hokum tradition, goes back at least to the 1930s, is generally credited as "traditional," has spawned a number of other songs with the same melody, the best-known being Bob Dylan's "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down." It was first recorded in 1935 by the State Street Boys, a Chicago group that sometimes worked with Big Bill Broonzy and Jazz Gillum.

The fourth, "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl," is credited as "Traditional," but it probably does have a progenitor--the first Sonny Boy Williamson, who recorded it on Bluebird in 1937 and is listed on that record as composer.

Also on July 7, a quintet led by Gene Casey, consisting mostly of guys who had played with the Latin Jazz Quintet plus Ray Barretto, had a recording session at the Van Gelder Studio, but it was never released. Too bad. Anything with Ray Barretto is worth hearing.