Alan Govenar
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Jesse Cahn, Dane’s son, remembered Lightnin’ coming to their house whenever he was in the Bay Area. “I don’t know how young I was when I first met him. I just remember Lightnin’ being around, but by the time I was about fifteen, he was staying at Carroll Peery’s house in Berkeley and so was I. And some situation had come up, as a crazy fifteen-year-old, I had hit a wall and broken a hole in the door. One of those jilted girlfriend situations or something like that, a typical thing. So I’ll never forget … Lightnin’ said, ‘When I gets like that, I hit the pillow,’ meaning a number of things behaviorally that are pretty obvious, but he was also saying if you want to play guitar, you better take better care of your hands.”23 Cahn described Hopkins as a “complete gentleman,” who liked to dress well: “Lightnin’ had sweaters and that Mexican chaleco that he liked to wear. He wore dapper slacks, really nice shoes, polished Stacy Adams, classic, shined.”24 On stage, Cahn felt that Lightnin’ played the role of a kind of “jester,” and was sometimes self-deprecating when he called himself “Po’ Lightnin’,” but musically, he was much more versatile than he usually let on. “I remember one time,” Cahn says, “I don’t know if it was during a sound check, but he was on stage. I was about fifteen years old and I used to clean the bathrooms and sweep up the inside of the Cabale. And I’m watching him, and he’s playing his usual blues thing, and I turn away and remember hearing these jazz chords, and I turn around and he’s playing these jazz chords and he’s looking dead pan right at me and then he goes back to his blues thing.”25
On the Arhoolie release, titled Sometimes I Believe She Loves Me, Dane and Hopkins engaged in a kind of blues dialogue, and “made up stuff, taking it [their relationship] to a further degree, acting like there was really some kind of thing going on there, which there wasn’t.”26 The lyrics are suggestive, humorous, teasing, and sometimes silly.
In the LP’s title song, Lightnin’ begins by singing:
Sometimes I believe she loves me
And then again Poor Lightnin’ believe she don’t
When I say can I go home with you
She won’t, won’t let me
And Dane answered:
Well, I said come over Lightnin’, I’m gonna cook you some hash
But when you come there, daddy, you done got smashed
Now, if that’s the way you want to do, I say that’s all right, that’s all right
I’ll just keep waiting on you
Lightnin’ replied:
You know I come to your house, I come that eve
But what you had cooked for Lightnin’
Do you know I had to eat it out on the streets
Overall, Dane and Hopkins’s blues dialogue is entertaining; the guitar work is tight, but at times rambling, and the lyrics have a drive that evokes the spirit of improvisation and the joy of swapping words and music on a Thursday afternoon for a small audience of friends and family.
When Lightnin’ got back to Texas, he mostly played around Houston, though he did perform as part of the KHFI festival at Zilker Park in Austin on July 13, 1964, with Mance Lipscomb, Carolyn Hester, John Lomax Jr., and Mickey and Marty. Over the course of the summer, Lightnin’ didn’t travel much, though he was no doubt thinking about the American Folk Blues Festival that he had agreed to earlier that year. His dread of air travel meant he was even more apprehensive by the time Strachwitz arrived in Houston to fly with him to Germany. “We took a United or American plane from Houston to New York, New York to Frankfurt,” Strachwitz says, “In those days, it was a charter flight, it wasn’t the system they’ve got now. Air India was one of the ones that had one plane a day flying around. I think the whole fleet had three planes. And if one got stuck some place, then you got stuck. Anyway, we got on this Air India plane. I think it was one of those back loading ones where you crawl in on the back, and I remember Lightnin’ and I were already sitting in our seats and the crew walks in. And Lightnin’ turns to me, ‘Chris, these people are going to fly this airplane?’ I said, ‘Ya, they’re good, you know.’ And it only dawned on me later on that he had never encountered these East Indians, except as ‘hoodoo’ people down in Louisiana.”27
When they finally landed in Frankfurt, Lightnin’ was a wreck: “He was just sickened. He couldn’t play. We called a doctor and they couldn’t find anything wrong with him. And thank God, we had a whole week in Baden-Baden for the television program that Joachim Berendt had arranged for and had apparently paid for much of the whole tour. So they put him on the last day of the week. By that time, he sort of regained his ability to play. I think he had a nervous breakdown.”28
During the TV recordings, the German photographer Stephanie Wiesand took an interest in Lightnin’ and realized his mysterious illness was psychosomatic. “I was looking after Lightnin’,” she recalled; he “spent quite some time at my kitchen table and on a sun chair on my balcony [located in Baden-Baden]. Lightnin’ recovered under my supervision, after providing him with his beloved soul food (steaks, etc.).”29 Lightnin’ was very grateful to Wiesand, and the following spring, on March 17, 1965, enshrined his memories of her in a song he recorded with his brother Joel Hopkins for Chris Strachwitz, who simply called the loosely structured tune “Two Brothers Playing (Going Back to Baden-Baden).”30
Strachwitz felt Hopkins “must have been scared shitless that these damn hoodoo people were going to fly that airplane. That was his big thing. ‘I’m gonna get me a mojo hand, so I can fix my woman so that she can have no other man,’ and all this stuff. He really believed in that.”31 In any event, once Lightnin’ got better, he was able to perform and by all accounts was well received during the tour that included Sonny Boy Williamson, Hubert Sumlin, Willie Dixon, Clifton James, Sunnyland Slim, Sleepy John Estes, Hammie Nixon, John Henry Barbee, Sugar Pie DeSanto, and Howlin’ Wolf.
