Lightnin' Hopkins - Free Form Patterns - 3CD DIGIBOOK

3-CD digi-book expanded & remastered edition of Texas blues legend’s only album for International Artists / 2-CD’s full of previously unheard and unreleased songs, studio talkback plus candid conversations with Lightnin’ Hopkins Recorded in January 1968, the original album stands out in Lightnin’ Hopkins’ discography due to unusual line-up on the sessions. The veteran bluesman, fuelled by homemade moonshine, was joined by a young hippy rhythm section comprising Danny Thomas and Duke Davis from The 13th Floor Elevators, themselves high on acid at the time. This however, is no failed hippy/blues amalgam but a straightforward, honest blues album with the great man backed by fans, who happened to be members of a popular psychedelic band. Its significance lies in how the music cut across the generational and racial boundaries within the segregated and repressive atmosphere of late 1960s Texas. Alongside recording the album for International Artists, producer Lelan Rogers also set out to generate THE definitive interview with the great bluesman and so left the tapes running in the studio as the album was cut. These recordings have lain hidden in a series of dump tapes for 44 years but have now been put together as a unique documentation of one of the 20th century’s most revered bluesmen. We now have a coherent combination of songs, studio chatter and candid conversations with Lightnin’ Hopkins about his life and times. On the two additional discs, the songs are as the band played them in the studio, live and raw, with the conversations captured as they were. All this material is previously unheard and unreleased except for the final versions of the songs and a brief excerpt of conversation included on the 1980 International Artists compilation ‘Epitaph For A Legend’. This definitive expanded edition of ‘Free Form Patterns’ offers a fascinating and unique insight into Lightnin’ Hopkins the man and the musician.