“Thomas Jefferson and Music” by Helen Cripe (Thomas Jefferson Foundation)

It goes without saying that Thomas Jefferson is one of the most heralded figures in American history. It’s not simply that he played one of the most crucial roles in establishing the principles on which the United States was founded. It’s not just that he became our third President, and was responsible for expanding our country’s borders tremendously via the Louisiana Purchase. Those things would be accomplishment enough for any one man. But it’s the whole “Renaissance Man” aspect of his life that catches the fancy of many people. We don’t witness that phenomenon much anymore, in an era when the great bulk of us have become specialists, which makes a politician, document writer, farming innovator, architect, inventor - well, you get the idea - who was also one of the most significant of all Founding Fathers such an attractive personality. To be sure, his relationships with people he held in bondage raised a few eyebrows a few years ago, though he didn’t really do anything that was considered grossly untoward in his day. Even so, every side in our national debates wants to claim him, to tell us that they are the ones who are carrying on his spirit. Fact of the matter is, we ALL are in one way or another. (Do I seem too much like a Fan?)

Given Jefferson’s involvement in so many facets of life, no one should be surprised that he also took a strong interest in music. And although he may not have been a major figure, and failed to become noteworthy as, say, composer or performer, he was still at the forefront of activity in the early days of the United States as a supporter, someone who was quick to catch on to the innovations of others and the artistic happenings of the day. This was the era when American composers such as Carr and Hewitt were taking the new land’s first musical baby steps (aside from psalm writers) in hopes of eventually establishing an identity apart from that of the former mother country. Jefferson supported them. It was the era when the long-established harpsichord was starting to feel the heat of competition from the pianoforte, which was just becoming a reliable instrument and a worthwhile alternative. Jefferson owned both. It was an era when other new instruments (such as Benjamin Franklin’s glass armonica; speaking of Renaissance Men!) and refinements of older ones (including a harpsichord attachment called the celestina) attempted to establish a foothold in the minds of the musical public, with fleeting success or none at all. Jefferson checked them out. It was an era of change in classical music, as the Classical Period began to give way to the Romantic Era. Jefferson went to the concerts. It was an era when classical and folk music had yet to appeal to audiences totally removed from each other. Jefferson the violinist/fiddler played both. It was an era when “popular music” in the modern sense of the term had not begun to develop to any great extent, as there was not yet enough of an urban middle class to make it profitable. But there WAS a theatrical style somewhere between light opera and our musical theater called the “ballad opera”. Jefferson attended the performances AND bought the scores.

All this activity is documented in “Thomas Jefferson and Music”, a small, yet detailed volume originally published in 1979, and now reissued in a revised edition. We see Jefferson the music lover, the amateur musician, the instrument and sheet music purchaser, the concert-goer, the guiding spirit behind his family’s musical interests, the technically-minded tinkerer who was interested in tuning keyboard instruments he himself had no facility for playing, the correspondent with musical inventors (including Franklin). In other words, if it has anything to do with music, and Thomas Jefferson is involved, it’s in this book. In the process, Helen Cripe has given us a fascinating glimpse into the musical life of America during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Americans were finally able to take the time to develop a fervent interest in the musical arts. The book reads easily, as Cripe never allows herself to get too bogged down in minutiae. A knowledge of the classical music scene in Europe will be helpful, but you can learn much without it.

The main body of the text is 82 pages long. There follows another 70+ pages of appendices (lists of sheet-music owned by Jefferson, so far as was documented; plus a list of the concerts he attended while in France, so far as we know), notes, resources, index. As I type this, the book is available through Amazon for under $12, so if you only need the overview, and the documentation does not interest you, it won’t break your bank, or your library’s bank

The book has been published by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, formerly distributed by the University of North Carolina Press. However, distribution is now handled by the University of Virginia Press.

“Ukulele” by Daniel Dixon with Dixie Dixon and Jayne McKay (Gibbs Smith)

About two months ago, I posted a review on my music-DVD review blog of an entertaining documentary about the ukulele called “Mighty Uke” - http://genecdvd.blogspot.com/2011/03/mighty-uke-amazing-comeback-of-musical.html
The film was a lighthearted but quite substantial look at the ukulele, encompassing the instrument’s history, its construction, visuals of unusual-looking ukes, examinations of well-known exponents of the instrument, and paeans to the uke’s ability to make people smile.

