Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [118]
Lightnin’ liked working in Los Angeles. He had his black friends and his white friends, and to some extent, they mixed. In fact, Ed Pearl said that when Lightnin’ wasn’t working, he’d sometimes come to the Ash Grove just to hear some of the other styles of music. “He had a broad view. Lightnin’ liked Bill Monroe. He came in to see Bill’s show. He came in to see Doc Watson’s show.”
Over the years, Lightnin’ wrote several songs about California. In “California Showers,” he identified with the plight of the farm worker:
Tell me why do it rain, why it storm in California all the time
I don’t want the rain, but you still have plenty sunshine
You know it keeps on rainin’, you know this poor man can’t make no time (x2)
You know if I can’t go to my job, how I’m gonna feed this family of mine?
In “Burnin’ in L.A.” he sang about the devastation of the fire in Los Angeles and the plea of one girl who wanted to get away:
You know a little sixteen-year-old girl come to me talked and said
Lightnin’, would you take me for your souvenir?
You know they had a big fire down in L.A.
All them buildings is burnin’ down
Lightnin’ returned to Los Angeles often between 1965 and 1973, when the Ash Grove closed, though Ed and Bernie Pearl continued to see Lightnin’ whenever they got a chance. Bernie even traveled to Houston to visit with Lightnin’ and Antoinette. “I took a Greyhound to Navasota,” Bernie says, “I spent Christmas with Mance [Lipscomb], and stayed three or four days and then I took the bus to Houston. And when I got off the bus in Houston, I hailed a cab and there was a black woman cab driver. And I gave her the address, she said, ‘No, you don’t want to go there.’ I said, ‘Yes I do.’ ‘Oh, yeah that’s in the Third Ward.’ ‘I’m gonna see Lightnin’ Hopkins,’ and she just about flipped out. ‘You’re going to see Lightnin’ Hopkins.’ So she delivered me there and got an autograph from him.”57
Over the years, Bernie became close friends with both Lightnin’ and Antoinette, and one time, he traveled with them to the Bay Area. But when they got to Berkeley, there were no rooms left in the motel. “Antoinette was with him,” Bernie says, “and I didn’t have a place to stay. So they invited me. They said, ‘Well, come stay in our room,’ … and the three of us ended sleeping in the same bed because there was no couch, and they didn’t want me to sleep on the floor. And needless to say, it was a very warm and generous thing…. It kind of shows the nature of the friendship.”58
In the mid-1970s, Bernie played backup for Lightnin’ when he appeared at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. For Bernie, Lightnin’ was a mentor who taught him not only how to play some of his licks on the guitar, but who also helped him to define himself. “There was one point where I might have been with his family and I might have been acting white or nervous. And he looked at me and said, ‘Be yourself.’ And I’ve taken that to be the watchword of how I approach this music. It was like boing somebody dropped a life message on me.”59
The Ash Grove had been an anchor for Lightnin’ on the West Coast. It was a base from which he could plan other gigs, both in Southern California and the Bay Area, where Strachwitz was eager to record him and help him find jobs. Ed Pearl would book Lightnin’ whenever he wanted, and the combination of family and friends made Los Angeles one of his favorite destinations, even as he began to get offers for larger concerts as a headliner. Lightnin’ was loyal to Pearl and to Strachwitz because they treated him well and paid fairly.
In 1972, Lightnin’ received his one and only Grammy nomination for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording for Lightnin’ Strikes, a reissue on the Tradition/Everest label of his 1965 album of the same title for Verve-Folkways. Muddy Waters, however, won the award for his LP The London Muddy Waters Session.60 Even though Lightnin’ didn’t win, interest in his music continued