Lightnin' Hopkins: self-titled [SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS]

Why you'll love it

This Folkways 70th anniversary reissue is remastered from the 1959 master tapes, in mono, in a classic tip-on jacket with the original liner notes. AllMusic calls it one of Hopkins's best albums and a landmark of the blues revival.

This edition

• Remastered from the original master tapes
• Mono
• Tip-on jacket
• Original liner notes

About the album

By the late 1950s Lightnin' Hopkins was a Houston legend whom the wider world had lost track of. Samuel Charters went looking, found him in a rented one-room apartment in Houston, and on January 16, 1959, set up his gear at 2803 Hadley Street and pressed record.

It's just Hopkins, his guitar and that unmistakable voice, close and conversational. "Penitentiary Blues" comes from tradition, "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" and "Reminiscences of Blind Lemon" pay tribute to his early hero Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Bad Luck and Trouble" and "Trouble Stay 'Way from My Door" are pure Hopkins, and "Fan It" and "She's Mine" lighten the mood. Two songs he co-wrote with folklorist Mack McCormick. The Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings heard it as an intimate, unplugged record, and that's the charm of it: you can practically hear the room.

It came out around the same time as Charters's book The Country Blues and relaunched Hopkins's career with a whole new audience. Charters captured it all with a single microphone, which is fewer than we use to announce the store is closing.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Smithsonian Folkways (cat# FS 3822), a reissue of the 1959 album.