Lightnin' Hopkins - King Of Dowling Street - Extended Liner Notes by Bill Dahl
Lightnin’ Hopkins - King Of Dowling Street
Only John Lee Hooker challenged Texas blues pioneer Lightnin’ Hopkins for the honor of being the most recorded bluesman of the entire postwar era, and Hooker had the advantage of moonlighting under a plethora of aliases. Lightnin’ was an unbelievably prolific figure during the second half of the 1940s and into the ‘50s, cutting a veritable mountain of sides for a dizzying array of labels large and small.
After mostly lying low at home during the late 1950s as rock and roll swept the musical landscape like a tornado and blues temporarily faded in commercial relevancy, Lightnin’ returned refreshed and rejuvenated as an acoustic bluesman to record for fresh firms as a newly established folk-blues demographic discovered him during the early ‘60s. After a few years of mining that movement (let’s not forget that Hopkins was actually a couple of months older than Robert Johnson, even if he got a considerably later start on launching his recording career than the ill-fated Johnson, so he knew the territory), Lightnin’ strapped his electric axe back on and kept right on going into the early ‘80s.
No matter the setting—solo unplugged, where he could set his own pace, or amplified in front of a rhythm section that hopefully had a handle on his unpredictably timed chord changes —Sam Hopkins never let his listeners down. Laidback, mildly mysterious, epitomizing street corner cool, he remained a fleet-fingered dazzler on his axe to the very end, his droll, understated vocal delivery never failing him for an instant.
Decked out in his omnipresent shades, conked hair, and sharp-creased suit, Hopkins presented himself to the world as the antithesis of a backwoods bluesman, though rural was precisely where he started out. By the time he first tucked a record contract into his back pocket and got down to business in a Los Angeles studio in late 1946, Lightnin’ had clearly transformed himself.
Like T-Bone Walker, the veritable father of electric blues guitar, Hopkins was one of the irreplaceable cornerstones of postwar Texas blues. His boogies were hurtling houserockers, and when Lightnin’ throttled down his tempo all the way, no bluesman ever sounded more lonesome. The three discs comprising this wide-ranging collection offer sterling proof of that, whether the sides hail from his first great postwar wave of recording or his wide-ranging later exploits. Insisting he would only cut one take of any song in the studio and demanding to be paid in cash for each tune before he’d count off the next one or performing live and up close in front of his fans as a tape recorder captured every note, Hopkins didn’t disappoint then and doesn’t now.
Born March 15, 1911 (according to Social Security records) or 1912 (in Hopkins’ own recollection) in Centerville, Texas (about 100 miles north of Houston), Sam Hopkins grew up without his father, who was murdered when Sam was only three. Centerville was a profoundly segregated community, but at least the impoverished Hopkins family had a guitar on hand to lighten their collective load. His oldest brother John Henry played, as did another older sibling, Joel. Little Sam snuck licks on John Henry’s guitar after building his own first humble instrument out of screen wire and a cigar box when he was only eight.
A 1920 family journey to Buffalo, Texas to attend a worship meeting presented by the General Baptist Association of Churches provided the lad with a defining moment when he not only met Blind Lemon Jefferson, who was there to perform at the picnic, but actually had the honor of briefly playing with him that day. Blind Lemon’s resulting encouragement deeply inspired Hopkins, as did the music he heard when he attended church. Sam was expelled from school in the seventh grade, leading him to embark on an early life of rambling and playing the blues (gambling provided quite a bit of what little income he realized in those footloose days).
Sam’s first duet partner was fiddler Jabo Bucks; they teamed up when Hopkins had just hit his teens to play for tips. He moved up the ladder considerably by inaugurating a musical partnership with his cousin, singer Alger “Texas” Alexander, an older vagabond with a bit of a timing problem who already boasted an impressive recording legacy. Born September 12, 1900 in Jewett, Texas, Alexander had debuted on shellac in 1927 on OKeh with Lonnie Johnson his elegant guitar accompanist. Alexander recorded regularly for OKeh into 1934, switching over to Vocalion that same year before falling off the recording radar. Hopkins wasn’t his accompanist those sessions; their musical relationship was lengthy, but the two never shared a studio date.
