Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [136]
On Tuesday, February 3, a wake was scheduled at Johnson’s Funeral Chapel at 2301 McGowen Street in the Third Ward. Throngs of people began showing up early in the afternoon, soon after Lightnin’s eighteen-gauge steel casket was opened for viewing. Lightnin’ was dressed in a brown pinstriped suit and was surrounded by three wreaths shaped like guitars. “Upwards of 1,000 mourners,” Marty Racine reported in the Houston Chronicle, “paid their final respects.” The tone was “quiet and low-keyed, as friends, fans, and family formed a line around the block waiting to file past the open casket.”79 An organ played quietly in the background, and the mourners expressed their condolences to Antoinette and members of Lightnin’s family and closest friends. Rocky Hill, a local Houston musician who had played with Lightnin’ on different occasions, brought his guitar, pulled over a stool, and started playing “Amazing Grace” and, according to Racine, “a standard blues on acoustic bottleneck guitar.” Hill’s performance lasted about five minutes, and afterward he told a friend that it was the “hardest gig I’ve ever done.” Racine wrote, “The blues bothered some mourners. One remarked, ‘Nat King Cole sang the blues, too, but they didn’t play the blues at his funeral.’”80 In fact, Benson said, Antoinette was annoyed, but she didn’t want to confront Hill. He was not asked to perform, and for family and friends, Hill’s “musical tribute” was inappropriate. Yet according to Bob Claypool of the Houston Post, Antoinette had in fact “asked Rocky … to play some music” at the wake, but after viewing the body, “Rocky said, ‘I can’t … I won’t make it,’” and stepped away. After a while, John Lomax Jr. said, “We’re gonna mourn anyway, and it’s better mourning with music than without it,” and Hill picked up his guitar and played “Amazing Grace,” but didn’t sing. He “just played—played it slow and haunting, and yes, very, very bluesy, and anyone who heard had to be touched. And when he finished, he walked out into the hallway and cried.”81
“Miss Nette took affront,” Benson said, “And she really asked me to ask him to cease and desist and leave, because she thought that he was desecrating the wake. But I didn’t ask him to leave. I didn’t confront him. We didn’t want a scene. But she was very distraught about it, and she thought it was very disrespectful. She didn’t say anything either, because she’s a very tactful woman.”82
However, the presence of Hill, Billy Gibbons, and numerous other white performers and fans at Lightnin’s wake accentuated the cultural divide in which he thrived and, to some extent, was able to bridge through his blues. As Harold said in the Houston Chronicle, Lightnin’ was essentially a private man: “He didn’t socialize in crowds, only performed in them.”83
Lightnin’s funeral was at 11:00 A.M. on the day after the wake at the Johnson Funeral Home Chapel, located at 5730 Calhoun Road in Houston, with Reverend Johnny Kelly officiating. Lightnin’s family and closest friends were there, including Antoinette, David Benson, Dr. Harold, as well as his sister, Emma Hopkins from Centerville; his daughter, Anna Mae Box from Crockett; and two other children, whose mothers are unknown and who Lightnin’ never talked about in any interview or conversation: his daughter Celestine from Fort Worth, and his son, Charles, who Benson said he learned about at the funeral, was studying to become a minister in Houston.84 For the funeral, Benson recalls, “I had Miss Nette’s car, a Buick Riviera, and I did some running around for her. We all showed up at Miss Nette’s house. We met and then we went to the funeral. I drove her car and she went in the car that the funeral home provided. And there were probably 100–150 people at the funeral, not nearly as many that had gone to the wake. It was sunny, as I remember, that day. We went to the cemetery. It was nice and bright. Albert Collins showed up. He came to the house, and we had a big dinner, fried