Now, along comes a profusely illustrated little book on “The World’s Friendliest Instrument”. It is a lighthearted but quite substantial look at the ukulele, encompassing the instrument’s history, its construction, visuals of interesting-looking ukes, examinations of well-known exponents of the instrument, and paeans to the uke’s ability to make people smile. Yet it does not simply cover the same material as the film did, but approaches the topic in its own, distinctive way. Clearly, there is quite a lot to say about this not-so-humble little music-maker.

As with the film, the emphasis is on how the ukulele is a user-friendly little instrument which has a long and illustrious history, sullied somewhat by a fallow period which in recent years has begun to give way to new glories. Author Daniel Dixon provides a look at the instrument’s origins in Portugal, and its journey to its adopted homeland of Hawaii. He also briefly acknowledges its influence in Brazil, where he calls it the cavaco, though it is more commonly referred to by the diminutive name, cavaquinho. (This is a very minor detail in Dixon’s book, but I seem to have missed it altogether in the DVD.) He raises doubts as to the veracity of the long-held tale of Joao Fernandes, who has most often been credited with introducing the Portuguese braguinho (Dixon prefers the term “machete”) to Hawaii. Alas, there were no musicologists documenting these events as they occurred, so Dixon’s guess is as good as anyone else’s. We then see how the instrument was adopted by Hawaiians after a somewhat sluggish start. By the beginning of the 20th century, it had very definitely taken a foothold on the islands.

From the 1910’s on, we see the instrument being spread far and wide, with Hawaiians bringing the uke to the mainland U.S., mainlanders discovering the uke on trips to Hawaii, Tin Pan Alley songwriters writing ukulele-themed songs which most often had little connection to what “real” Hawaiian music (even the Westernized varieties) sounded like, and a variety of American entertainers popularizing the uke as accompaniment to mainstream mainland music. We are introduced to such once-famous performers as Cliff Edwards (a/k/a “Ukulele Ike” and the voice of Jiminy Cricket), multi-instrumentalist Roy Smeck (who sometimes let his virtuosity play havoc with his musical taste, but was a most impressive ukist nonetheless), 1920’s singing stars Johnny Marvin and Wendell Hall, the hugely-popular (in England) singer/actor and proponent of the banjo-uke, George Formby, and the virtually forgotten May Singhi Breen. We meet them through short biographical sketches, photos, sheet music, and pics of their ukuleles, celebrating a decade-plus when the ukulele was a significant element in the world of show-business on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as the Pacific.

This was followed by that unfortunate period when the ukulele fell into a long period of disuse. Radio and t.v. host Arthur Godfrey, strumming and plugging a cheap, plastic uke on his programs, kept the instrument in the public consciousness, after which Tiny Tim brought it to “Laugh-In” and the world beyond. While Godfrey’s reputation has dimmed, and Tiny Tim is generally thought of with derision, Dixon is objective enough to soberly discuss their roles in the instrument’s history, giving them credit where due. In the meantime, Hawaiian virtuosi such as Eddie Kamae and Herb Ohta (a/k/a “Ohta-San”), along with jazz ukist Lyle Ritz, proved much more could be done on the instrument than simply strumming chords. This in turn led to the present-day emphasis on intricate melodies played on an instrument once thought to be too limited to achieve any degree of true complexity. This brings us to modern times, as we meet the ukulele’s 21st-century golden-boy Jake Shimabukuro, as well as such strumming self-accompanists as the late Iz and all-around man-about-music Ian Whitcomb, plus innovators such as James Hill and John King.

But the book is not just about people, it’s about the instrument itself. There are pictures of ukuleles made by Martin and Gibson, unusual variations such as the pineapple-shaped ukulele, the balalaika-shaped Ukalyka, the tiny fluke, and a variety of ukes with exotic designs imprinted on them. We learn how the instrument is manufactured, tour an important Hawaiian uke factory, and visit with a skilled craftsman who makes high-end instruments. We visit one of the many ukulele clubs which have sprung up in all sorts of places. There is much, much more, even chord charts and an introductory ukulele lesson!