Hopkins scratched out a living across the vast expanses of Texas as an itinerant bluesman at picnics and juke joints. His musical activities were frequently interrupted by dice games and the occasional bout of backbreaking work in the fields, which he didn’t care for one bit. Along the way, Sam influenced more than a few future blues guitar notables, including Tomcat Courtney, who first caught him playing around East Texas during the late ‘30s and early ‘40s.
“I used to see him when I was a kid, Lightnin’ and T-Bone. I’d see more of them than I did anybody,” said the Marlin, Texas-born Courtney. “Lightnin’ was a cool cat, man. Well, he drank, you know what I mean? He drank. T-Bone drank too, but not as much as Lightnin’. But they both liked to shoot, including B.B. King. They all at that time liked to shoot dice. So I was very young then, but I used to see them in crap games, especially T-Bone. T-Bone loved to shoot dice. I’ve been in several craps games with him. Lightnin’ was the same way. But Lightnin’ drank more. He liked gin, is what he really liked.
“Lightnin’ used to come up there and play, you know, like the fall of the year, in them little joints. He would play all out in West Texas, Albuquerque, he played all out in them places.”
Hopkins settled in Houston during the mid-1940s, immediately gravitating to the jumping nightlife scene centered on Dowling Street in the Third Ward. That’s where African American talent scout Lola Anne Cullum discovered him in 1946. She had already accompanied one highly promising young Houston bluesman, boogie piano pounder Amos Milburn, to Los Angeles and snared him a contract with Eddie and Leo Mesner’s Aladdin Records, leading to a spectacular run of R&B hits for Milburn.
Cullum tracked Hopkins down while he was in the middle of shooting craps and offered him a thousand bucks to become his manager. She contacted the Mesners at Aladdin about her latest find, initially making plans to bring Hopkins and Alexander out to the Coast. But the older blues singer apparently intimidated Cullum; she didn’t want to include Texas on the lengthy journey. Hopkins suggested local blues pianist Wilson Smith as a replacement. Cullum wasn’t too thrilled with that plan either, but Sam insisted. So Cullum shepherded the two “newcomers” (Hopkins was 35 years old, hardly a neophyte) out to L.A. for their first bouts of recording.
On November 9, 1946, Hopkins and Smith made their studio debut at Hollywood’s Radio Recorders for Aladdin. “Katie Mae Blues” was the first number Aladdin released from the session. It gave the guitarist his lifelong nickname when it hit the shelves as by “Lightnin’” Hopkins. Aladdin christened Smith, who also recorded as a leader that day with Hopkins accompanying, as “Thunder,” so the pairing made sense. Lightnin’s Aladdin encore “Rocky Mountain Blues” was another classic that remained in his repertoire for decades thereafter. The newly formed duo returned to L.A. for another Aladdin session the following August. Lightnin’ waxed his first rendition of “Short-Haired Woman” at that date, along with a supercharged “Play With Your Poodle” that verged on rock and roll long before the term ever came into play.
Lightnin’ recorded solo for Imperial in Houston into late February of 1948 before recording studio boss Bill Quinn lured him away from the Mesners for his own Gold Star label. In addition to Hopkins’ Gold Star output, Quinn moved some of his product out to the Bihari brothers’ Modern label in L.A. Lightnin’ found his way onto the national R&B charts in early 1949 with the protest ode “Tim Moore’s Farm,” a thinly veiled commentary on a brutal real-life plantation owner in Navasota, Texas named Tom Moore. The 78 came out on both Gold Star and Modern and no doubt rendered Hopkins persona non grata anywhere near Moore’s encampment.
