- Album list
- Singer Intro
Samuel John 'Lightnin'' Hopkins (March 15, 1912 – January 30, 1982) 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.
Style
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.[citation needed] 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. Many of his songs were in the talking blues style, but he was a powerful and confident singer.[citation needed] Lyrically, his songs expressed the problems of life in the segregated South, bad luck in love and other subjects common in the blues idiom. He dealt with these subjects with humor and good nature. Many of his songs are filled with double entendres, and he was known for his humorous introductions to songs.[citation needed]
Some of his songs were of warning and sour prediction, such as 'Fast Life Woman':
You may see a fast life woman sittin' round a whiskey joint,
Yes, you know, she'll be sittin' there smilin',
'Cause she knows some man gonna buy her half a pint,
Take it easy, fast life woman, 'cause you ain't gon' live always...
The musicologist Robert 'Mack' McCormick opined that Hopkins is 'the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act'.
Selected discography
Lightnin' and the Blues (Herald), 1955
Lightnin' Hopkins Strums the Blues (Score), 1959
Lightnin' Hopkins (Folkways), 1959
Country Blues (Tradition Records), 1960
Last Night Blues (Bluesville Records), 1960
Lightnin' (Bluesville), 1960
Lightnin' in New York (Candid Records), 1960
Autobiography in Blues (Tradition), 1961
Blues in My Bottle (Bluesville), 1961
Walkin' This Road By Myself (Bluesville), 1962
Mojo Hand (Fire Records), 1962
Lightnin' and Co. (Bluesville), 1962
Lightnin' Strikes (Vee-Jay Records), 1962
Blues Hoot, with Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and Big Joe Williams, recorded live at The Ash Grove, 1961 (Vee-Jay Records), 1963
Smokes Like Lightnin' (Bluesville), 1963
Goin' Away (Bluesville), 1963
Down Home Blues (Bluesville), 1964
Coffee House Blues, with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (VJ Records VJLP-1138 stereo), 1964
Hootin' the Blues (Bluesville), 1965
Lightnin' Strikes (Tradition), 1965
The Roots of Lightnin' Hopkins (Verve Folkways), 1965
Soul Blues (Bluesville), 1966
My Life in the Blues (Bluesville), 1967
Original Folk Blues (Kent Records), 1967
Lightnin'! (Arhoolie Records), 1967
Freeform Patterns (International Artists), 1968
California Mudslide (and Earthquake) (Vault Records slp129), 1969
Swarthmore Concert Live, 1964, 1991
Sittin' In with Lightnin' Hopkins (Mainstream Records), 1991
The Hopkins Bros., with his brothers Joel and John Henry (Arhoolie Records), 1991
The Complete Aladdin Recordings (EMI Blues Series), 1991
Lonesome Life (Home Cooking/Collectables), 1992
It's a Sin to Be Rich (Gitanes Jazz Productions), 1992
Mojo Hand: The Lightnin' Hopkins Anthology (Rhino Records), 1993
Texas Blues (Arhoolie Records), 1994
Po' Lightning, 1995
The Very Best of Lightnin' Hopkins (Rhino Records), 1999
Dirty House Blues (Not Now Music), 2012
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