Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [75]
But John Glenn done it. Yes, he did! He did it, I’m talkin’ about it
Only he did it just for fun
Half a million dollars made him feel so well
He got to eatin’ his lunch, he could hardly tell
The other songs on the LP were more typical to Lightnin’s repertoire, but the band had difficulty following him. Lightnin’ did play an up-tempo version of Sonny Boy Williamson’s standard “Good Morning Little School Girl,” in which he quipped, “Lightnin’ is a school boy, too.”92
On Smokes Like Lightning the band sound was a little tighter, and the solos by Hopkins were the highlights. But in McCormick’s notes, it became clear that his relationship with Hopkins was deteriorating. McCormick began the notes by responding to a question he was then being asked about how Lightnin’ had changed since he met him: “No, he has not changed. He is just the same as he has been his adult life, a natural born easman, consumed by self-pity and everlastingly trying to persuade the world that it is his valet.” McCormick then ridiculed Lightnin’ further, maintaining, “We might almost imagine Lightnin’ the most purely dedicated of all artists for he goes to astonishing lengths to maintain himself in a pathetic, blues-producing state. He is, for example, an incorrigible gambler who will take advantage of simple-minded friends with the crudest of dice tricks…. He is a joke to the gamblers of Houston’s Third Ward.”
McCormick’s tone was at once angry and illuminating about Hopkins’s personal life: “Lightnin’ sings endlessly of mistreating women though in fact he has been the pampered daytime pet of a married woman [Antoinette Charles] for 14 years. She often accompanies him on trips out of town and is then introduced as his wife, but in Houston, a triangle is maintained with everyone keeping carefully to their own corner. He has no personal relationships that are not severely limited. He spends most of his time surrounded by a coterie of ‘helpers,’ restless young men who envy him on one hand and on the other answer his incessant demands for attention, accept his drunken tongue lashing, and let him maneuver them into humiliating positions (ie. [sic] Clearing a path to the men’s room for him). He is lovable and yet tyrannical in the same sad way of a very spoiled child.”93
The details about Lightnin’s daily life are revealing, though it is surprising that they were published as liner notes, especially given the ranting tone of McCormick’s text. McCormick, instead of discussing the music on the LP, continued his diatribe against Hopkins and described how Lightnin’ left Houston to avoid his sister’s funeral, leaving the harmonica player Billy Bizor to make the necessary arrangements. Reportedly, Bizor drove Lightnin’s brother Joel and their mother, Frances Hopkins, who was eighty-eight years old at the time, back to Centerville after the funeral and discovered that the gas and electricity had been turned off because the bills had not been paid. Resigned, Mrs. Hopkins, “resting herself on the steps of the rickety two-room cabin,” McCormick wrote, “mused by herself: ‘I had five children and they could each play music, but the baby couldn’t do nothing else but. And he never has been no help to nobody except when you wanted to hear music.’ She turned her head to the west, as if seeing the Hollywood nightclub where Lightnin’ had gone, and firmly answered the question the fans had been asking: ‘I guess he never will change.’”94
Lightnin’ had pushed McCormick to the limits of what he was able to endure. While the tone of his text is harsh, it is likely a realistic portrayal of what McCormick observed and experienced. Lightnin’ was not easy to work with, but on the other hand, McCormick had been telling him what to do for years, and Lightnin’ was no doubt fed up. In other places and with other people, Lightnin’ was perceived differently. Ed Pearl from the Ash Grove describes him as a “gentle person,” as did Barbara Dane. But neither of them had tried to be Lightnin’s manager as McCormick had; they might not have thought of him as “gentle” if they had.