That autumn, Hopkins’ Gold Star release “‘T’ Model Blues” pierced the R&B hit parade. Aladdin reached back for the ominous “Shotgun Blues” a year later and finally realized a national R&B hit from the sides Hopkins cut for them. Quinn sold another batch of Lightnin’s masters to Modern’s RPM subsidiary, while Hopkins drifted over to Bobby Shad’s Sittin’ in With logo in 1951 and scored more R&B chart entries the next year: “Give Me Central 209” and “Coffee Blues.”
Recording contracts and label affiliations meant nothing to Hopkins during this bountiful period. If an A&R man had money to spend, Lightnin’ was all too happy to oblige him with a session. Shad brought him over to Mercury Records for a brief stint after plenty of releases on Sittin’ In With and its Jax sister label. There was a July ‘53 session for the major Decca imprint in Houston that found him backed by a supple little rhythm section.
Hopkins landed at Al Silver’s Herald Records in 1954 and made some of the most exciting records of his life. With bassist Donald Cooks and drummer Ben Turner behind him, Lightnin’ cut 28 masters for the imprint in Houston led by the incredible instrumental “Hopkins’ Sky Hop,” which hit a supersonic tempo level from start to finish that Little Richard would have been proud of (Lightnin’ tore off blazing licks fed through an amp cranked to the boiling point).
King of Dowling Street opens with all four of Lightnin’s solo sides for one of the last indie labels to aim his output solely at the R&B market. Bob Tanner’s San Antonio-based TNT (short for Tanner ‘N’ Texas) imprint was just getting its bearings when Hopkins cut a date for the company in all his fully electrified glory. His first platter for the firm, pairing the anguished slow blues “Late In The Evening” and a hard-driving “Lightnin’ Jump,” was released in November of 1953. Hopkins’ TNT encore, coupling the lonesome downbeat “Leavin’ Blues” and “Moanin’ Blues,” saw light of day in ‘55. For TNT, the Hopkins session represented a rare foray into Lone Star blues; apart from two singles by Lightnin’s friend, pianist Big Walter Price, the label would specialize in country and rockabilly in years to come, launching Johnny Olenn, Bill Anderson, Ray Campi, and Roy Head and his Traits with important early releases.
Apart from an isolated 1957 single on Henry Stone’s Chart label out of Miami, the second half of the decade was barren for Lightnin’ as far as recording opportunities, although his fans could have been forgiven for believing otherwise—he’d left so many masters behind in various tape vaults that a steady stream of fresh singles continued to emerge on Shad’s Harlem logo as well as Ace and Herald, the latter stretching their holdings all the way into 1960 before running dry. That was one of the drawbacks of Lightnin’s money up front and no royalties policy—labels swamped the market in product several years after he cut it for them, even if his peculiar policy stipulating no revisiting any song sometimes rendered the leftovers unusable. At the end of a session, a producer had to accept whatever Lightnin’ left him with.
“He wouldn’t give you but one take,” noted the late Stan Lewis, owner of Jewel Records in Shreveport, Louisiana, which brought Hopkins aboard in 1965 for a comparatively lengthy stretch. “We tried to conserve tape in those days, but we should have let it keep on rollin’. The outtakes on some of that stuff is so great today, it’s worth as much as a song is.”
After his temporary exile to the gin joints of Houston’s Third Ward during the late ‘50s, musicologists Sam Charters and Mack McCormick tracked Hopkins down. Charters got the comeback ball rolling in January of 1959 by setting up an Ampex tape recorder and a hand-held Electrovoice microphone in his room on Hadley Street to record Lightnin’s first fresh full-length album for Folkways on a rented guitar (Hopkins’ was locked in a local pawn shop).
That eponymous Folkways LP introduced Lightnin’ to a new demographic just as the folk-blues movement was taking shape. Scoring R&B hits was no longer the goal. Hopkins and his next several producers would concentrate on knocking out albums where he would play acoustic guitar as he had back in Centerville.