“Ukulele” is a fairly slim, hard-bound volume which packs a lot of pictures, information, and opinion into its 144 pages. It’s an entertaining read as well as a painessly educational one. If you have any interest in the ukulele, or are just curious to find out what all the buzz is about, I suggest you might wish to pick up both this book AND the “Mighty Uke” DVD. Each one by itself is a treat. The two together are not only complementary, they can give you a pretty comprehensive view of this growing musical phenomenon.

“Forever Doo-Wop: Race, Nostalgia, and Vocal Harmony” by John Michael Runowicz (University of Massachusetts Press)

The amount of verbiage which has built up around the 1950’s/early-‘60’s style of rhythm-and-blues vocal-group singing known as “doo-wop” has been quite extensive, not only in book form, but also in specialist magazines and on the Internet as well. Most of the writing on this musical genre has been factual/biographical/historical/discographical, concerned primarily with who did what when, who sang on which record by which group, how/when/where individual groups formed and who their influences were, whatever happened to the singers in these groups, and so on. This material is generally carefully researched, and has great value for fans and future researchers alike, to be sure.

But as the subtitle of John Michael Runowicz’ book and the fact that it published by a University Press both indicate, “Forever Doo-Wop” is hardly your typical work on the subject. It is indeed, one of the few academically-oriented books in the field, and the first to my knowledge that approaches the subject through the lens of ethnomusicology. Rest assured, though, that despite the copious footnotes and the seriousness with which Mr. Runowicz approaches his subject, the book is written in a reader-friendly style, without the over-reliance on academic jargon which mars so many otherwise insightful academic books on popular culture.

John Michael Runowicz is perhaps uniquely qualified to write an ethnomusicological examination which retains an authentic feel for and love of the music. On one hand, he is an “independent scholar” with a PhD in ethnomusicology; on the other, he has worked extensively as guitarist and Musical Director for both the classic 50’s vocal group Earl Carroll and the Cadillacs (known for “Speedoo” and the version of the song “Gloria” which served as a template for dozens of cover versions) and Shirley Alston Reeves (former lead singer of the Shirelles, and a busy solo artist in her own right).

Don’t let that seven-syllable word, “ethnomusicology”, scare you away. It simply refers to the serious study of music within a culture or community. ”Community” in this sense does not necessarily refer to a geographical location, but may be extended to a group of people with a shared interest. Bluegrass fans, to cite but one well-known example, tend to comprise a tight-knit “community”. And, as Runowicz is careful to point out, the entire field of doo-wop - including singers, backup musicians, what he calls “mediators” (record producers, promoters), and fans - can be considered to constitute one large and, to a considerable extent, tightly-knit community as well, albeit one in which the various subgroups often have varying interests. One common misconception is that ethnomusicology always studies what the music industry refers to as “world music”, which some people translate as “foreign music” (as if the United States were not a part of the world). But in recent years, ethnomusicologists have studied a variety of musical genres which are far from being specific to a single country or ethnic grouping (such as the “riot grrrl” phenomenon).

When I first became interested in ethnomusicology in the 1960’s, the major emphasis tended to be on technical musical analysis, breaking the music of a particular group of people into its component pieces, seeing how these pieces fit together, thus seeing not only how these types of music “work”, but also to uncover what makes these musical expressions differ from other musical expressions. Yes, Runowicz does offer some musical analysis in terms of what sorts of chord progressions are common to much doo-wop, how the vocal harmonies are arranged, what time signatures are often heard, and so on. But these analyses are kept to a bare minimum of technicality. Even when he describes how singers and backup bands learn their parts, his descriptions are easy to follow and highly instructive. There is enough meat here to please the scholars (though I suspect that the definitive technical analysis of doo-wop has yet to be written), but it is approached in ways that should be accessible to the average reader.

The emphasis, then, is on the people of doo-wop and the way the music impacts their lives. Most notably, he offers an extended look into the career of Earl Carroll and the Cadillacs, the vocal group with which the author has spent the bulk of his performing career, a group which has been around for over a half-century, more than long enough to witness and to form opinions about the many changes and trends in doo-wop through the years. Runowicz is quick to point out that, while the audience may listen to this music in order to satisfy a craving for a nostalgic experience, the performers themselves are not trapped inside a museum, but are living, breathing professional entertainers who are serious about their art and its craft, who work hard even into old age to maintain a high level of quality in their music and stage show.

