Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [141]
When Hopkins would say, “Lightnin’ change when Lightnin’ change,” he was not only telling his sidemen they needed to be ready, he was expressing exactly who he was. In performance, he had a general sense of where he wanted to go, but didn’t know exactly how he was going to get there until he started into a song. At its best, his blues were a seamless dialogue between words and guitar, a largely improvised conversation not only between him and his instrument, but also between him and those who were listening. It’s difficult to tell which lyrics are his, and which are from other sources, but in performance it didn’t seem to matter.
Lightnin’ did not want to be told what to do; he spoke his mind through his music. Lightnin’ worked when and where he wanted to, and as he gained a white audience, the interest in his music among younger African Americans declined. Nevertheless, his concerts at college campuses were attended widely and introduced young audiences to down-home blues, which evoked a sense of the place that African Americans carried with them as they migrated away from country to the city, looking for new opportunities and a better way of life. As Chris Strachwitz has pointed out, even though Lightnin’ spent most of his adult life in Houston, he remained “a real country man.”
Sam Charters described Lightnin’ as “the last singer in the grand style. He sang with sweep and imagination, using his voice to reach out and touch someone who listened to him.”101 For filmmaker Les Blank, Lightnin’ was “clown and oracle, wit and scoundrel. Like Shakespeare, he had an understanding of all people and all their feelings. Whether he was singing other people’s songs, or as it more often happened, making a song up as he played, Lightnin’ Hopkins was a man of all colors and classes, and of all times. He was an eloquent spokesman for the human soul which dwells in us all.”102
While it is tempting to romanticize Lightnin’ as a bluesman, one must not lose sight of the extent to which he was plagued by his own personal problems. He drank too much and was ostensibly an alcoholic, who in “Watch Yourself” sang: “I got to get drunk every day to please my mind.” But according to Carroll Peery and others, he was never a sloppy drunk. “He didn’t lose control of himself when he was drinking,” Peery said, “because he didn’t drink that heavily at any one time. But he drank pretty constantly. When I first met him he was drinking gin and then when we got a little bit of money, he switched to more expensive types of alcohol. He always drank whiskey [Canadian Club], but he started drinking it more consistently after he became more secure economically.”103
As much as Lightnin’s creativity may have declined in his later years when he was paid more for playing less and often repeating himself, or re-recording old songs, he was nonetheless a professional who was at any moment capable of a great performance that could surprise and wow even the most jaded. Lightnin’, like his contemporaries Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, was an entertainer with an uncanny sense of drama. His movements on stage were measured; he knew he was a “star” for the people who bought the tickets and packed the clubs and festivals where he was often a headliner, and he played what they wanted to hear. Even when he was sloppy, or maybe had too much to drink, he was still worth seeing, especially if one had never seen him before. Everyone who came into contact with Lightnin’ Hopkins remembered him. His presence was indelible and imbued those around him with a mix of emotions, from admiration to disdain. While he was generally respected for his blues, his personality was often inscrutable.
Through his songs, he led young and old alike into his past, but could push them back in an instant