- 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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