This is where it all began for the Houston troubadour: 43 solo sides, as evocative and stark as any he ever did, from 1946-1948. The first 13 sides find the guitarist in tandem with pianist Wilson "Thunder" Smith (who handles the vocals on a few tracks), but after that, old Lightnin' Hopkins went the solo route. "Katie May," "Short Haired Woman," ...
The late great Lightnin' Hopkins was one of the most natural of bluesmen, a poet who would often make up lyrics as he recorded. He was at his best when unaccompanied, as on this 1961 Prestige date. Though he usually played electric guitar, the Texas blues titan performed on this release with an acoustic, and the result is most rewarding. Tunes ...
Prestige Profiles, Vol. 8 contains previously released tracks taken from Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins' short stint with the label. These 16 cuts feature both solo and small-combo sessions recorded between 1960 and 1964, and include tasteful versions of such Lightnin' favorites as "Mojo Hand," "Katie Mae," "I'm a Crawling Black Snake," and ...
Hardly. What is on this two-disc set is a real hodgepodge of new and old tracks by a variety of artists ranging from soul shouters and blues-rockers to the true originators. Disc one gets off to a sluggish start with tracks from Johnny Winter, the Boneshakers, Colin James, Larry McCray, the Kinsey Report, John Hammond, Duke Robillard, and Terry ...
Pruning 16 tracks from Hopkins' extensive catalog for a best-of meant that some hard choices had to be made. The ones Rhino came up with won't satisfy everyone, but the label did take the correct road by sticking exclusively to the earliest part of his career, 1947-61. Perhaps the decision will offend some fans who feel that his 1960s and '70s ...
Lightnin' Hopkins' many albums are remarkably consistent (or all of them sound the same, depending on the way you want to phrase it), featuring his semi-improvised autobiographical lyrics sung over a stock set of slow blues riffs, with the occasional speeded-up boogie tossed in, and now and then a turn at the piano. Whether Hopkins played acoustic ...
Repackaging of three earlier albums, Walkin' This Road by Myself, Lightnin' & Co. and Smokes like Lightnin'. Lightnin' plays electric with small band support on these sides, which probably come the closest to what he sounded like in the juke joints around Houston in the early '60s. ~ Cub Koda, All Music Guide
Far from being an actual "best of," The Very Best of Lightin' Hopkins comes off as being a largely nonessential purchase -- many classic songs are absent and there's a lack of detailed liner notes to even denote which period the tracks are taken from. That's not to say the material selected isn't consistently engaging, with tunes like "Trouble in ...
Lightnin' Hopkins' plaintive, soft-rolling blues style is exemplified on "Let's Go Sit on the Lawn," "Just a Wristwatch on My Arm," "I'm a Crawling Black Snake," Willie Dixon's "My Babe," and others. Accompanied only by himself on guitar (and oh what a guitar he plays), Leonard Gaskin (bass), and Herb Lovelle (drums), Hopkins' seductive, intricate ...
A Lightnin' solo concert from his college kiddie-folk period (1964), this languished unissued in Fantasy Records' vaults until its release in the early '90s. That's a shame, because this concert captures Lightnin' at his beguiling best, spinning tales and blues magic with every track. His introductions are half the show, making even shopworn ...
This is a seven-CD box set that repackages all 11 LPs that Lightnin' Hopkins recorded for Bluesville and Prestige during the first half of the 1960s: Last Night Blues, Lightnin', Blues in My Bottle, Walkin' This Road By Myself, Lightnin' and Co., Smokes Like Lightning, Hootin' the Blues, Goin' Away, Down Home Blues, Soul Blues and My Life in the ...
As with its John Lee Hooker two-disc set, Rhino offers a very pleasant way to begin serious appreciation of Lightnin' Hopkins' humongous recorded legacy with this 41-track anthology. His Aladdin, Gold Star, RPM, Sittin' in With, and Mercury output are all liberally sampled on disc one, and there are a half-dozen of those electrifying 1954 Herald ...
Essential Blues is an attempt to trace the evolution of the music from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago and other modern, urban cities. It does a fairly good job in providing a brief history, but the main strength of the collection simply comes from the music. Featuring cuts from Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Slim Harpo, Junior ...
It's hard to believe from the vantage point of a period when blues songs are used for network television commercials, but it wasn't so long ago that the blues was, though hardly in danger of extinction, certainly limited to a pretty specialized audience. The blues revival of the early '60s brought the music back into the spotlight through its ...
As the third volume of Columbia's Austin City Limits series, this one shines the spotlight on the cornucopia of blues treasures from the show's rich history. The big tickets here include Lightnin' Hopkins' lion-in-winter performance of "Rock Me Baby" (complete with screeching wah-wah pedal), Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Love Struck Baby," his brother ...
This assemblage of blues, bluegrass, mountain ballads, topical songs, and jazz shows the wide range of American vernacular music, and Smithsonian Folkways' commitment to it. Among the many highlights here are Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson's ragged and yet sleek version of "The Coo Coo Bird," Doug Wallin's creaky and breathless a cappella version ...
Forever Gold: Great Blues Masters features several of the most popular artists of the genre, including tracks by John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Gatemouth Moore, Charles Brown, Canned Heat, Big Joe Turner, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Ray Charles, although some of the renditions may not be the best-known versions available. Still, this is an ...
Recorded between 1961 and 1969, Texas Blues gets to the essence of Lightnin' Hopkins' music, delivering a fine sampling of his guitar work as well as the superior sense of humor which sends cuts like "Bald Headed Woman" and "Meet You at the Chicken Shack" over the top. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
While Hopkins in his prime could crank out as many albums as there were days in the week (and sometimes more), some dates were more inspired than others and this casual recording is happily one of those times. In 1959, armed with nothing more than a single microphone mono tape recorder, folklorist Mack McCormick recorded Hopkins in an informal ...
Lightnin' Hopkins had a kit bag of slow blues riffs, a talent for improvising up-to-the-minute lyrics to go with them, and a general distrust of the recording industry that kept him bouncing from label to label for one-off albums in which he always made sure he got his money upfront before he played a note. This has led to a licensing bonanza that ...
In the 1960s, lovers of electric blues had a lot to choose from -- not only the Chicago blues, but also the electric blues of Texas, Louisiana, Detroit, and Memphis. Vanguard's electric blues output of the 1960s is the main focus of this 2000 compilation, which spans 1965-1968 and spotlights some of the guitar playing singers who recorded for the ...
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