Search - Lightnin Hopkins :: Straight Blues

Lightnin' Hopkins was one of the blues' most distinctive and prolific artists, a man who wandered into recording studios and onto stages with no defined song list, sat down, and played whatever came into his mind. Sometimes he covered old traditional tunes, sometimes he played his established original songs, and sometimes he made tunes up on the spot, but he was usually brilliant. He recorded 11 mostly stunning albums for Prestige/Bluesville in the 1960s, all of which are available as part of a massive seven-CD box. This particular 1999 reissue offers a dozen cuts only available on that box and is culled from three different sessions. The first four tunes are enthralling solo studio recordings from Houston in 1961, two are subpar trio recordings from May 1964, and the remaining six are spellbinding solo live cuts from December 1964. Hopkins's deeply personal, easygoing vocal delivery and formidable but idiosyncratic guitar playing are impossible to duplicate and always genuine. Of special note are Francis Squibb's revelatory liner notes, which originally appeared in 1965. --Marc Greilsamer