Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [20]
Fulson maintained that he met up with Texas Alexander in 1939: “I worked in a string band for a while in Ada, Oklahoma—Dan Wright and his string band. I couldn’t get the blues feel for the type of music they were playing. So Texas Alexander came through there, and he wanted a guitar player. So he heard me…. I went on a trip with him to Texas. First, we started out in Western Oklahoma and played Saturday night fish fries and whatever else they had going on. They’d cut the nickelodeon [jukebox] if they thought you sounded pretty good. They let you play there, and they passed the hat around, take up a little collection.”17
Texas Alexander insisted that he had been in prison twice, once with a sentence of ten years on Ramsey Farm for murder or attempted murder “over some woman,” and then a second time, for singing the “obscene” song “Boar Hog Blues.” However, no prison records have survived to establish that Alexander was ever in prison. In fact, he may never have served prison time, but told people that to establish a badass credibility that even Sam found appealing.
Sam never talked much about Texas Alexander’s crimes, or how long or where he was in jail, though he did confirm that he was punished for singing “Boar Hog Blues.” However, when Mack McCormick asked him if they put Alexander in prison, Sam was vague: “Well, I don’t know. That’s what they tell me.”18
Texas Alexander made a huge impression on Sam, even though in the overall scope of Alexander’s career, Sam was a relatively minor accompanist. The peak of his popularity was probably between 1927 and 1929, but he continued to have a following that extended into Oklahoma and was concentrated in the small towns of East and Central Texas and the segregated wards of Houston. Alexander never exuded optimism in his songs. His music was always more unsettling than it was entertaining, and while he dwelled heavily upon the difficulties he claimed to have experienced, his actual biography remains inscrutable. Whether or not Texas Alexander was forthright in his songs wasn’t important. His lyrics had a resonance that moved those who identified with the hard luck and bad times that he sang about, and from Alexander, Sam learned that it wasn’t necessarily the truth of the song that mattered so much as the emotions it evoked.
Hopkins’s rambling vocal style is heavily indebted to Alexander, but Sam seemed to know few of his songs, at least the ones he recorded. Texas Alexander may have discouraged him or warned him not to imitate him, but then again, Sam may simply not have liked his songs, or perhaps was only interested in certain lines. As Sam matured as a singer and guitarist, the recordings of Big Bill Broonzy, John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, Lonnie Johnson, and Tampa Red, among other popular blues artists, figured more heavily in his development. To Sam, Texas Alexander’s music probably seemed dated, and he wanted to keep up with his peers whom he heard on jukeboxes. Yet, on a personal level, Sam admired Texas Alexander, who demonstrated what success as a bluesman might bring—booze, women, and even a Cadillac car—but also made explicit the perils of a self-destructive life.
3
The Move to Houston
With the growth of Houston as an oil-rich shipping port and industrial center, the African American population increased rapidly to meet the needs of an expanding work force. By 1920 there were an estimated 35,000 African Americans in Houston, and by 1940 the number had swelled to roughly 86,000 out of a total population of 384,000. In 1945 the Port of Houston was the fourth busiest in the United States, and by 1948, it was second only to New York in overall tonnage. While Houston embraced and promoted a Western image