AllMusic reviewer Thom Owens stated: "Upon its initial release, it was a pivotal part of the blues revival and helped re-spark interest in Hopkins.

Before it was recorded, the bluesman had disappeared from sight; after a great deal of searching, Sam Charters found Hopkins in a rented one-room apartment in Houston.

[5] The Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings awarded the album three stars stating "'Exciting' may not be the word everyone would choose to describe this intimate, unplugged performance, but it was greeted on its original release with considerable enthusiasm, a response moulded by interpretation of the blues as folk music, suspicion of electric guitars, and other views current in the '50s and '60s among the sort of people who bought Folkways albums.

[6] The album was released in the UK by Verve Folkways as VLP 5003 (mono) and SVLP 5003 (stereo) in 1965 as The Roots of Lightnin' Hopkins and re-released in 1972 by Transatlantic Records (XTRA 1127).

The CD was produced by Matt Walters, remastered by Doug Sax and Alan Yoshida at The Mastering Lab in Hollywood, California, and printed in Canada.