Lightnin' Hopkins - Lightnin' Strikes (Mono)
Rarity - Sealed
Lightnin' Hopkins, vocals and guitar [click here to see more vinyl featuring Lightnin' Hopkins]
Written by Semiens (A1, B1), Hopkins (A1, B1), B. Quinn (A2-5, B2-5), A. Cullen (A2-5, B2-5)
1 LP, Standard sleeve
Limited Edition
Original analog Master tape : YES
Heavy Press : 180gr
Record color : black
Speed : 33 RPM
Size : 12'’
Mono
Studio
Record Press : GZ Media
Label : VMP - Vinyl Me Please, Classics series
Original Label : VeeJay Records
Recorded in 1962 at Gold Star Studio (Houston, Texas)
Lacquer cut by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound
Plated at Record Technology Incorporated
Liner Notes by Andrew Winistorfer
Sleeve Notes by John W. Peters
Tracks :
Side A
- Got Me A Louisiana Woman
- Want To Come Home
- Please Don't Quit Me
- Devil Is Watching You
- Rolling And Rolling
Side B
- War Is Starting Again
- Walkin' Round In Circles
- Mary Lou
- Heavy Snow
- Coon is hard to catch
“Lightnin’ Strikes (from 1962, not the album of the same name recorded three years later) is credited as another solo record, recorded back in Houston and notable for most of the songs being credited not to Hopkins but to Lola Anne Cullen and Bill Quinn, who had worked with Hopkins over the years at Aladdin and Gold Star Records and seem to have an amazing knack of writing songs just like Hopkins does.
It opens with Got Me A Louisiana Woman – complete with bass, drums, electric guitars, piano, all uncredited and all struggling at times to keep up with Hopkins’s raffish approach to tempo and song structure. The band return for War Is Starting Again, which fades away mid-verse. Both songs are credited to Hopkins and Semiens, rather than to Cullen and Quinn: Semiens is probably Ivory Lee Semien, a Houston-based drummer. The album’s also notable for using too much reverb, possibly in an attempt to make Hopkins sound more with-it: it’s unnecessary.
There are plenty of songs here about the life of the blues singer, but Hopkins may be unique among his contemporaries in writing a song for Queen Elizabeth II. Blues For Queen Elizabeth is the longest track on these albums by some way, a song in praise of the titular monarch with Hopkins bemoaning the fact “this big world is sinking down,” telling of how the rooster crowed in England and could be heard over in France, then declaring his hope that he can take Mrs Hopkins to England to meet the queen. It’s a fine example of Hopkins’s vividly imaginative approach to songwriting.” Jazz Journal Review by Bruce Lindsay
Ratings :