|
The
news outlets from Houston
reported recently that a Texas Historical Marker has been dedicated
to Lightnin'
Hopkins, whose blues music became famous between 1946 and the
1970s.
But Hopkins’
fans in East Texas beat
Houston to punch--and in
a more significant way--years ago.
At Crockett, resting
in a little grove across the street from the Camp
Street Cafe, is a statue of Lightnin'
playing his guitar. Local historians say that Lightnin'
often showed up at the Cafe,
a Crockett landmark--to
entertain folks.
The statue was the result of Guy and Pipp Gillette, whose grandfather
ran the cafe decades ago. The Cafe
is now one of the best music venues in East
Texas, thanks to the Gillette brothers.
Before Houston decided
to erect the historical marker in Hopkins’
honor, the only place where he was honored was a modest footstone
in Houston’s Forest Park
Lawndale Cemetery.
For those unfamiliar with Hopkins’
music, his approach to the blues was a thing of his own making, It
was marked by a laid-back, countrified vocal delivery and a percussive
guitar-playing style with his spidery fingers snapping the length
of his fretboard like typewriter keys.
There has been much debate if he was playing an acoustic or electric
guitar, but one musician summed it up with a simple statement: “He
played whatever guitar wasn’t in hock at the time.”
Hopkins
could create songs on the spot. Weariness was a common theme, but
his songs could also be very funny. “If My Starter Won’t Start” wasn’t
about a car, but about the indignities of growing old.
Hopkins’
historical marker stands at the corner of Dowling and Francis in Houston.
Fittingly, the ceremony included some of the Hopkins
blues songs.
Bob Bowman's East Texas January
3, 2011 column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers |
|
|
HOME
