Lightnin' Hopkins_ His Life and Blues - Alan Govenar [95]
The elusive Lightnin’ that Charters depicted in his book also intrigued Phillips, and she wanted to go to Houston to see if she could track him down as Charters had done. “I and one of my roommates, Krista Balatony, who was very blond and from Austria (now clinical professor of law emerita at the University of Wisconsin), decided we were going to find Lightnin’. Krista and I went to Houston over Thanksgiving break [1962], telling our parents that we were going to spend the holiday at a friend’s home in Montecito. We took the Sunset Limited, hoboing in coach by keeping one step away from the conductor.” They were worried that they were too light skinned and that Lightnin’ might reject them for this reason, even though Phillips was in fact African American: “As the train neared Houston, we slathered ourselves with Man Tan [an early sunless tanning cream] so we’d look darker and less conspicuous, but instead of imparting the desired degree of brownness to our skin, we turned a ghastly yellow ochre, as if we were jaundiced and in the terminal stages of liver disease. We couldn’t wash it off; it took several days to fade. We felt so foolish. That was my brilliant idea.”6
When they got to Houston, they checked into a hotel on Dowling Street and asked around for Lightnin’. “Krista recalls that we met a fellow who told us he knew where Lightnin’ lived, but said that he wouldn’t be at home until much later that night. The three of us then went to our hotel and waited around, it seemed interminably, until about two in the morning, when the man declared that Lightnin’ would now be at home. He walked us over to Mama’s Place on Hadley Street, just a few blocks from the hotel, where we found Lightnin’ in his room, and we introduced ourselves. He told us he’d be playing the next night at a honky tonk called the Snowboat Lounge, and we could see him play there. The meeting was brief; we bid him adieu, ditched our new friend, and returned to the hotel to get some much needed sleep.
“Sometime the next day, I got a call from one of Lightnin’s minions, perhaps Billy Bizor, instructing me to repair to a particular alley nearby and wait for Lightnin’ to meet me there. It was all very cloak and dagger, but I followed his instructions. I don’t remember what time of day it was, but I did meet Lightnin’, who was in his car, with his shades on. He wanted to know who we were. He and I exchanged a few words. He seemed very enigmatic, and soon he was gone, crunching gravel as he slowly drove away. I don’t know what he said to me or what I said—or more probably stammered—to him in that encounter. I might well have said something very brash and outrageous, such as ‘Hey, I like your music and I want to be your woman.’
“That night, we showed up at the Snowboat Lounge and immediately became the cynosure of all eyes in this rather raucous juke joint—especially blond, vivacious Krista, whom everyone called ‘Crystal.’ I was fairly oblivious to the stir we caused in the club and on Dowling Street because my objective was to meet Lightnin’. I was surprised that people did not simply sit quietly and listen, then applaud demurely when a song or a set was over. They drank and ate and talked while the music was playing, and sometimes whooped and hollered. But it was nothing akin to a supper or folk club atmosphere, either. There was no raised stage or special lighting. Lightnin’ was just a few feet away from the audience, and frequently directly interacted and bantered with them, as individuals and as a group, drawing them in, weaving them into his performance, cracking jokes, making up timely verses on the spot, directing songs or lines of songs to specific people, who would counter with wisecracks