Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [120]
While there is little question that Lightnin’ had been manipulated and exploited by various club owners, promoters, and record producers both white and black over the course of his career, this was not uniformly true. Arhoolie and Prestige/Bluesville had been paying advances and royalties with timely statements since the early 1960s. In other instances, where no royalties were paid and the fees may have seemed low, Lightnin’ consented to the terms when he wanted the money. To simply say, for example, that white producer Bobby Shad and black producer Bobby Robinson exploited him is not fair to them; they paid Lightnin’ the flat fee that he asked for, and while they knew that he might eventually earn royalties, Lightnin’ insisted on getting paid in full up front. Moreover, Lightnin’s flagrant disregard for the “exclusive” contracts he signed, his propensity for recording the same song for different labels, and his reluctance to record more than one take of any given song made him difficult to work with, though from his point of view he likely felt that he was getting back at those who were already taking advantage of him.
Undoubtedly, Lightnin’s heavy drinking and gambling impeded his ability to keep up with his business affairs, and even when Harold and Benson worked to manage his interests, he did not always follow their advice. Harold recalled, for example, that Lightnin’ liked to buy a new used car every Labor Day because the banks were closed and it was impossible to check his credit rating. Lightnin’ would keep the car for as long as he could without making payments, knowing that it would in time be repossessed.6
By the time Benson met Lightnin’, he wasn’t performing very much locally around the Third Ward. “He was playing college gigs and predominantly young, white nightclubs. And he would say, sometimes, off the mike … it was my job to really be that buffer between him and club owners, at places like Liberty Hall in Houston, because it was a pretty alienating environment for him in comparison to what he had come up in and what he was used to—and what he preferred.”7
Benson liked socializing with Lightnin’, but getting to know him on a personal level was a gradual process. “He would reveal himself in pieces to me,” Benson says. “What you didn’t see [for example] is that he was a tremendous tap dancer and buck dancer. I mean, beyond, a Sammy Davis Jr. type dancer. But he would only do it behind closed doors. And I never knew it, and then, one day, all of a sudden, we were sitting in the dressing room passing time, and he got up and he just started dancing.”8
Benson traveled with Lightnin’ as often as was possible, even after he graduated from the University of Houston and enrolled in a PhD program at Michigan State University in East Lansing. He continued to work with Harold, who tried to coordinate Lightnin’s performance dates with Benson’s vacations and days off. One time Lightnin’ was invited to perform at the student coffee house at Michigan State and Benson made arrangements for Lightnin’ to stay with him. Benson cooked for him and helped him get around. “Lightnin’ had very particular dietary tastes,” Benson says, “and being a student, I made some kind of chicken stew.” And when Benson came back to Houston on vacation, Antoinette wanted the recipe because Lightnin’ had told her how good his cooking was. Antoinette, Benson recalls, did most of the cooking for Lightnin’, and it wasn’t long before they all became close friends. Lightnin’ called Benson “Babe,” and often referred to him as Antoinette’s boy, and Antoinette treated him like a son, though in fact she was still living with her own children and husband in the Fifth Ward. “She had two separate lives, and I never met her other family,” Benson said, “except for her daughter, who sometimes came over to Lightnin’s. But