The author also includes a short overview of doo-wop history, pointing out its roots in the German/Austrian style of close harmony, but in an Americanized style which began to develop in the 19th-century in black barbershops. (There has been quite a bit of scholarly detective work in recent years which has demonstrated beyond a doubt that barbershop-quartet singing as we know it began as an African-American phenomenon). He looks at harmony singing in an African-American religious context, at its entrance into mainstream musical circles thanks to such groups as the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots, and at the immediate precursors of doo-wop, such as the Delta Rhythm Boys and Ravens.

He extends his historical view into the later period of doo-wop, when Italian- and Jewish-American harmony vocal groups became prominent. He looks at the dark days of the British Invasion, when doo-wop seemed to disappear off the face of the earth, when groups had to adjust or die, and most of them died. He also studies the revival of doo-wop in the 1970’s, a somewhat limited revival which found aging groups singing to mostly aging audiences, consisting primarily of the same people who listened to their records in the “old days”, who wanted to hear groups sing their hits, and only their hits, and rejected anything new. And while it was a welcome revival of interest, it was limited in that it did not cause the music to come rushing back to the mainstream popularity it had from the mid-1950’s to the early 1960’s. And he does this all very effectively, in a very short space - the book consists of less than 150 pages of text, a page count which does not include the detailed notes and a thoughtfully-complete index.

One aspect of the book which might cause some controversy within the doo-wop community, but which Runowicz approaches delicately yet openly (meaning, he names names) is the subject of racism. As a white man who performs with black singers and musicians in a genre originated by African-Americans, but which in many ways became co-opted by white audiences, white managers, white-owned record companies, and white concert promoters, Runowicz reveals the often seedy manipulations to which this particular group of African-Americans and their music have been subjected, with largely negative impact to their financial and social well-being. Sadly, the stories he relates are common to many African-American musical genres, yet it’s an area too many authors writing for the mass market do not feel comfortable discussing. Once again, this is a University Press book, which one hopes allows for a greater degree of openness when discussing sensitive matters.

In all, I find this to be the most fascinating and unique book on the subject of doo-wop I’ve ever come across, and I recommend it highly to anyone interested in American popular music history, whether a doo-wop fan or not. I’m sure Mr. Runowicz has more to tell us on the subject, and I hope there will be more books to come.

“Banjo on the Mountain: Wade Mainer’s First Hundred Years” by Dick Spottswood (University Press of Mississippi)

Wade Mainer was born April 21, 1907 and, at the time of this book’s publication, was still alive and occasionally active. Making music in front of an audience while over the age of 100 is rare, but not totally unheard-of. (Ukulele legend Bill Tapia comes to mind.) But Mainer’s accomplishment in outliving virtually all of his contemporaries is so unusual, it is sometimes forgotten that he was an important, influential figure in his heyday, who prefigured many of the innovations which have taken place in bluegrass and country music to the present day.

Indeed, when Wade Mainer first impacted the country-music scene in the mid-1930’s, bluegrass had yet to be invented. It was his fresh, new approach to the banjo that served as a bridge between the traditional, African-rooted clawhammer technique and the three-singer style popularized by Earl Scruggs in the mid-1940’s. This new book by veteran bluegrass historian Dick Spottswood is not so much a completely detailed biography (though it does offer quite a bit of significant biographical information), as it is a tribute, perhaps “celebration” might be a better word, of Wade Mainer’s long, if somewhat sporadic career.

Mainer was born in rural western North Carolina, in an area and an era in which it would be expected that a youngster would grow up to spend his entire life as a millworker. But Wade and his fiddle-playing brother Joseph Emmett “J. E.” Mainer chose another option, forming a string band which played on numerous radio stations throughout the area. Spottswood traces their career on radio and records, through numerous personnel shifts, and changes in leadership (J.E. had to leave his own band due to his drinking problems). The Mainers’ recordings not only became regionally popular, they attracted the attention of famed folklorist Alan Lomax, who invited them to Washington to perform “folk music” for President and Mrs. Roosevelt. In one of the most revealing segments of the book, Alan Lomax instructs Mainer as to which “authentic folk songs” he wants Wade and the band to perform, not all of which were part of the band’s recorded repertoire. It’s as if Lomax thought he knew more about what was folk music than the “folk” themselves, or at least felt the need to control their performance.