McCormick countered by extensively recording Hopkins less than a month later, licensing some of the masters to Tradition in the U.S. and others to Tony Dobell’s 77 label over in England (the logo was named after the street address of Dobell’s record shop in London). McCormick followed Charters’ example, cutting his client (McCormick had also assumed a managerial role) in a solo acoustic format.
“Long Gone Like A Turkey Through The Corn,” a folk-based romp cut February 26, 1959 in Houston, was one of the masters that Mack dealt to Tradition, the firm placing it on Lightnin’s Country Blues album later that year. Hopkins’ dexterous guitar work is utterly delicious, pounding out the rhythmically driving boogie bottom with a pick on his thumb while adding his usual barrage of high notes via his index and middle fingers.
As his star belatedly rose outside the Houston city limits, Hopkins indulged in more touring, though he wasn’t all that thrilled with leaving his homebase even if the pay was better. With the help of Texas folkie John A. Lomax, Jr., Lightnin’ got a featured slot at the Berkeley Folk Festival, held July 3-4, 1960. John and his sister Bess Lomax Hawes then brought him down to L.A. for a concert that ran no less than four hours.
The festivities adjourned to Bess’ abode for an all-night jam session starring Hopkins and the cantankerous duo of whooping harpist Sonny Terry and guitarist Brownie McGhee (they were headlining at Ed Pearl’s Ash Grove, where Hopkins would headline often in years to come). Lightnin’ and Brownie swapped licks and lyrics, Terry offered whooping encouragement, and Mississippi nine-string specialist Big Joe Williams also got involved. Although the two hadn’t previously crossed paths, Hopkins and McGhee did share a long-ago connection: in 1952, Brownie had waxed “A Letter To Lightnin’ Hopkins” for Shad’s Jax label, jauntily taunting Hopkins on subjects near and dear to both of their rambling hearts.
Before the feeling was lost from the jam, a recording session was hastily arranged at the studios of Richard Bock’s World Pacific Records for 11 a.m. with Ed Michel producing. All four legends sat in a semi-circle, a bottle of something potent nestled under each of their seats, and the entirely improvised album Down South Summit Meetin’ quickly took shape. Most of the selections were shared excursions, lead vocals passed around as liberally as the hooch, but “How Long Have It Been Since You Been Home” was prime solo Hopkins all the way.
Expanding his touring radius, Lightnin’ headed for New York that autumn for more high-profile concert bookings, including an October 14 appearance at a benefit for the folk magazine Sing Out! at prestigious Carnegie Hall along with Pete Seeger, the Clancy Brothers, and teen Joan Baez. There was also a four-song guest stint on a culturally significant CBS-TV program.
While he was in town, Hopkins made the most of his time in various recording studios, cutting four full albums: Lightnin’--The Blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins and Last Night Blues, the latter in cahoots with Sonny Terry, for Prestige’s Bluesville subsidiary; the Nat Hentoff-produced Lightnin’ in New York for Candid, and most notably Mojo Hand on Bobby Robinson’s Fire Records. This album would be intended for Hopkins’ old fans as well as his newly acquired demographic.
Robinson knew the R&B market like the back of his hand. Born April 16, 1917 in Union, South Carolina, Robinson had moved up to New York in 1937 and opened Bobby’s Record Shop on bustling 125th Street in 1946, its proximity to the Apollo Theatre just down the block guaranteeing a brisk walk-in trade. Bobby and his younger brother Danny launched their first label, Robin (soon changed to Red Robin), in 1951, specializing in R&B vocal groups and no-nonsense blues (Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry cut separate singles for the logo). Red Robin folded in 1956, Bobby immediately going into partnership with Jubilee Records boss Jerry Blaine at Whirlin’ Disc Records. But that lasted less than a year.