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. Th
e 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 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 appeal of real blues is growing. It is part of America’s contribution to musical culture. Lightnin’ Hopkins is an outstanding purveyor of the blues as blues should be sung. His guitar and vocal work are a perfect marriage of instrument and talent.”38
Lightnin’ was in demand, and although he often was reluctant to travel, some gigs were too good to refuse. On November 7, 1964, he was featured in another show at Carnegie Hall, which by then had become a major venue for folk and blues shows. Lightnin’ appeared on the same bill as Mississippi John Hurt, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, and Doc Watson. Barbara Dane, who by then had moved from Berkeley to New York, attended the concert but was disappointed: “Lightnin’ walked on stage and put his shades on and started to do his thing, and it was totally, how should we say it, contained. He was not giving anything, not giving anything emotionally to it that was visible. He wasn’t attempting to communicate or do the kind of thing he would have done at the Cabale or the Ash Grove where he’s sitting face to face with people, basically talking to them through his music. In this case, in the Carnegie Hall setting, I was really studying it carefully, and saw how different his demeanor was. My take on it was, he was saying, ‘Okay, you know, this is a hot shit place and everything. I’m not giving you anything because you don’t understand it. It’s not for you. I’ll just do what I gotta do. You all love me if I do something great or not because you’re into this sort of gotta really love the black artist, that kind of thing, and I’ll just do and get off of here.’ And that’s what he did. Then, of course, the audience went wild.”39 While Dane sensed that Lightnin’ felt contempt for the audience at Carnegie Hall, other factors may have been at play. She wasn’t with him backstage, and what she observed may have simply been an indication that he had had too much to drink, as he sometimes did, before he got on stage. Lightnin’ was very much aware of the fact that he was revered by white audiences no matter what or how he performed. Mitch Greenhill said that he once asked him “whether he preferred performing to white audiences or black audiences. And he said that white audiences were much more attentive and respectful. He was really happy to have found this little niche and he was working it.”40 In other words, he didn’t have to work very hard for the money he earned from such performances. Lightnin’ was a star, but he was loyal to his longtime supporters, and when he returned to Houston, he performed at the Jewish Community Center on November 19 as part of its folk song series, a gig that no doubt paid considerably less than what he got from appearing at Carnegie Hall.
On December 2, 1964, Lightnin’ made his last LP for Prestige/Bluesville; it was produced by Sam Charters, who featured six song tracks and eight tracks of interviews that he did with Lightnin’. These interviews constitute the only recorded autobiography that Lightnin’ ever did. However, they contained little new material. By the time these recordings were ma
de, Lightnin’ had done countless interviews, and the stories related to his childhood, his meeting with Blind Lemon Jefferson, travels with Texas Alexander, move to Houston, discovery by Lola Cullum, getting his nickname, and thoughts on the blues had appeared in liner notes and articles by Mack McCormick and others. What’s particularly striking, however, is Lightnin’s tone and awareness that he was shaping his own legacy, even if the facts were skewed and somewhat vague.
In addition to recording for Bluesville in December 1964, Nashville producer Aubrey Mayhew (who may have been responsible for the Bird Lounge LP) brought Lightnin’ into a studio in Houston and recorded a solo album with him for the Pickwick label. The overall quality of the session was poor; Lightnin’ rehashed old material, drawing upon previously recorded songs and reiterating themes and lyrics that had become the staples of his concert performances.
For the first few months in 1965, Lightnin’s touring slowed down, whether it was by choice, fear of flying, or a saturated market. On March 18, Strachwitz recorded Lightnin’ in Houston, accompanied by drummer Harold “Frenchy” Joseph, whom he had heard play with Lightnin’ in the Third Ward. “He was a tough drummer,” Strachwitz says, “and he really grooved with Lightnin’. Spider [Kilpatrick, one of Lightnin’s primary Houston drummers] was always sort of raggedy. He didn’t put that solid beat behind him. Spider drummed in the Holiness Church and was Lightnin’s usual cat because he would play for very little, I think. He was from Houston. Frenchy was also in Houston…. He was a total wine head, but he could sure play drums. That’s when we did ‘Money Taker’ and ‘My Little Woman,’ which has got a sort of racist tone: ‘My little woman, she ain’t no Mexican. You better believe she ain’t no Jew, but she’s my Frenchman little girl.’”41