Seeing You Riding 'Round
“It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.”― Rebecca West
Today is a big one for musician birthdays. Sly Stone. Ry Cooder. Will.i.am, Phil Lesh (still missing Terrapin), DJ Fontanta…but whenever March 15th rolls around, the birthday’ed artist that I throw on the turntable…as I do so often on many other days during the year…is Lightnin’ Hopkins. I dug deep into his crazy life on his birthday a few years ago, so to mark this day, I was just wanting to focus on one of his records that has been a go-to since long before I care to remember….
Lightnin’: The Blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins on Prestige/Bluesville
Jazz label Prestige launched Bluesville in the late 50s to promote the great blues artists that were still kicking around, before the blues rediscovery of the 1960s (and yes, Bluesville was WELL POSITIONED for that moment). One of the artists who released a slew of records on the label was Lightnin’ Hopkins. Lightnin’ was in his mid-forties and in top form, delivering the label classic after classic, some solo…some in collaboration with other killer bluesmen…some with ever changing combos: all showcasing different sides of his craft.
Lightnin’ is a mellow groove…a sweet, lazy ice-tea-on-a-tall-grass-lawn-in-summer kind of record featuring a trio that only recorded a few Bluseville records together in the early 60s. While the groovy factor is abundant, Hopkins shows his mastery of his instrument on every track, picking each note as a diamond cutter slices a gemstone. Every angle, every shape, every strum and chord show an effortless complexity: Lightnin’’s signature. Bass player Leonard Gaskin, who cut his teeth working briefly with the likes of jazzbos succcchas Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis (an early record on Prestige) walks his way through the record, the champion of minimalism, quietly framing Hawkins’ performance along with drummer Belton Evans, who started with King Curtis and became a regular on Bluesville sessions, painting a rhythmic sauce with an abundant amount of brushes.
Without giving too much away, lets just say that the beginning track, Automobile Blues, a song Hopkins originally cut solo in 1949 (which was a play on Big Bill Broonzy’s Too Many Drivers), brilliantly introduces the listener to the idea of slow and peaceful living through Hopkins’ graceful notes and riffs. He is taking you somewhere…oh, he has a destination in mind…but he is taking you via a sleepy mule pulling a hayride. And the rest of the album just keeps you going and going and riding and flowing…sometimes picking up a little speed (You Better Watch Yourself, The Walking Blues)…just to slowwww back down again (Katie Mae, Down There Baby)…all with a groove that goes for miles.
Lightnin’ is a classic.
Happy birthday to the great Lightnin’ Hopkins. Arguably one of the great blues players of all time…
I have been doing late-night deep dives into the sites that are selling art online. They all have really interesting ways of showcasing art that is under their oversight. Here is a great click-baitish comparison between film scenes and famous works of art….
National Endowment for the Arts Announces 2023 NEA National Heritage Fellows
WOW! The great RL Boyce received an NEA National Heritage Fellows award. WOWOWOWOWOWO!!! You all know RL Boyce by this time, right? If not, check out the record I co-produced and released some years ago….he is the greatest living hill country blues musician and SO VERY MUCH deserves this honor.
Tiger painting industry lifts a small village called Wanggongzhuang to prosperity
I want to live in a town where 70% (!!) of its inhabitants are painters! “A small village, which has a population of just 1,300, in Central China's Henan Province, one of the most populous provinces in China, has found fame for its residents' special technique used in painting tigers. In Wanggongzhuang village under Minquan county in Shangqiu, Henan Province, about 70 percent of residents are in the business of painting, and natural the village was named as ‘China's No.1 village of tiger painting.; Many painters are often from the same family. Siblings, couples, parents and the children paint together.”
The long, strange trip of Mountain Girl
Ulf—-check this out—Mountain Girl has a memoir.
Top 10 Painters to Watch in 2023
Another site that sells art showcasing their wares. Many of these artists are really good.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s One-of-a-Kind Circular Sun House Lists in Arizona
Pretty damn groovy…
Undeserved Sweetness
By: Ben Okri
After the wind lifts the beggar
From his bed of trash
And blows to the empty pubs
At the road's end
There exists only the silence
Of the world before dawn
And the solitude of trees.
Handel on the set mysteriously
Recalls to me the long
Hot nights of childhood spent
In malarial slums
In the midst of potent shrines
At the edge of great seas.
Dreams of the past sing
With voices of the future.
And now the world is assaulted
With a sweetness it doesn't deserve
Flowers sing with the voices of absent bees
The air swells with the vibrant
Solitude of trees who nightly
Whisper of re-invading the world.
But the night bends the trees
Into my dreams
And the stars fall with their fruits
Into my lonely world-burnt hands.
“Eat, drink, smoke, swim in the ocean, play tennis, golf, and poker, watch polo, read trash, listen to pop singers, occasionally attend the theatre, opera, ballet, charity bashes, and private shindigs, buy clothes and trinkets, write to old friends, party with new friends, and sleep. I think that about covers it.”― Lawrence Sanders