Spottswood traces Mainer’s subsequent career through its various ups and downs, a religious conversion which caused to leave music, his years as an autoworker in Michigan, his long and successful marriage to Julia Brown Mainer, who would become his duet partner in later years, and his subsequent comeback in the 1970s, when he began recording a long string of LP’s for the Old Homestead label. It’s a fascinating story of a man who really had very little concept of what an important historical figure he was, and was therefore almost entirely free of pretense.

In addition to Spottswood’s biographical essay, there is a more technical essay on Wade Mainer’s banjo style, which explains what it was that set him apart from other banjo players who preceded him. The second half of the slim, but highly informative volume is devoted largely to a collection of photographs, documents, and reminiscences by Wade and Julia, as well as a discography (with dates and personnel) of Mainer’s 78-RPM recordings of the 78 RPM and LP eras. I would, however, have preferred a more complete breakdown of song listings for the Old Homestead collections.

The book is only 134 pages long, but there’s a lot packed into these oversized pages. I would assume that the primary markets for a book such as this would be music historians, collectors, and libraries rather than casual bluegrass/oldtime-country fans. But I found Mr. Mainer’s story a fascinating one, and I’m sure casual readers would likewise find it so.

“Talking To Girls About Duran Duran” by Rob Sheffield (Dutton Books)

Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield’s latest set of remembrances has attracted much more attention in the mainstream press than most music-oriented books. This may well be because, despite its outward appearance, “Talking To Girls About Duran Duran” isn’t really a music book. It is, rather, a series of short essays about growing up in Boston during the 1980’s to a constant backdrop of the music being played on the radio during this much-loved (by some), much-reviled (by others) era.

Each of these 25 essays is named after a specific new wave, hip-hop, or pop record of the period. In some cases, the song plays a defining role in the essay. In others, it is barely mentioned. In a few cases, songs other than the one that supplied the essay’s title perform a more significant role in the telling of Sheffield’s story. The titles and artists serve as themes, as reference points, which situate his reminiscences in time and mood, as guides to where Sheffield’s head was at any given time.

Thus, we learn about Sheffield’s relationship with his sisters (who recur throughout the book) as he tells us about his musical encounters with Duran Duran (who bookend this collection by being the focus of both the introduction and the final essay). He tells of his sexually frustrating experiences dancing with girls as an exchange student in Spain, represented by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s “Enola Gay”. In two of my favorite chapters, we discover him working on a garbage truck in an essay entitled after Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (for reasons which would take too long to explain here), and spending an idyllic summer driving an ice cream truck, which very tangentially connects to “Purple Rain”. Indeed, the connection is definitely tangential in a few other cases as well. These, however, are balanced by essays that directly connect to the artist or song under discussion. Perhaps the most entertaining of the latter is Sheffield’s look at the virtually forgotten one-hit wonders Haysi Fantayzee.

I might surmise that the reason I so thoroughly enjoyed reading this book is that I can easily relate to the concept of phonograph records as the essential soundtrack to my own life, albeit two decades earlier. While I would never get around to writing my own Sheffield-inspired memoirs of my own defining era, the 1960’s, I can imagine which songs and vital performances would figure into it – “Runaway”, “Running Scared”, “Pipeline”, “California Sun”, “96 Tears”, “Pushin’ Too Hard”, and so on through the psychedelic era. While reading this book, I felt a kinship to Rob Sheffield, a man I’ve never met, almost as if he and I were brothers, born eighteen years and a world apart.

Or perhaps I simply enjoyed the book because Rob Sheffield is a lively and engaging writer, a fellow who has overcome much of his teenage angst, yet who can still relate to it and can express his fears and small triumphs with both humor and poignancy. Anyone who enjoys true-life coming-of-age tales, whether the reader is able to relate to ‘80’s pop music or not – I hereby confess it’s not really one of my favorite decades – will have a good time with this book.

