With the fresh release of Live from the Ash Grove…Plus! by Liberation Hall Records, the already voluminous discography of versatile Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins just grew larger by one LP and CD. Available now, the set combines acoustic and electric performances that capture the man in solid, crowd pleasing form. If not an essential acquisition, the record’s pleasurable vibes are far from scrapings from the barrel’s bottom. Its purchase will increase the sturdiness of any Hopkins shelf.
Founded by Ed Pearl in 1958 in Los Angeles, the Ash Grove was a folk club, so it makes sense that Hopkins played there solo and acoustic. Additionally, beginning with his late 1950s “rediscovery” by Samuel Charters and Folkways Records, much of Hopkins’ output landed solidly in the folk blues zone, to the point that he’d become something of a staple on the folk circuit across the ’60s and beyond.
This reality comes through with clarity in Ash Grove’s sourcing two different performances from the venue, the first from September ’65 and the second from November ’70. This covers only a portion of Hopkins’ residencies at the club, but these inclusions still suggest a tougher, more energetic and intense Hopkins at the beginning of the five-year stretch who transitioned to a deceptively “laid back” yet appealingly garrulous comportment at the dawn of the decade.
The latter show is represented by eight songs (likely the entirety of a short set) plus spoken intros and it covers the whole of side one. As he chats up the audience, Hopkins’ comfort is palpable and his abilities are essentially undiminished. Overall, the short set really drives home the folky atmosphere; if this wasn’t the Ash Grove, it could’ve been any number of coffeehouses or folk clubs still operating in 1970.
Hopkins does maintain the Texas blues root that lent distinctiveness to his work, strutting his instrumental stuff in “Lightnin’s Boogie” and getting his R&B-ish grooves in with a cover of Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say.” Making plain that Hopkins could’ve turned this November night at the Ash Grove into a house party, these inclusions further amplify a similarity in approach to John Lee Hooker that gets more pronounced on Live from the Ash Grove’s second side.
1970’s “Ain’t It Crazy” shares a looseness (and flashes of the extemporaneous) with the two ’65 tracks, “Black Cadillac” and “Coffee House Blues,” that open side two. This spontaneity is a big reason why Hopkins has (in part posthumously) amassed such a huge body of work. Even when he’s dishing out relatively simple structures (another deceptive maneuver), he’s never just a rote regurgitator of blues form. His style is familiar, for sure, but he’s always a little different each time out.
The pliable nature of Hopkins’ sound is another trait in common with Hooker, whose discography was also huge. They also both alternated between playing acoustically and plugged in, either solo or with accompaniment, as the backing bands often struggled to keep up. The four electric cuts that finish side two of this LP, recorded in August 1971, not at the Ash Grove but in Palo Alto, CA at the short lived jazz-blues-rock club In Your Ear, are a far cry from the amplified vigor of Hopkins’ early sides.
Hopkins is fully engaged and reflective as the electric tracks unfold, and some of that house party gusto does get worked up. Altogether, Live from the Ash Grove…Plus! throws a likeable spotlight onto the versatility of a blues giant.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
