Saturday was proclaimed "Sam 'Lightnin' Hopkins Day" to honor the city's most famous bluesman nearly 30 years after his death in 1982.
A sharecropper's son, Sam built a guitar at age 8 by cutting a hole in a cigar box, nailing on a plank and stringing it with wire. He performed for pennies and dimes until he was drawn to Houston in the late 1930's. He played dance parties and gin joints, the sidewalks and even on city buses. "He loved to drink and play dominoes and shoot dice. Oh, that was his game", recalled cousin and guitarist Milton Hopkins who performed after the dedication of the state historical marker.
In 1960 he played Carnegie Hall with Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. He opened for the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, and performed a royal command performance before the Queen of England. Hopkins was a major influence on the playing of singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt and ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. The morning after a performance in Houston's Liberty Hall, a Daily Cougar writer and a young photographer were invited into Sam's apartment for an interview by his daughter Annie Mae Cox, pictured, right. He wouldn't let me use flash and there was only a single lamp burning as we talked with the shades drawn. Here was a man, a legend of country blues, who reluctantly talked about his new fame, discovered by a young white audience searching for the roots of rock and roll. My photos were not great. We did learn that he recorded many hundreds of songs, insisting on $50 cash up front per side, a mere hundred bucks for a 45-RPM record, including his future songwriting royalties.
His granddaughter Bertha Kelly loved to visit. "You could always find him in his big Cadillac parked in front of the liqour store on Dowling Street, his doors open, chatting to passersby." Annie May and her children, along with a great granddaughter attended the ceremony. We chatted and posed in front of the marker. My daughters also enjoyed the morning, listening to live music, visiting the Flower Man's house across the street and lunching on barbecue. Howling Wolf made an eerie appearance through the voice of bassist King Dino. And across the country, Bob Dylan was beginning his current sets, bopping away at “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” its gruff veneer gave a surprising nod to Mr. Hopkins' song “Automobile Blues” from which Dylan drew the inspiration. Lightnin' was a man set free by his music, free to tell us his stories. Goodnight, Sam.
(Thanks to the Houston Blues Society, Eric Davis, Marty Racine and the Chronicle.)
