Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [85]
After playing for German TV in Baden-Baden, the American Folk Blues Festival went to Strasbourg, where it was featured at the Palais des Fêtes. Francis Hofstein, who was then a student at the University of Strasbourg, was at the performance, and after the show he got a chance to meet Hopkins. Like many in Europe at that time, Hofstein was excited to see Lightnin’ because he viewed him as a kind of myth or legend, but ultimately he didn’t get much of a response. “He was detached, but present,” Hofstein says. “I asked him some questions: How is it to be in France? And he wasn’t very interested, but then I asked him when we were leaving together if he would come again to France or to Europe and he said, ‘No.’ Like that. And I asked him why. And he just answered, ‘I don’t want to die wet.’ And that was it.”32
From Strasbourg, the festival toured to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and back to France for one date in Paris before leaving for Great Britain. Derek Stewart-Baxter in Jazz Journal described the festival as the “most important blues event of the year” in England, where there were five dates, presented in association with the National Jazz Federation.
British blues fan Alan Balfour recalled going backstage before Lightnin’s show at Croydon’s Fairfield Hall concert and asking him to sign an album sleeve. Lightnin’ looked at Balfour “over the top of his dark glasses and said rather testily (people were plaguing him like mad for interviews and discographical information) ‘Boy, everybody’s bin asking me one damn thing or another. I’ll sing you something from that record when I get out there. You’re here to hear me sing, ain’t ya?’”33
In reviewing the concert, Stewart-Baxter wrote: “Good as all this was, it was not until Lightnin’ Hopkins ambled on stage that things really began to happen, for he, in his own quiet way, proceeded to take the Fairfield Hall apart. Like all really great performers, Hopkins has the ability to cast a spell over his audience even before uttering a word; and when he commenced to sing and play his guitar the effect was electric. It was a most memorable experience and was to be repeated at every concert. Everything he sang was magnificent from his well-known “Short Haired Woman” to a semi-improvised blues on his fears of air travel. The latter a good example of how Lightnin’s music is influenced by every-day events. My only criticism was that his spot was far too short. This man is quite capable of carrying a whole show on his own.”34
Paul Oliver concurred with Stewart-Baxter in Jazz Monthly and wrote: “In the completeness of his performance Lightnin’s appearance was the peak spot of the concerts.” Oliver described Hopkins’s performance with exacting detail: “Lightnin’ came on with the slow tread which earned him his ironic nick-name. He looked sleek and slick, his gold-edged teeth flashing and his newly straightened and brushed-up hair dyed with a positive hair-line. Lightnin’ settled down at the chair, picked the strings with elaborate casualness and played as he talked. To the large audience he spoke conversationally as if they were just a handful of people around him. His easy-going manner hardly alters on stage or in club; it is the secret of his success in these unlikely circumstances. Many of his conversational asides must have been virtually incomprehensible to all save a very few collectors … like that ‘one-eyed woman when she cry…’ he commented, making reference to a small incident that occurred several years ago and affected him deeply. Hardly a soul could have known what he was talking about but they were happy to be taken into