Lightnin' Hopkins

And for me, a lot of that was sort of the same feeling that I had when I listened to Bob Dylan or Neil Young to that matter.

Like if you listen to Blind Edward Jefferson or Lightning Hopkins or John Lee Hooker, you know, Robert Johnson, Donnie Johnson, all these guys, like each one has its own voice, his own expression.

there is just some sort of freedom to that, because that was the beginning of that music.

So you didn't really have the standardized form.

I just found that out later.

But their son played me some Lightning Hopkins when we were visiting them one time.

So that was

a

me a lot of like, I'm sure you've seen them.

There's a series of live videos of Lightning Hopkins where he's kind of on a stage and he's like the only thing that's lit.

And he's doing that a lot.

He's just kind of...

No audience here.

no stage no microphone no one listening only a teenager's bedroom in palo alto with the door shut and clothes on the floor and a bottle of cheap wine pushed under the bed where his mother will not see it and in the quiet very softly so that nobody in the rest of the house will notice a harmonica the teenager was ron mckernan he was fourteen or fifteen when jerry garcia met him a few years younger than the rest of the crowd at kepler's and the chateau and he was hanging around the edges of every scene in town garcia was by his own account the only person around who played any blues on the guitar so the boy attached himself to him garcia gave several versions of how it went and they all agree on the important part ron would come to the parties where garcia was playing blues and he would watch very carefully and then he would go home and learn it all on the sly he picked up the basic lightnin hopkins style just by watching and listening then he took up the harmonica garcia spent countless hours in that bedroom listening to the old records he called it a mess stuff thrown everywhere ron had a habit of lounging around in just a shirt and his underpants you would knock and he would say come on in man his mother Garcia said, would check in about once every five hours to see if he was still alive, Robert Hunter was less charmed at first, he remembered a scruffy teenage kid in a fatigued jacket, drinking Thunderbird wine, the sort of guy one would ordinarily discourage from coming to one's parties, except Hunter said, he played a hell of a harmonica, and that was his passport, Hunter did not know any other harmonica players at all.

David Nelson was simply amazed that this kid could play Robert Johnson and Lightnin Hopkins material when hardly anyone else was doing it.

He was so authentic, Nelson said, and Garcia added the thing that everyone eventually learned about Ron.

His real strength was sitting around a room with a bottle of wine and an acoustic guitar, playing the blues and making up the words as he went.

This week in 1971, a Texas blues legend took the stage two nights in a row at an iconic Austin music venue.

Jason Mellard with the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University brings us the story of Lightnin' Hopkins' electrifying performances at the Armadillo World Headquarters.

This week in Texas music history, lightning strikes twice at the Armadillo.

Lightnin' Hopkins, guitarist, vocalist, and arguably Texas' greatest blues performer, took the stage in Austin at the Armadillo World Headquarters for two nights, October 22nd and 23rd, 1971.

Hopkins was born in the early 19-teens in Centerville and grew up there and in the East Texas communities of Leona and Crockett.

By his own account, he was encouraged by the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson while playing guitar at the age of eight at a Baptist gathering in Buffalo, Texas, and by the age of 10 was performing alongside another blues pioneer, Texas Alexander.

I know a lot of folks are, that's for sure.

Hey, listen, coming up, we're going to be taking a look at the week in Texas music history, and I hear that Lightning Hopkins is on the agenda.

Also, politicians pledging more affordable energy.

Sounds great, right? Any substance to the promises? A closer look at that and a whole lot more as the Texas Standard continues.

When the publicity around him grew too loud, he told the whole city to go by the name Emmett Grogan.

Then, years later, he wrote an autobiography under his own name, and one deadhead newsletter called it highly egotistical a saint of free lunch then or a hustler with very good timing or both depending on the afternoon in the panhandle the pots are empty now scraped clean and stacked the wooden frame stands alone on the grass on the page it reads like a scrap of a play a radio studio in san francisco the band sitting around a table the host going from one to the next when he gets to the organ player somebody says the name out loud and calls it a horrible name the host asks for his real one the answer is short and who influenced you mostly blues people he says and then he lists them lightnin hopkins bobby bland little junior parker little walter that was ron mckernan whom everybody called pigpen in the spring and summer the band first went east he was the man out front his father had been a rhythm and blues disc jockey and pigpen grew up singing along with records garcia met him in palo alto when pigpen was 14 or 15 a kid hanging around the only guitar player in town who could play the blues he watched garcia closely went home and learned the lightning hopkins licks on the sly Then he took up the harmonica.

Robert Hunter said the harmonica was his passport.

Without it, nobody would have let that scruffy teenager into the parties, and he was shy.

Garcia said Pigpen was deathly afraid to play in front of anybody.

He had practiced harmonica in secret for a long time.

then one night at a folk club he finally got up with garcia behind him on guitar and sang like lightnin hopkins and it blew everybody's mind by the time the dead flew to new york pigpen had a small choice set of numbers that were his alone Wilson Pickett's In the Midnight Hour, Junior Parker's Next Time You See Me, Slim Harpo's King B, Good Morning Little School Girl, the old Sonny Boy Williamson Blues, which the dead seem to have learned from a Junior Wells arrangement.

Blair Jackson points out that apart from Midnight Hour, almost none of these had been hits outside the rhythm and blues charts.