“Lightnin’ Hopkins: His Life and Blues” by Alan Govenar (Chicago Review Press)

Sam “Lightnin’” Hopkins (1912-1982) has been dead for 28 years, but remains an iconic figure among blues fans, including many who were not yet alive during his lifetime. To many people, Hopkins represents post-WW2 down-home blues at its purest level of authenticity, even when played on his instrument of choice, the electric guitar.

But how much do blues fans really know about Lightnin’ Hopkins, and exactly how far removed was he from the “taint” of show business, or the modernization of urban influences? Part of the reason we think of Hopkins as a bastion of rural Texas blues values is the mythology which has grown up around him. As Alan Govenar, a greatly respected chronicler of the Texas roots-music scene, makes clear in this first-ever full-length biography of the man from Centerville, Lightnin’ Hopkins in large measure created and disseminated his own myth.

To be sure, this hardly makes Sam Hopkins unique among bluesmen of any period. Not many blues artists from earlier eras have left us autobiographies in which they explain themselves and their art, though many have been interviewed and documented by collectors and historians. But even autobiographies cannot be relied upon; Big Bill Broonzy comes to mind in this regard. Many interviewees have been known to answer straightforward, fact-seeking questions with colorful tall tales, relating “experiences” which they think people would like to hear, or which they feel would fit the interviewers’ preconceived notions. Not enough documentation was done during the early, pre-war era of the blues, making it difficult for authors to check for accuracy or multiple views of the same events.

Lightnin’ Hopkins may have come from a slightly later era, when one would have hoped hard documentation would have replaced the gushing admiration of colorful stories. But even so, he first came to the fore when white blues collectors still had not yet done crucial research, and were all too ready to make suppositions based on insufficient knowledge mixed with stereotypes. Thus, Hopkins was able to get away with painting ever-changing word portraits of his life. Couple this with the fact that little documentation was done of African-American music (and life in general) during Hopkins’ younger years in rural Texas, and you have mythmaking opportunities galore. Alan Govenar makes a valiant effort to separate fact from fiction, to make sense of the contradictions, to follow the complex arc of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ life and career, to fill in as many gaps in the record as he can. Holes remain, and most likely always will. Nevertheless, this book strikes me as a fair, unbiased, and believable, providing unprecedented insight into the life and music of an enigmatic, self-made mystery man.

Not surprisingly, the weakest part of the book is the section dealing with Hopkins’ younger, rural years. Govenar has interviewed a few relatives and childhood friends, but by and large the trail has gone cold, particularly since Lightnin’ claimed to have left home to become a traveling musician at age 8. (He subsequently had very little schooling and remained functionally illiterate his entire life.) We find him receiving encouragement from Blind Lemon Jefferson, followed by a stint accompanying singer Texas Alexander in the years after the latter’s period of relative recording stardom. But Hopkins really emerges musically in the big city, Houston, where he spent most of his adult life. He originally performed for strictly segregated black audiences, and indeed had several Top 10 hits on the r&b charts in the late 1940’s and early 50’s. He continued thereafter to present himself differently to black ghetto audiences, with whom he felt comfortable and could identify, than with the white audiences who came to dominate the last 20-plus years of life. Govenar suggests that experiences with record companies, folklorists (including the influential Mack McCormick, who is portrayed in a most unflattering light), bookers, etc. led Hopkins to mistrust most of the white people he came into contact with. (Arhoolie Records’ Chris Strachwitz was a refreshing exception.) The combination of lack of education and mistrust led him to demand payment-in-full for every song he recorded as soon as he finished recording it, either refusing to sign contracts which could potentially have brought in considerable, much-needed royalties, or to ignore without a second thought those contracts he did sign.

Hopkins was a bristly fellow, one who enjoyed his alcohol rather too much, who gambled away what little money he earned from his music, who had a very violent streak, and a very highly developed ego. He spent (by his own reckoning) a dozen or more stretches in jail for assault and related charges. But with the right people, he could be a bosom friend and companion, in particular with the woman he called his “wife”, who actually had a legal husband and children with whom she continued to live at night while spending her days with Hopkins. His dislike of travel early in his career, followed by a virtually disabling fear of flying once he realized that he could make far more money on the road than in the bars of Houston’s Third Ward, held back his career. But his distinctive recording style and highly mannered give-the-audience-what-they-want live performances eventually made him prosperous well beyond his expectations. Govenar follows these developments in an easy-to-read, yet highly detailed manner. In particular, there is much detailed information about most of Hopkins’ recording sessions, beginning in 1946 as half of the recording duo of Thunder and Lightnin’ (with pianist Wilson Smith; it was this nom-de-disque, supplied by a record company, which resulted in Sam Hopkins becoming known as “Lightnin’).