Robinson introduced Fury Records at the start of 1957. He struck major paydirt with Wilbert Harrison’s 1959 pop and R&B chart-topping “Kansas City.” Fury’s sister label Fire posted two more #1 R&B sellers the next year with Buster Brown’s whooping “Fannie Mae” and Bobby Marchan’s melodramatic “There’s Something On Your Mind Part 2.”
Bobby always had a soft spot for real-deal blues, bringing Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup and Elmore James onto Fire and trying unsuccessfully to coax something releasable out of Hopkins’ fellow Texas guitar slinger Frankie Lee Sims--so Lightnin’ was right up his alley. In November of 1960, Bobby brought Hopkins, young New York drummer Delmar Donnell (who had cut his own ‘60 rock and roll single “Lizzie Mae” for Fury as a vocalist), and an upright bassist into a New York studio and cut enough sides for an album (and then some). Robinson recalled that Hopkins demanded payment in the sum of $400 for the project, eschewing future royalties.
Wielding brushes rather than sticks and placing a book on his drum to achieve a muted backbeat, Donnell received simple marching orders from producer Robinson—follow Lightnin’ wherever he went musically in the studio and everything would be fine. The session produced the original version of one of Lightnin’s signature songs. “Mojo Hand” counted off a brisk lope, Hopkins crisp on his acoustic licks and typically vocally assured.
In Timothy J. O’Brien and David Ensminger’s 2013 book Mojo Hand—The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robinson and his promotion man Marshall Sehorn describe how Bobby went back in the studio after the session and edited down the lengthy master of “Mojo Hand” into the concise version that he issued as a Fire 45, misspelling Hopkins’ first name on it as “Lightin’.” “Mojo Hand” charted in Cash Box in early 1961, although it avoided Billboard’s hit parades. Its flip side “Glory Be” was a slow dirge defined by stinging guitar filigrees and Lightnin’s offhand vocal delivery, complete with an occasional spoken aside. The full-length version on Hopkins’ Mojo Hand album was a couple minutes longer than the single.
Oddly, there was no encore 45 for Hopkins on Fire, but Robinson did press up Mojo Hand. The guitar wizard revisited one of his vintage classics; “Coffee For Mama,” as Robinson retitled the mid-tempo number on the LP, was a remake of “Coffee Blues,” Lightnin’s 1952 hit on Sittin’ in With. Lowdown blues were plentiful—“Shine On Moon,” “Awful Dream,” and “Santa,” one of Hopkins’ contributions to the Yuletide canon, were taken at leisurely tempos.
“Sometimes She Will” kicked off at a livelier pace, and the instrumental “Black Mare Trot” at times sounds more than a little like Freddie King’s hit “Hide Away”—which wouldn’t debut on Syd Nathan’s Federal label for another couple of months. Freddie, a native of Gilmer, Texas prior to moving to Chicago at the close of 1950, was no doubt aware of Lightnin’—but the similarity adds another layer of mystery to the origins of “Hide Away” (King waxed the tune for Federal in August of ‘60, but it was yet to be pressed). There was even space for Hopkins to sit down at the piano and accompany himself on the back alley “Have You Ever Loved A Woman.”
Bobby didn’t include the jaunty shuffle “How Long Has The Train Been Gone” on Mojo Hand, nor another pair of resolutely downbeat outings, “Baby I Don’t Care” and “Houston Bound,” all with Lightnin’ back on guitar. “Houston Bound” elicited a particularly intense vocal effort; Hopkins was clearly homesick for his girlfriend back in the title town, mentioning his home address and wondering why he should stick around New York any longer. He threatens to hop on a southbound airplane even if it kills him, revealing his fear of flying.
Even though he made three albums for Stan Lewis’ Jewel label between 1965 and 1969 (the final one, The Great Electric Show and Dance, was cut in Muscle Shoals), Lightnin’ was by no means tethered to one label during that period. His disdain for exclusive contracts had him also cutting full-length projects for Arhoolie and Verve-Folkways during that timeframe. The potentially strangest one of all was done right in his hometown of Houston.
