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and walked back to my car, and I saw Oland Hopkins was staring at me. “May I have your card?” he asked in amicable way, “I’d like to help you if I can. If I find out anything more, I’ll call you.” I handed him my card and told him he could call me collect if he wanted to, but I’ve never heard from him. At that point in 1995, it appeared all that remained of Lightnin’ in Centerville were spotty recollections. I decided to set the idea of writing a biography of Lightnin’ Hopkins aside, though I did continue to collect stories about him whenever I got the chance. I interviewed Paul Oliver, the British blues aficionado who had traveled to Houston to meet Hopkins with Chris Strachwitz in 1960, as well as Francis Hofstein, the French psychoanalyst who had met Lightnin’ when he appeared with the American Folk Blues Festival tour in Strasbourg in 1964. I spoke with John Jackson, the Piedmont bluesman who was at the Newport Folk Festival a year later when Lightnin’ performed.

In 2002 the musician and impresario Pip Gillette called me and asked me if I wanted to give the keynote speech at the dedication of a Lightnin’ Hopkins memorial statue created by the sculptor Jim Jeffries. I agreed, and much to my surprise, more than three hundred people came to the event on Camp Street in Crockett, Texas, where Lightnin’ had performed in the 1930s and ‘40s. Pip introduced me to Lightnin’s daughter, Anna Mae Box, who lived in Crockett, and to Frank Robinson, who had played with Lightnin’ in the 1950s. I also had a chance to meet Wrecks Bell, who had played with Lightnin’ in the 1970s, and David Benson, who had been Lightnin’s traveling companion and road manager during the last decade of his life. Benson helped me to get a clearer sense of his personal life, especially as it related to his relationship with Antoinette and Dr. Harold during a period when he performed less, got paid more, and failed to produce any new recordings.

After speaking in Crockett, my work on the Lightnin’ biography had a new momentum. I went to Centerville to meet Clyde Langford, whom I had read about a couple of years earlier.8 Clyde had grown up across the road from Lightnin’s mother, Frances Hopkins, and had learned to play guitar from his brother Joel. Clyde lived in a small wood-frame house on FM 1119 and was eager to tell his story and what he knew about Lightnin’. When I asked Clyde about other people who might know something about Lightnin’ he was uncertain, but one time he mentioned Ray Dawkins. Dawkins, born in 1928, is eight years older than Langford, and his memories of Lightnin’ were vivid. Lightnin’s early years were coming into clearer view. I was beginning to cut through the hearsay to get a stronger sense of what actually transpired over the course of his life. But each time I returned to Centerville, I came away with a slightly different impression. I realized that it was in those varying perceptions that the truth about Lightnin’ Hopkins lies. Inconsistencies about the details of his biography abound, fueled as much by the idiosyncrasies of his own memory as his capacity to reconstruct his past to meet his more immediate needs.

For most people, Hopkins was simply known as Lightnin’, but he was sometimes called Lightning. However, he didn’t get his nickname until November 1946, when an Aladdin Records executive (probably one of the Mesner brothers) decided during his first recording session to dub him “Lightnin’” and his accompanist, Wilson Smith, “Thunder” to enhance their presence in the marketplace. In discussing Hopkins’s life prior to 1946, I refer to him by his given name, Sam, for clarity.

Hopkins often referred to himself as Po’ Lightnin’ in his songs, not only to elicit sympathy, but to identify himself with the plight of those who were listening. Lightnin’ was the lifeblood of his own myth. In this book, the stories he told and the accounts of others provide a base for understanding how myth and memory merge into the blues that ultimately defined the man.

1

Early Years

Leaving Centerville on Leon County Road 113, midway