Lightnin Hopkins Jewel

These 22 sides offer a very telling portrait of Texas blues giant Lightnin' Hopkins between 1965 and 1969 when he was recording for Jewel. Almost all of these sides are electric, many of them up-tempo idiosyncratic takes on Texas jump blues or far Western versions of Delta music. West Side has done a fine if not exemplary job of cleaning up sound and getting dates correct, as well as the sidemen.

From all accounts, George Butler was indeed a "wild child." But he found time between the youthful shenanigans that inspired his mom to bestow his descriptive nickname to learn some harp basics at age 12.
George remained active throughout the 60's and from 1966 he performed mainly in Houston and New Orleans. He worked extensively with the late Cousin Joe Pleasant and Roosevelt Sykes in New Orleans and the great Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins in Houston. George appears as a sideman on a number of sides with Lightnin' Hopkins, the best known of which being the album on the Jewel label entitled "Talking Some Sense". He was next signed to a contract by the Mercury label; in fact George observes, "The record companies always wanted me to sign an exclusive contract, and their people always met me with a paper their hand." George did an album for the Mercury label entitled "Keep On Doing What You're Doing"…