Product Description:
Personnel: Lightnin' Hopkins (vocals, guitar); Duke Davis (bass); Danny Thomas (drums); Billy Bizor, Mansel Rubenstein.
Recorded at International Artist Studios, Houston, Texas, on February 1, 1968. Includes liner notes by Bill Dahl.
Personnel: Lightnin' Hopkins (vocals, guitar); Lightnin' Hopkins; George "Wild Child" Butler, Billy Bizor (harmonica); Duke Davis (bass instrument); 13th Floor Elevators (drums); Danny Thomas (drums).
Liner Note Author: Alan Balfour.
Recording information: International Artists Studios, Houston, TX (02/01/1968).
Lightnin' Hopkins originally recorded the ten tracks that make up Free Form Patterns on February 1, 1968, for the International Artists label. Also on that label's roster was the psychedelic group 13th Floor Elevators, which, by 1968, had basically disbanded. For this session, producer Lelan Rogers (Kenny's brother) teamed Hopkins up with Elevators drummer Danny Thomas and bassist Duke Davis. While not as revolutionary as John Lee Hooker's sessions with Canned Heat, Free Form Patterns steers clear of the late-'60s psychedelic trappings that screwed up such similar sessions as Electric Mud. No one tried to bend Hopkins to fit a foreign musical approach on Free Form Patterns; he made the music bend to him. ~ Al Campbell