Govenar’s portrayal is eventually a sympathetic one. Despite Hopkins’ difficulties as a person, his music and artistry far transcend his personality and defy easy analysis. I rather wish Govenar had spent more time discussing which portions of Hopkins’ improvised lyrics were indeed spontaneously generated and which were built from traditional, floating-verse sources. But this is a biography, after all, neither a musicological tome nor a study in poetics.

Because he recorded for so many labels and was subject to so many reissues and repackagings, Hopkins’ discography provides special challenges for researchers. However, Govenar includes a list of Lightnin’s sessions, complied by Andrew Brown and Alan Balfour, that is probably as complete as one can get. A full discog, listing all reissues, remains for another day.

In all, this is a very successful and satisfying book, which will appeal greatly to blues fans, and could reach a wider audience a

“Cold Pizza For Breakfast: A Mem-Wha?” by Christine Lavin (Tell Me Press)

Singer-songwriter Christine Lavin celebrates 25 years as a full-time professional contemporary-folk singer-songwriter with the publication of this book of reminiscences.

For those of you may not follow the current folk scene, Christine Lavin is a songwriter with a sly sense of humor, more than a few clever turns of phrase, a penchant for writing songs on topics few other performers dare to consider, and a generous heart for promoting the music of other performers she believes in. If her songs are often atypical of her genre, her book is hardly your average garden-variety autobiography, either.

This is not the usual dry recitation of names, dates, facts, and lists of accomplishments. Indeed, the historian in me wishes there were a few MORE names and dates. Being a kind-hearted person, Lavin will sometimes avoid last names, even first names on occasion, of people she would prefer not to identify in full. (For example, at one point, she lets slip that she was once engaged to another performer. I suppose people in the know realize whom she’s talking about; I don’t.) Likewise, there are times when it is a bit difficult to determine exactly when some of the events she recounts occurred.

But these are really minor quibbles in the long run. This is a very entertaining book, chock full of humorous (and true) stories, often of the laugh-out-loud variety, though even these were not always funny while Lavin was living them. Right off the bat, she tells us of her Gig From Hell, when she opened for Joan Rivers before an audience of senior citizens who had never heard of her and didn’t want to hear her. In my past life as an Irish folksinger, I had a couple gigs like that, so I can empathize with the author right from the outset. Then there was the night at a regular Birdland event called “Cast Party” where she not only battled a peripatetic microphone; she also miscalculated audience reaction to the song she was attempting to perform. I should quickly add that the book is not simply a collection of Christine Lavin’s Greatest Disasters; she shares her triumphs as well.

I don’t wish to give the impression that it’s all humor. There are moments of sadness and tears, plenty of sound advice from her mentors (including her guitar teacher, the great Dave Van Ronk, as well as from veteran club owners), tales of growing up (in the Hudson River town of Peekskill, NY, and in Geneva, in New York’s Finger Lakes region) and finding her way in the world, stories on how she encountered many of her musical associates (including the other members of her old group, the Four Bitchin’ Babes), and anecdotes concerning her various obsessions (Dame Edna, knitting, individual Broadway musicals which she attends over and over again).

One of the things I like best about “Cold Pizza For Breakfast” (named after one of her best-known songs, which supplied the title for an ESPN2 show, which wound up NOT using the song on the program itself – well, you can read about that) is that you have this feeling that you’re in a cozy chair having a conversation with an old friend. It’s a most pleasant diversion, an easy read, yet a substantial one. You’ll feel as if you’ve learned a few things about Christine Lavin, about the contemporary folk-music world, and a few important things about life as well.

“Cold Pizza for Breakfast” may be found through tellmepress.com as well as some of the usual online sources such as Amazon. It includes a complete discography of Lavin’s many CD’s and the various-artists releases she has helped compile. There is also a fascinating list of a thousand recordings she has played on her radio show.

Get this one. You can’t help but enjoy it.