Lightnin’ Hopkins - Jesus Won’t You Come By Here

Topic: Seminal Versions
It is tempting to see the difference in white and African-America concepts of songs as a function of cultures isolated by race. That obscures the fact the white definition only dates back to the Anglo-Scots Reformation, and was a divergence from attitudes about music shared by Europeans and Africans.

At the simplest level, the Calvinists replaced Roman Catholic rituals with sermons explicating scripture. The contact with the word became the talisman of religious experience, not contact with the spirits through the Eucharist. Music was eliminated.

Later, Jean Calvin reintroduced psalms sung without instrumental accompaniment after he saw the ways Lutherans were using music in Strasbourg. [1] The English and Scots accepted his innovation, but with much stricter rules for melodies. Music existed solely to make it easier to sing the words of scripture, with one note to one syllable. [2] Rhythm did not exist. Psalms lines contained six or eight syllables. The song leader matched psalms with tunes whose lines contained the same numbers of notes.

To ensure fidelity to the word, the Scot’s parliament ordered churches that did not possess psalters in 1645 to appoint someone to read out the lines before they were sung, [3] lest any deviation enter from oral tradition or faulty human memory.

Quite simply, the ability to learn music by singing was bred out of congregations, and reading scores became the mark that distinguished accomplished musicians. This contributed to the idea that songs had immutable texts, that could be orchestrated in different ways.

When Lightnin’ Hopkins began performing for white audiences on the folk revival circuit, he navigated the chasm by distilling de rigeur lyrics and melody from his 1952 rendition of "Come by Here," but keeping fluid the instrumentation and interplay between parts. In 1964 he used a piano and sang most of the words with Barbara Dane humming along. In 1969, he sang the first words of each of his three verses, and let the organ complete them.

The underlying cultural differences persisted. Individuals interested in playing blues guitar listened to, and mastered, the way Hopkins had played the acoustic guitar on "Needed Time." They sang all, some, or few of his verses, depending on their abilities. If the words changed, it was because of demands stemming from ways impromptu groups of musicians came together.

His unique phrase, "come if you don’t stay long," was accepted into the pool of verses African-American religious singers drew upon to sing "Come by Here." He also may have reinvigorated the use of the phrase "needed time."

Performers
1964 Dane
Vocal Accompaniment: Barbara Dane
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano
Rhythm Accompaniment: piano

1969 Organ
Instrumental Accompaniment: organ

Credits
1964 Dane
Arranged by Hopkins

Notes on Lyrics
Verses: Hopkins kept the sestet structure, but converted what had been an improvisation done to fill three minutes into a set, three-verse song.

1964 Dane: come by here, needed time, don’t stay long
1969 Organ: come by here, needed time, don’t stay long

Notes on Music
Basic Structure: two verses, an instrumental interlude, and a final verse. The similarity between the piano version and the organ one done five years later suggested Hopkins, by then, had performed so many times on programs with time limits that he had created musical units that could be combined into circumscribed sets. He then improvised within those limits with elements like musical phrasing.

Solo-Group Dynamics:
1964 Dane
Dane, no doubt, had seen Hopkins perform enough times to know his basic style. On the first line of the first verse she attempted to sing harmony, but she could not match his timing. As a soloist who controlled his accompaniment, he was able to sustain or shorten notes to fit his mood without losing his basic cadence. As Alan Grovenor observed, this created problems for drummers and bass players. [4]

On the second line of the first verse Dane switched to humming in ways borrowed from 1920s blues singers. Once she realized which parts he was not singing, she joined the instrument in singing those phrases. The kinesics of playing ensured the rhythm would be constant.

Vocal-Orchestral Dynamics: the instrument was treated as an equal voice. Hopkins would begin a line, and let the instrument continue the melody. The transfers between parts was the same in both versions, indicating this too had acquire a form through repetition. In the second line, he sang the first part of the line, and the piano or organ took over. On the third line, he sang the first word.

1964 Dane: the accompaniment used motifs from ragtime or stride piano styles, with a low bass and flourishes played by the right hand. This was especially prominent in the instrumental interlude.

1969 Organ: the organ played melody and chords. In the instrumental interlude Hopkins played twice as many notes to the same rhythmic pattern.

Notes on Performance
Both were described as live performances, although no background noise or audience reaction could be heard.

Notes on Performers
Hopkins cultivated the image of the hard-drinking, hard-living blues man. He only recorded one gospel song, [5] and Dane was surprised "he was dead serious with his religiosity." [6]

His mother was a religious woman, and the family attended picnics sponsored by the General Association of Baptist Churches. He told Sam Charters:

"the organ used to be the real family instrument, you know. We’d play on Sundays if we didn’t go to church, we’d have church at home. And, I was the organ player, sang them old Christian songs and mamma she’d [ne’er] get happy, you know." [7]

Barbara Dane’s parents moved from Arkansas to Detroit after World War I. She moved to San Francisco in 1949 where she began singing in jazz clubs. Later, in the 1960s, she opened her own club in a tourist district to expand the audience for the blues, and became involved in political protests. [8]

Availability
1964 Dane
Album: Lightnin’ Hopkins and Barbara Dane. "Jesus Won’t You Come By Here." Lightnin’ Hopkins. Arhoolie F1022. Cabale Club, 1964, Berkeley, California; released 1966.

YouTube: uploaded by Warner Music Group, 8 November 2014.

1969 Organ
Album: Lightnin’ Hopkins. "Jesus, Would You Come By Here." California Mudslide (And Earthquake). Vault Records SLP-129. Los Angeles, 1969.

YouTube: uploaded by Fede Corchero, 29 August 2015.

End Notes
1. Wikipedia. "Psautier de Genève."

2. Archibald T. Davison. "Psalter." In Harvard Dictionary of Music. Edited by Willi Apel. Cambridge: Belnap Press, 1969 edition. 704.

3. Scotland. Act of Parliament to establish The Directory for The Publick Worship of God. Edinburgh, 6 February 1645. Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics website. It ordained:

"That the whole congregation may join herein, every one that can read is to have a psalm book; and all others, not disabled by age or otherwise, are to be exhorted to learn to read. But for the present, where many in the congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some other fit person appointed by him and the other ruling officers, do read the psalm, line by line, before the singing thereof."

4. Alan B. Govenar. Lightnin’ Hopkins: His Life and Blues. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2010. viii.

5. Govenar. 11.

6. Timothy J. O’Brien and David Ensminger. Mojo Hand: The Life and Music of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. 15.

7. Lightnin’ Hopkins. "I Growed Up with the Blues." My Life in Blues. Prestige 7370. 1965. Interviewed by Sam Charters. My transcription; not sure of words in brackets. See previous post for reissue information.

8. Wikipedia. "Barbara Dane."