Up in Chicago, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf had been subjected to psychedelically inclined blues-rock experiments by Chess Records that resulted in some of the weirdest albums of their respective careers. That was probably the concept that International Artists Records producer Lelan Rogers—singer Kenny Rogers’ older brother—had in mind when he paired Lightnin’ with the rhythm section from the 13th Floor Elevators (Roky Erickson’s rock band) for the album Free Form Patterns.
But thanks to the tasteful grooves of Elevators bassist Duke Davis and drummer Danny Thomas, Free Form Patterns, waxed February 1, 1968, wasn’t the train wreck it could have been. With Hopkins’ childhood pal and longtime accompanist Billy Bizor adding pungent harmonica, “Give Me Time To Think” was a solid mid-tempo electric grinder.
International Artists wasn’t Lightnin’s only new label suitor. Vault Records boss Jack Lewerke hired young blues aficionado Bruce Bromberg, then working for the L.A. record distributor that owned Vault, to produce California Mudslide (And Earthquake) for the label.
“One day they came to me: ‘Lightnin’ Hopkins is in town!’ I’d known him a little bit, because when he came to town, he used to stay with Long Gone (Miles), because Long Gone was kind of a protegé of his in Houston,” said Bromberg. “So he said, ‘Do you want to produce him?’ At first I’m going, ‘Oh well, Lightnin’s sure made a lot of records. Why would we want to do that?’ Then I just hit myself: ‘Jesus, Lightnin’ Hopkins! We should do it!’ So we did it. That was a big thrill.”
The album’s title track was inspired by a mudslide that struck the City of Angels on the May 1969 day that Hopkins was to cut the album. Its poignant solo electric “No Education” was one of the highlights of Lightnin’s Vault LP (the label’s earlier album catalog was dominated by the surfing Challengers and the pre-hit Chambers Brothers). Louisiana rocker Tony Joe White, a huge Hopkins fan, dropped by the sessions; he ended up jamming with Lightnin’ (alas, no tape was rolling) and wrote the album’s liner notes.
Our second disc is comprised of tracks from two rare sources. The first 10 sides, cut in late 1964, replicate The King of the Blues, his album for the budget Pickwick label. There was nothing cut-rate about this collection; Lightnin’ was armed with his electric guitar and in peak playing condition. Particularly notable was “The Jet,” a harrowing account of his October flight from New York City to Europe to appear on the American Folk Blues Festival tour (in the book Mojo Hand, it’s claimed the stress from his skyborne terror may have caused Hopkins to suffer a slight nervous breakdown; he couldn’t play when he arrived but soon recovered). When it came to chronicling current events, including his own travails, few bluesmen were as adept as Lightnin’--he could make up songs right on the spot and often did.
The bawdy houserocker “The Crazy Song” was a staple of his live repertoire that he recorded several times over the years under various related titles, and “I Wish I Was A Baby” and “Come On Baby, Let’s Work Awhile” were taken at aggressive boogie-fired tempos and drenched in slashing guitar. Hopkins added another title to his personal holiday songbook with “Christmastime Is Coming;” “Lightnin’s Love” spotlighted his downbeat side.
The remaining 10 numbers on disc two hail from the archives of Houston producer Roy C. Ames. “Feel Like Ballin’ The Jack,” more prime solo Hopkins, is actually his interpretation of Big Bill Broonzy’s celebratory “I Feel So Good,” while a rhythm section joins in on the languid “Rainy Day In Houston” and “You Just Got To Miss Me.” Lightnin’ is again thoroughly amplified, his folk-blues tenure at an end.
