Alan Govenar by Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life, Blues Read Free Book Online Page B

mouth, and probably a few inches below it that would capture enough of the guitar.” 44
    In 1947, “There was no reverb,” Bradley points out. “Quinn was recording direct to disk, cutting a master on a lacquer-coated metal disk. And the cutter had a cutting needle that cut grooves in the master acetate. After he cut one song at a time on the acetate disk, the acetate disk went into an electrolyte bath from which would emerge the stamper, which was a negative image of that acetate. [In order to get protection, many places would offer three-step processing, which included not only the master, which could be used as a stamper, but also a “mother” that could then produce any number of stampers.] And he made a stamper plate for each side, and each plate was then placed on either side of a record pressing machine, and a glob of a warm compound that included shellac [which was generally known as “biscuits”] and that would be placed between the two metal sheets together with the two labels. Basically, the press stamped out the disk and when it was removed, it was put on a turntable and the rough edges were trimmed before it was put in a sleeve.” 45 Quinn frequently did not use full three-step protection because it was costly. The complicated part of the process was not the stamping of the actual disks, and he told Chris Strachwitz that several times the acetate master was destroyed in the electrolyte bath. “That accounts for some missing catalogue numbers,” Strachwitz explains, “though Quinn said that he sometimes forgot the last release number and for safety would just jump a few numbers ahead.” 46
    Quinn struggled to keep his business going, and by the late 1940s the competition between independent record labels in Houston was growing. Eddie’s, Macy’s, Freedom, and Peacock were all involved in recording local and regional blues musicians, such as Gatemouth Brown, Little Willie Littlefield, L. C. Williams, Goree Carter, Lester Williams, Peppermint Harris, and Big Walter Price. 47 Of these, Don Robey’s Peacock label emerged as the most successful, and in time Robey acquired the Duke label and started the Back Beat and Songbird
    labels. 48
    The differences between the Duke/Peacock sound and the music of Lightnin’ Hopkins not only underscored the breadth and complexity of the Houston black music scene, but was also indicative of the social stratification within the African American communities of Houston. Robey favored gospel music and the big band rhythm and blues sound that was popular among an upwardly mobile African American audience, who participated in the social scene of venues like the El Dorado Ballroom and the Club Matinee. For Robey, Lightnin’s blues lacked sophistication; there were no orchestrated arrangements. Lightnin’ played a gritty, improvised style of blues in the low-income dives of the Third Ward, and many of the people who listened to his music were poor rural blacks looking for work and trying to get a foothold in Houston—the factory workers and day laborers who struggled to support themselves and their families. Although there are no demographic studies about who bought Hopkins’s records, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that his blues did also appeal to some African American professionals, who had either moved to Houston from East Texas or who just simply liked Lightnin’s country flair. Dr. Cecil Harold, a respected surgeon in Houston who years later became Hopkins’s manager, says that he “always appreciated the way Lightnin’ could put into words the mood of the black community—especially a black community that was hit especially hard by the Great Depression.” 49
    Lightnin’s records were stacked into jukeboxes in cafes and bars in the Third Ward and the low-income black neighborhoods of Houston, but he did also get some airplay. Black groups had been broadcast in Houston