The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #64558   Message #1056342
Posted By: GUEST,Poppa Gator, cookieless at work
18-Nov-03 - 01:03 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Mighty Crazy (Lightnin' Hopkins)
Subject: RE: looking for a Lightning Hopkins song
I heard a song recently, on WWOZ radio (available worldwide at www.wwoz.org, by the way), that might be the one you're thinking of. It was a live performance, with Lightin' joining with Brownie McGhee (alternating on vocals, both on acoustic guitar) and Sonny Terry (harmonica). Lightin' extols the superiority of whiskey to wine and Brownie begs to differ, all within the familiar 12-bar blues format.

Wish I had more to contribute, but I can't even remember a decently representative couple of lines of lyric. Brownie and Sonny have a large discography as does Lightin', but maybe searching for a recoding featuring all three will narrow things down considerably.

Now, "Crazy Ain't It Crazy (to keep on rubbin' that same old thing)" is another tune entirely. I heard a version recently on an old CD by Mother Machree's [Uptown?] Jug Stompers, a precursor of the Grateful Dead that featured Jerry Garcia, Pigpen, and (I think) Bobby Weir -- about half the eventual membership of the original GD. It's probably on at least one later Dead recording, as well as whatever earlier folk/blues recording from which the guys learned it.