Disc three captures Hopkins in concert in a wide variety of venues. “Leave Jike Mary Alone,” “You Treat Po’ Lightnin’ Wrong,” and “Rock Me All Night Long” (better known as “Rock Me Baby,” though mistitled “There’s Good Rockin’ Tonight” at the time) were laid on tape at the Bird Lounge, an intimate Houston nightspot where he frequently starred in 1964. They were originally issued on an ultra-cheap long-player on the Guest Star logo.
As he made more trips to the West Coast, Hopkins did a fair amount of recording in various L.A. venues. At the Troubadour in 1964, he cut loose with “Mighty Crazy” and “Baby Please Don’t Go,” and he was back on the popular nightclub’s stage the next year, when he performed “Last Night I Lost The Best Friend I Ever Had.” “You Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone,” “Big Black Cadillac Blues,” and “Baby Scratch My Back” were all taped at a May 3, 1966 gig at Ed Pearl’s Ash Grove, and he returned to the welcoming venue on September 15, 1967, offering up “My Babe” for his fans.
Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field was long the home of baseball’s Dodgers, but that wasn’t where Lightnin’ starred on April 25, 1974. A Denver music room had adopted the name in tribute, and that’s where Hopkins unleashed “Cook My Breakfast,” “Key To The Highway,” and “I Got My Hook In Your Water.” The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival welcomed Lightnin’ on April 11, 1976 to reprise his classic “Mojo Hand” and “Shining Moon.” The aptly titled “Houston Rock” caught Hopkins January 7, 1981 back on his home turf at the Rock House.
Sam Hopkins died a year after his Rock House engagement of esophageal cancer on January 30, 1982. Nearly four decades later, he remains one of the deepest laid cornerstones of Texas blues. That’ll never change.
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
Mojo Hand—The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins, by Timothy J. O’Brien and David Ensminger (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2013)
Blues Records 1943-70: A Selective Discography, Vol. 1, A to K, by Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven (London: Record Information Services, 1987)
Blues Who’s Who—A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers, by Sheldon Harris (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979)
Both Sides Now website: www.bsnpubs.com
Discogs website: www.discogs.com
45cat website: www.45cat.com
Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles 1942-1988, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1991)
Wikipedia website: www.wikipedia.org
YouTube website: www.youtube.com
Disc 1 / Favorites
Moanin’ Blues
Leaving’ Blues
Short Haired Woman
Late In The Evening
Lightnin’ Jump
Long Gone Like A Turkey Through The Corn
How Long Have It Been Since You Been Home?
Mojo Hand
Glory Be
How Long Has The Train Been Gone
Have You Ever Loved A Woman
Santa
Black Mare Trot
Coffee For Mama
Awful Dream
Sometimes She Will
Shine On Moon
Houston Bound
Baby I Don’t Care
Give Me Time To Think
No Education
Disc 2 / Rarities
This Time We’re Going To Try
Christmas Time Is Coming
Let’s Work Awhile
The Jet
I Don’t Need You Woman
I Wish I Was A Baby
This Crazy Song
Lightnin’s Love
Take It If You Want It
Have Have You Been
My Baby Was Crying For Bread
I Wonder Where She Can Be Tonight
Feel Like Ballin’ The Jack
Rainy Day In Houston
How Does It (Instrumental)
A Man Like Me Is Hard To Find
Movie’ Out
You Just Gotta Miss Me
World’s In A Tangle
Shinin’ Moon
Disc 3 / Live
You Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone
Big Black Cadillac Blues
Baby Please Don’t Go
Houston Rock
Leave Jike Mary Alone
Rock Me All Night Long
Don’t Treat That Man The Way You Treat Me
Cook My Breakfast
You Treat Po’ Lightnin’ Wrong
I Got My Hook In Your Water
Mighty Crazy
My Babe
Last Night I Lost The Best Friend I Ever Had
Key To The Highway
Mr. Charlie (Part 2)
Baby Scratch My Back
Mojo Hand
Shining Moon
$1.00 from each album sold will be donated to The Life Center For the Homeless, Houston, TX
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