Lightnin' Hopkins: Blues In My Bottle (Bluesville Acoustic Sounds series) [BLUESVILLE]

Why you'll love it

This Bluesville Acoustic Sounds pressing has all-analog lacquers cut from the original master tapes by Matthew Lutthans and is pressed on 180g vinyl at QRP. It's Hopkins alone with his guitar, mixing his own songs with blues standards.

This edition

• Bluesville Acoustic Sounds series
• 180g vinyl
• All-analog mastering from the original tapes
• Mastered by Matthew Lutthans
• Pressed at QRP
• Obi with notes by Scott Billington
• Remastered
• Stereo mix

About the album

Some bluesmen needed a band. Lightnin' Hopkins needed a guitar, a chair and someone to press record. On July 26, 1961, in Houston, producers Kenneth Goldstein and Mack McCormick did just that, and Hopkins delivered an album's worth of songs in his easy, conversational style.

He learned at the feet of Blind Lemon Jefferson as a boy, and you can hear that deep Texas tradition in every bent note. "Buddy Brown's Blues" and "Death Bells" are slow and haunting, "Sail On, Little Girl, Sail On" rolls easy, "Goin' to Dallas to See My Pony Run" gallops along, "Catfish Blues" is a gritty standard done his way, and "My Grandpa Is Old Too!" shows the playful side that made him such a storyteller. McCormick, who helped bring him to wider audiences, called him the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit.

Hopkins went into the Blues Hall of Fame in its first year, and Rolling Stone named him among the greatest guitarists ever. One man and one guitar in one day in Houston; on staffing levels alone, it's the most efficient record in the shop.

Also at Kops: more Lightnin' Hopkins on vinyl · browse Blues

Tracklist

Listen

On Bluesville / Craft Recordings (cat# CR00978), a reissue of the 1961 album.