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Honoring Lightnin’ by
Bob Bowman | |
Earlier
this year, Lightnin’
Hopkins, the late legendary blues musician, was awarded a Texas Historical
Marker to be placed in Houston, where
he moved in the 1920s and lived until his death in 1982.
But an East
Texas city long ago beat the state and Houston
to the punch.
A statute
of Hopkins stands in Crockett
in front of the Camp
Street Cafe, where he often performed during his early years.
Hopkins’
headstone stands in Houston’s Forest
Park Cemetery and was the only public marker that tied Hopkins
to Houston until Houstonian Eric Davis
led the campaign to fund a historical marker after visiting Hopkins’
grave, only to find the headstone faded and covered with grass.
“This
guy has done so much for the blues internationally and regionally, and it was
sad for me to see that there was nothing in Houston
to honor him,” said Davis, a Hopkins fan for ten years.
Davis originally
thought about putting the state marker near his grave, which can be difficult
to find. But Project Row Houses offered property on Dowling Street--a fitting
place for a man who used to pay his guitar and sing while riding a bus up and
down Dowling.
Hopkins,
whose given name was Sam, was born in Centerville
on March 15, 1912, the son of Abe and Frances (Sims) Hopkins. After his father
died in 1915, the family (Sam, his mother, five brothers and a sister) moved to
Leona. At age eight he made his first instrument, a cigar-box guitar with chicken-wire
strings. By ten he was playing music.
By the mid-1920s Sam had started
jumping trains, shooting dice, and playing the blues anywhere he could.
He
served time at the Houston County Prison Farm in the mid-1930s, and after his
release he returned to the blues-club circuit.
In 1946 he had his big break
and first recording in Los Angeles for Aladdin Records. On the record was a piano
player Wilson (Thunder) Smith; who gave Sam this nickname, Lightnin’.
Aladdin
was so impressed with Hopkins that the company invited him back for a second session
in 1947. He eventually made forty-three recordings for the label.
During
the 1960s he played at Carnegie Hall with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and in 1964
toured with the American Folk Blues Festival. By the end of the decade he was
opening for such rock bands as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.
During
a tour of Europe in the 1970s, he played for Queen Elizabeth II at a command performance.
Hopkins died of cancer of the esophagus on January 30, 1982.
Bob Bowman's East Texas
February 15, 2010 Column
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
Copyright
Bob Bowman
See A
Statue for Lightnin' by Bob Bowman
Crockett
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