Birth of the Blues: Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Part 1

By Hunter60





Although he often played with a small band behind him, Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins was primarily a solo act. He would chatter to the audience, spinning stories and lyrics out of thin air, his faced lined hard with age and fast living, playful yet tired eyes hidden behind his trademark dark shades and a cowboy or porkpie hat tilted back on his head. He would flash his gold-capped smile, start tapping out a beat with his feet--his white cotton socks often hanging just low enough to reveal the chain scars from his years on various Texas work gangs--and begin pumping out old country blues.

Lightnin' could take his old acoustic, slap a pickup into the sound hole, plug into an ancient, humming amplifier and speak directly to his expectant fans. His style, a unique blend of southern country blues coupled with the grit of city living, sparse playing style, a complete disregard for conventional timing or the rigors of musical rules and his seemingly innate ability to either make up lyrics on the spot or alter existing lyrics to play to the situation at the time made him a truly unique and powerful voice of the Texas blues. It was something more than just showmanship, it was just Lightnin' being Lightnin'.

It has been estimated that during the course of his six decade career, Lightnin' Hopkins made between 800 and 1000 records for a variety of labels making him one of the most prolific blues artists and yet do his dying day, he preferred to play to small crowds in dingy Houston, Texas clubs as opposed to some of the larger, more famous venues that were seeking him out during the '60s and '70s.

Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins was one of six children born to Abe and Frances Sims Hopkins in the Piney Woods section of east Texas in the small town of Centerville on March 15th, 1912. Sam's grandfather had been a slave who had hung himself in despair over the horrid conditions and Sam's own father, a hard drinker and gambler was killed in a knife fight over a card game when Sam was only 3 years old. It's unknown if Sam ever had a chance for any formal education at that time. According to Sam, "I didn't get no schooling, man … Oh I got my education by sitting around talkin', looking at this one do, that one do and how they do things. You go to the field. That was our school – hoe that field, plow that mule, chop that cotton."

He began to take an interest in the guitar at an early age, watching his older brother Joel (a blues performer and singer in his own right) play. "I heard my brother playing a guitar. It was first one I ever seen. He wouldn't let me play his guitar. I wanted to play it, so at last one day they come in and caught me with the guitar 'cause I couldn't hang it back up – so he caught me fair." His brother asked him if he could play so Hopkins played a little bit. His brother was shocked and asked him where he learned how to play. Sam said "I just learned it." So he decided to make his own guitar, fashioning one out of a cigar box (cutting a sound hole in the lid), fashioning a bridge, nailing a 'plank' to the end and attaching pieces of wire from a screen door as strings.

He took this homemade guitar with him to a Baptist Church picnic in nearby Buffalo, Texas where Blind Lemon Jefferson was entertaining. Jefferson had Hopkins lifted up onto the hood of a pickup truck so that the two could perform together. The story that Hopkins always told was that Jefferson said to him "Boy, you keep that up and you’re gonna be a good guitar player." According to Hopkins, it was all the encouragement he needed and he took to his playing seriously at an early age.

He played alongside his brothers and sister in the Hopkins Band at various churches playing what Sam called "the good old Christian songs" and eventually began to accompany his cousin blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander in the local barrelhouses. During the day, Hopkins was working the fields, chopping cotton and driving mules. He told blues archivist Sam Charters "It was hard times … I was trying to take care of my family, me and my mother. Six bits a day … I would come in the evening, and it looked like I'd be so weak till my knee be cluckin' like a wagon wheel, man. I'd go to bed and I'd say 'Baby, I just continue like that.' Look like I no sooner go to bed and I'm ready to go catch that mule again."

During the late twenties and thirties, the hard drinking Hopkins got into a lot of fights and found himself in and out Texas prisons, spending the majority of his stays working on chain gangs. "That ball and chain ain't no good for no man," he would recall. But when released, he hit the rails, hoboing around east Texas and staying in hobo camps. He went to Houston in the late '30s to give a shot at being a professional musician but the trip proved a disaster. Unable to find a paying gig, he took a job working for the Missouri-Pacific Railroad tamping ties. The only money he made from playing the guitar came from playing for tips on the streets of Houston. After a few short months, Hopkins returned home to Centerville.

During the forties, Hopkins was making his meager income from doing farm labor, still playing the guitar but now for family and friends and occasionally accompanying Alexander on local gigs. He married Antoinette Charles in the early forties and took a job as a sharecropper for a mean-spirited landowner named Tom Moore. The experience, although deplorable, provided the foundation for one of Hopkins' more popular songs from that period.

Next week, the story of Lightnin' Hopkins continues...