Lightnin' Strikes

Lightnin' Hopkins was the man. Gold teeth, slicked-back hair piled high (or corralled under a cowboy hat), ever-present black sunglasses, killer guitar skills, a quick wit and a singing voice that's tangy and sweet like a plate of ribs, but can bite you like a Texas rattlesnake. He became my favorite bluesman a few decades ago, in what seemed like an accident at the time, but turned out to be just great fortune.

My older brother, Steve, was into blues music when he was in college. For Christmas one year around that time I bought him Lightnin' Hopkins: At His Natural Best, an album with just seven songs that came out in 1981. I probably bought it at Caldor.

I don't believe Steve asked for this album; I just bought it because I loved the name Lightnin' Hopkins. Born Sam Hopkins in Centerville, Texas, in 1912, Lightnin' learned to play guitar by the age of 10, according to the album's liner notes. As a boy, he met the legendary Blind Lemon Jefferson. Here's Jefferson:

Lightnin' became an accompanist for Jefferson's cousin, Texas Alexander, according to the liner notes. Hopkins acquired his nickname during an L.A. recording session in 1946 with pianist Thunder Smith, the notes indicate. He released dozens of albums during his career.

Details about the route Lightnin' Hopkins: At His Natural Best traveled from my hand to my brother's, and back to mine (it's in my attic as I write this) are fuzzy at best. My recollection is that my brother didn't particularly enjoy the album -- it's comprised of unedited tapes from an August 6, 1969, recording session, and includes dialogue and tune-ups. I believe he left it behind when he went back to college, along with other records from over the years. He has less recall than I do.

As a music lover, I figured at some point that it was my duty to take over ownership. I recall playing the albm when I went to college a few years later and entertaining my friends with it.

I own just one other Lightnin' album, I'm embarrassed to say. The Very Best of Lightnin' Hopkins features 16 songs and is a great listen. I need to buy more.

I've checked out several of Hopkins's videos on YouTube over the years and I just love the way he sings, plays, dresses and banters with the crowd in his live videos. So I was excited to learn recently about "The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins," a 30-minute documentary directed by Les Blank.

Shot in 1968, the film features Hopkins playing lots of music, some of it by himself, some with a woman who bickers with him and some with friends and family, including a great harp player who sings with deep emotion in his voice. The film is also a great time capsule of small-town Southern life in the late '60s, with scenes of kids playing, sharp-dressed dudes and hot ladies dancing, older folks hanging out, and cool cars driving by.

Here's the film in its entirety.

If you watch only part of this documentary, tune in at the 23:12 mark. That's all I'm gonna say.

If you want to pay money for the movie, you should do that. If you want to check out more of Blank's films (none of which I've seen), you can buy the newly released "Les Blank: Always for Pleasure" DVD collection of 14 of his films, which range from the Hopkins piece to one about hippies in 1967 to a film about Mardi Gras festivities to a short feature on blues guitarist Mance Lipscomb, who appears with Hopkins in his documentary.

Heavy Reading

I've been in a great reading groove for quite some time now. I'm on my 13th book since the beginning of the year, and it's one I've been anticipating for a long while.

Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns has been on my radar since it came out three years ago. In this massive undertaking, Wilkerson, who in 1994 became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize while working as the Chicago bureau chief for The New York Times, tells the story of the emigration of African Americans from the South to the North and West that took place from World War I until the early '70s.

During that half century, approximately six million people fled the brutally repressive conditions in the Jim Crow south for cities ranging from Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and New York, to Los Angeles, Oakland and Houston. They didn't know what they would find upon their arrival, and often times they surely discovered that conditions weren't much better than what they'd known back home.

I've just barely cracked this book, so this isn't a review. I just wanted to get across how excited I am to be reading this book. I'll admit that I knew next to nothing about this amazing chapter in America's history. I was aware that black Southerners headed north seeking work, and that countless Delta guitarists turned Chicago into the capital of the blues.

But I had no idea of the scope of the exodus, and never thought about the incredible bravery involved in taking part. Entire families left everything behind because they were so sick of being harassed, beaten, threatened and humiliated by white folks. Sometimes just the men left in search of work; at times it was just women. All of them went seeking something better, a place where they could spread their wings a bit, have a chance at moving upward.

Wilkerson interviewed more than 1,200 people while researching and writing this book. She uses the riveting information from their stories to build the base of the 500-plus page book, while focusing on three individuals whose stories she tells in rich, rich detail.

Here she explains her process:

I may post more about this book as I read it, and most likely something when I'm all done. I can say this, though. I recommend it already and I'm only 35 pages in.