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to swell, and whether or not he played electric or acoustic guitar became irrelevant. However, it became more difficult for him to assess the opportunities that were presented to him and to organize the logistics of touring. Dr. Harold worked with him to manage his contracts, but only on a volunteer basis, and he didn’t really have the time to go out on the road with him. After Lightnin’s car wreck, he became more cautious about whom he traveled with, but he was still drinking heavily. As time went on, his needs intensified; the invitations to play festivals and concert dates had never been greater.

9

The Last Decade

In Houston, the Third Ward of the 1970s was in many ways more dangerous than it was in the 1940s or ‘50s, when the neighborhood was flourishing and Dowling Street was a main thoroughfare of African American life and culture. During the years of desegregation and integration, many of the black-owned businesses in the Third Ward closed or moved, and the problems of drugs and violence were exacerbated by urban decay and neglect. In music, the Third Ward had gone from the jazz-oriented big bands of Milton Larkin, I. H. Smalley, Conrad Johnson, and the rhythm and blues of the Duke/Peacock era to the popular soul/funk of the TSU Tornados, Oscar Perry, and John Roberts and the Hurricanes. Archie Bell and the Drells had a #1 hit with “Tighten Up” in 1968 and continued to have a strong presence in the Houston scene of the 1970s. Guitar-based blues in Houston was declining. Young African Americans were after a sound that reflected the world in which they were coming of age and most were not interested in down-home blues.

In this context, though Lightnin’ may still have been known among older African Americans in his community of the Third Ward, he had become a legend for white blues and rock audiences. He rarely played in the bars and nightclubs in the Third Ward anymore, and even he viewed his neighborhood as threatening. Lightnin’ always carried a loaded gun and had been known to drive around with a shotgun on the back seat of his car. He lived in a culture of violence, where he knew people who had been killed, beginning at an early age when he learned about the murder of his father. And as he got older, there were others. According to McCormick, Buster Pickens, who had accompanied Lightnin’ on piano, was “senselessly shot to death in a West Dallas Street bar on November 24, 1964.”1 Moreover, Leadbitter wrote that Thunder Smith had been “murdered in 1965 after a drunken argument.”2

David Benson, a twenty-three-year-old African American from the small town of Waycross, Georgia, met Lightnin’ in the fall of 1970 while he was a student at the University of Houston. A classmate, Alfie Naifeh, who was then accompanying Lightnin’ as a drummer on some local gigs, asked him if he wanted to go over to Lightnin’s apartment on Gray Street. Benson had played alto saxophone when he was younger and had grown up playing the blues: “So I knew about these old bluesmen already, though I had never known a bluesman. I knew the validity and the history of that music because my uncles lived in that world.”3

Going into Lightnin’s apartment for the first time, Benson felt that he “was walking into the presence of greatness.” He wanted to get to know Lightnin’ and went to visit him as often as he could. He also got to know Antoinette, because they were often together. “I had been around older people as a younger boy,” Benson says, “so I knew how to say, ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ and ‘No, Ma’am,’ and keep my mouth shut and be properly respectful and polite and that’s how I got in there.”4

In time Benson met Dr. Harold, who realized that Benson could help Lightnin’ in ways that he could not. Dr. Harold began asking him to drive for Lightnin’ and to accompany him as a kind of road manager, ensuring that he was paid properly and that his lodging and per diem needs were adequately met. Benson respected Dr. Harold and worked in coordination with him to manage Lightnin’s business dealings. “From the start,” Benson says, “we were part of that