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his confidence. ‘Two old women in a foldin’ bed …’ he sang; then stopped and said, ‘Y’know, it’s bad when there’s two people in one foldin’ bed … ‘specially if they both mens…’ The audience picked that up all right. Lightnin’ talked about his trip over to Europe. He was still shaken by one air trip and apprehensive of the flight back, for he is very frightened by aircraft. He talked about it and sang ‘Airplane Blues’… ‘Mister Airplane driver, you got po’ Lightnin’ in your hand …’ which was a version of ‘DC-7.’ It was indicative of his lack of any self-consciousness or even any real awareness of usual delicacies … that he sang:

I’m gonna tell my woman like that Dago told the Jew

Yes, gonna tell my woman like the Dago told that Jew

You don’t lika me, and I sure God, don’t lika you

They both had plenty money, that’s why they couldn’t get along35

The British photographer and critic Val Wilmer wrote in Jazz Beat: “Lipmann and the NJF [National Jazz Federation], assisted by the good judgment of Willie Dixon, put on the best balanced package shows blues enthusiasts could hope for. This one was no exception.” About Hopkins, Wilmer focused on his performance style: “He walked on stage, cool, assured, slid into a chair and just went into a blues about a little girl…. His splendid eerie guitar made him the hit of the show for this reviewer and a partisan section of the audience screamed their approval to show they felt the same. He did ‘Baby Please Don’t Go,’ sang some more about air transport, imitating jet noises with his instrument and then he was gone.”36 Wilmer hoped that a “single tour” could be arranged for Hopkins, but commented that “apparently his price is prohibitive.” While many American blues singers regularly included England in their tour itineraries, the 1964 tour was the only time Lightnin’ ever played there.

A film clip from an unspecified date during the American Folk Blues Festival in the United Kingdom shows Lightnin’ on stage, decked out in a black tuxedo and bow tie, with processed hair, sunglasses, and a neatly folded white handkerchief in his breast pocket. His introduction to the song “Come On, Baby, Come Home with Me” was awkward—he stumbled on his words and explained, “It’s not exactly the blues right now”—but his playing was sharp on amplified guitar and his vocals shuffled forward with confidence.

When Lightnin’ got back to Texas, Kay Pope interviewed him about his trip for the Houston Chronicle Sunday magazine. “Lightnin’ Sam Hopkins leaned back and talked about what he’d seen in Europe,” Pope wrote. “Next to the bed the TV carried on its own conversation and down below his little wife, Antoinette, applied determination and a dust mop to the stairs of their boarding house.” In the article Pope not only recounted Hopkins’s impressions of his travels, but also evoked a sense of his home life with Antoinette, who rummaged around their living quarters, looking for the list of tour dates and a packet of photographs. Even though Lightnin’ and Antoinette were not legally married, they were very much living as a couple.

Highlights of the trip for Lightnin’ included “good German beer,” eight bottles of which he bought for himself and carried with him. “They’re good folk over there,” Lightnin’ said. “But their bread’s too hard. When I’d finally find some food I liked, I’d a whoppin’ of it. I found some chicken in one or two places, I’d order a whole chicken. Wrap the rest in paper and take it with me.” Overall, Lightnin’ was pleased with the way the audience responded to him. “I talked to a few people over there,” he said, “them that spoke English who wanted my autograph. A few, not many. But I make my guitar talk just like I talk. They could understand. They all jump, shout, jaw, and grab me at the end. They wouldn’t be happy like that if they didn’t like me.”37

While Lightnin’s acclaim was growing in England and throughout Europe, his recordings were garnering strong reviews in the United States. On October 3, 1964, Billboard, in its review of Lightnin’s “Down Home Blues” (Prestige 1086), wrote: “The