Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [93]
Lightnin’ Hopkins and Long Gone Miles, Houston, Texas, 1960. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
Dietrich Wawzyn and his wife, Anna Marie, filming in the Third Ward, Houston, Texas, 1963. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
Joel, Lightnin’, and John Henry Hopkins with their mother, Frances Hopkins, Waxahachie, Texas, 1964. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
Joel, Lightnin’, and John Henry Hopkins, Waxahachie, Texas. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Berkeley, California, ca. mid-1960s. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
Lightnin’ Hopkins and Antoinette Charles, Berkeley, California, ca. mid-1960s. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
clockwise from top left: American Negro Blues Festival poster, Fairfield Hall, Croydon, England, October 19, 1964. COURTESY OF DOCUMENTARY ARTS; Lightnin’ Hopkins, Munich, Germany. PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHANE WIESAND, 1964. COURTESY OF ARHOOLIE RECORDS; Stephanie Wiesand, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Evelyn Parth, Munich, Germany, 1964. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
(above) Lightnin’ Hopkins at the Newport Folk Festival, 1965. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
(right) Les Blank during the production of Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins, 1967.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SKIP GERSON, COURTESY OF LES BLANK.
J. J. Phillips (left) in her dormitory at Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, California, 1962. COURTESY OF J. J. PHILLIPS
J. J. Phillips, El Cerrito, California, 2009. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALAN GOVENAR
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Navasota, Texas, 1967. © LES BLANK
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Houston, Texas, 1967. © LES BLANK
Billy Bizor and Lightnin’ Hopkins in front of ACA Studios, Houston, Texas, 1968. COURTESY OF ANDREW BROWN
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Houston, Texas, 1964. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ, 1964
COURTESY OF ANDREW BROWN
(L–R) Townes Van Zandt, Margaret Lomax, Antoinette Charles, and Lightnin’ Hopkins in the Lomax family backyard, Houston, Texas, ca. 1968. © JOHN LOMAX III
John Lomax Jr. and Lightnin’ Hopkins, Houston, Texas, 1968. © JOHN LOMAX III
Poster for the Lightnin’ Hopkins appearances at Fillmore Auditorium, San francisco, California, October 21–22, 1966. COURTESY OF ALAN GOVENAR
Berkeley Blues Festival poster, April 15, 1966.
COURTESY OF CHRIS STRACHWITZ
Boogie n’ Blues poster, Carnegie Hall, April 10, 1979.
COURTESY OF ANTON J. MIKOFSKY
Lightnin’ Hopkins at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, 1974. © MICHAEL P SMITH
Cleveland Chenier (above) and Clifton Chenier (below) with Lightnin’ Hopkins at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, 1974. © CHRIS STRACHWITZ
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Houston, Texas, 1972. © Benny Joseph
Lightnin’ Hopkins and Antoinette Charles (seated), Gothenburg, Sweden, 1977. © PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIK LINDAHL
Lightnin’ Hopkins, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1977. COURTESY OF HANS KRAMER
Lightnin’ Hopkins memorial by Jim Jeffries, Crockett, Texas, 2007. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALAN GOVENAR
Lightnin’ Hopkins grave marker, Forest Park Cemetery, Houston, Texas, 2007. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALAN GOVENAR
7
Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale
In 1966, Trident Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, published J. J. Phillips’s novel, Mojo Hand (later reprinted as Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale), which is loosely based on an affair she was in the midst of with Lightnin’ Hopkins. While the book is fiction, many readers have assumed the biographical fallacy and interpreted the book as thinly disguised autobiography, with Phillips as the character Eunice, and Lightnin’ as the blues singer Blacksnake Brown, with whom she was obsessed. In fact, the novel is significantly different than the actual affair. Unraveling the facts of the relationship is revealing as a means to illuminate the life of the man behind the music. Little is known about Hopkins’s private life and the experiences that informed the self-styled autobiography of his blues.
Phillips’s story elucidates some of the social and cultural dynamics surrounding Lightnin’s career and life that are much more complex than had been previously thought. While a close examination of Hopkins’s discography and the continuous stream of record releases serves to debunk the myth of “rediscovery,