Dominic Percell

Music 1040 Lightnin Hopkins

Sam Lightnin Hopkins was a Texas country bluesman of the highest caliber whose career started in 1920s and sanded all the way into the 1908s. Throughout his long career, Hopkins watched the genre change remarkable, but he never really altered his mournful Lone Star sound. He was a prolific songwriter whose lyrics chronicled life in the south, romantic turmoil, and bawdy sexual themes, Hopkins vocals mixed with soulful voice with a talking blues style. Hopkins unique finger picked guitar style would alternate single note leads with rhythm and bass guitar, adding percussive elements by slapping or tapping his guitar body.

Born in Centerville Texas on March 15, 1912, Hopkins Learned to play the guitar from his brother at an early age. The young Hopkins interest in Blues music though began at the early age of eight after meeting the Texas blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson at a social event. A few years later he served as the bluesmans guide and apprentice.

While in his teens, Hopkins hooked up with his cousin, bluesman Alger Texas Alexander, and the pair traveled across East Texas playing house parties and picnics. They did this for a little while until sometime during the mid 1930s Hopkins was arrested for some unknown offense and was sent to the Houston County prison farm for a while. After he was released from the prison farm, Hopkins once again began playing with Alexander on street corners and nightclubs in Houston, sometimes venturing into Mississippi and other Southern states to perform at parties or juke joints.

In 1946, Lola Anne Cullum, a talent scout for Aladdin Records, discovered Hopkins in Houston. Cullum Then offered Hopkins the opportunity to travel to Los Angeles to record for the label. Hopkins accepted and when he got to L.A. he was paired with pianist Wilson Smith. The pair was subsequently dubbed Lightnin and Thunder by an Aladdin executive. With Smith on the ivories, Hopkins recorded his first regional hit Katie May. Other hits would follow like: Shotgun Blues, Short Haired Women, and Abilene, among others. During his short tenure with Aladdin, Hopkins recorded forty-three songs during two lengthily sessions from 1946 to 1947. He then returned to Houston, However, subsequently recording songs for the Gold Star label even though he was still signed with Aladdin, sometimes even re-recording the same songs he made with Aladdin in L.A. in Texas.

During the 1950s, Hopkins recorded prolifically, a flurry of songs like Tim Moores Farm, T-Model Blues, and Lightnins Boogie charting for both indie labels like Gold Star, Sittin In With, and Modern/RPM as well as majors like Decca and mercury Records. During his lengthily career Hopkins recorded nearly 1,000 songs from some twenty different labels, making his discography one of the deepest and most complicated in blues music history. By the late 1950s, popular interest in the sort of country blues that were Hopkins trademark had largely given way to the electric blues of Chicago artist like Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf. Folklorist Mack McCormick tracked Hopkins down in Houston and he was re-invented as a folk blues artist. Then Producer Sam Charters recorded the groundbreaking album The Roots of Lightnin Hopkins in his living room. This album opened Hopkins up to entirely new audience.

Following the success of his 1960 song Mojo Hand, Hopkins went from playing back- alley dives in Houston to performing on the stage of Carnegie Hall alongside artists like Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s though Hopkins usually solo performed at college campuses, folk clubs, and coffee houses. He did tour Europe though as part of the American Folk Festival in 1964 with Howlin Wolf, and later toured Japan in the late 1970s. Throughout the last years of his life, Hopkins would record for almost any label that would pay, demanding cash up front before hed plug in and play. Hopkins would usually only do one take on a song, regardless of the producers request. He was then inducted into the blues hall of fame in 1980. He then later passed away in 1982 from cancer.

References

Dahl, B.L., (2013), Lightnin Hopkins Artist Biography, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/lightnin-hopkins-mn0000825208/biography

Gordon, K.A.G., Sam Lightnin Hopkins Profile, http://blues.about.com/od/artistprofile1/p/LightninHopkins.htm

Unknown author, http://www.mtv.com/artists/lightnin-hopkins/biography/