Texas Blues Guitar

and Lightnin’ would have entered the obscurity common to
many bluesmen of his generation had Sam Charters not inter-
vened.
Charters, who found Hopkins living in a Houston room-
ing house, devoted the closing chapter of his influential 1959
book, The Country Blues, to him. He also recorded Hopkins
for Folkways, and by 1960 Hopkins’s rediscovery had become
exciting news to folk-blues fans on both coasts. Though reluc-
tant to leave Houston, Hopkins toured the West Coast in 1960
and ventured to New York City for the first time since a 1951
session for the Sittin’ In With label. The New York stint was an
unqualified triumph, commencing with an October 14th
Carnegie Hall concert in which he appeared on a folk bill fea-
turing Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and culminating in his No-
vember 15th recording session for Nat Hentoff’s Candid label.
During his busy month in New York City the enterprising
Hopkins had already cut 36 titles which yielded four Lps for
Bluesville/Prestige, Fire and Sphere Sound. He also performed
at the Village Vanguard and appeared on the television pro-
gram, A Pattern of Words and Music. It is this remarkable foot-
age of Hopkins at the outset of his rediscovery we see here.
Hopkins would continue to perform and record prolifi-
cally for two more decades, a man who effectively presided
over two country blue revivals in his lifetime. The impact of
this intense artist on the growing folk revival, embodied here
by the presence of a young Joan Baez, is fully tangible in this
1960 performance from Hopkins’s eventful month in New York
City. His was a ‘comeback’ he neither planned nor anticipated,
but one for which he had spent a lifetime preparing.