Lightnin’ Hopkins Caricature

Lightnin’ Hopkins shown here age 55, at a casual barbeque jam in a film by Les Blank shot in the town of Porter, Texas in 1968.

Samuel John Hopkins was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist, and occasional pianist, from Centerville, Texas. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 71 on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.

Hopkins as a child was immersed in the sounds of the blues. He developed a deep appreciation for this music at the age of 8, when he met Blind Lemon Jefferson at a church picnic in Buffalo, Texas.
Hopkins began accompanying Jefferson on guitar at informal church gatherings. Jefferson reputedly never let anyone play with him except young Hopkins, and Hopkins learned much from Jefferson at these gatherings.

In 1946, while singing on Dowling Street in Houston’s Third Ward, he was discovered by Lola Anne Cullum of Aladdin Records, based in Los Angeles. She convinced Hopkins to travel to Los Angeles, where he accompanied the pianist Wilson Smith. The duo recorded twelve tracks in their first sessions in 1946.

An Aladdin executive decided the pair needed more dynamism in their names and dubbed Hopkins “Lightnin'” and Wilson “Thunder”.
It has been estimated that he recorded between eight hundred and a thousand songs in his career.

With hits such as “Leavin’ Blues”, “Walkin’ Round In Circles”, “Mr. Charlie, Pts. 1 & 2”, “Feel So Bad”, “T-Model Blues” and “Tim Moore’s Farm”.

Hopkins’s style was born from spending many hours playing informally without a backing band. His distinctive fingerstyle technique often included playing, in effect, bass, rhythm, lead, and percussion at the same time. He played both “alternating” and “monotonic” bass styles incorporating imaginative, often chromatic turnarounds and single-note lead lines. Tapping or slapping the body of his guitar added rhythmic accompaniment.
Much of Hopkins’s music follows the standard 12-bar blues template, but his phrasing was free and loose.

Hopkins died of esophageal cancer in Houston on January 30, 1982, at the age of 69.