| |
The
news outlets from Houston reported
recently that a Texas Historical Marker has been dedicated to Lightnin'
Hopkins, whose blues music became famous between 1946 and the 1970s.
But Hopkins’ fans
in East Texas beat Houston
to punch--and in a more significant way--years ago.
At Crockett,
resting in a little grove across the street from the Camp
Street Cafe, is a statue of Lightnin'
playing his guitar. Local historians say that Lightnin'
often showed up at the Cafe,
a Crockett landmark--to entertain
folks.
The statue was the result of Guy and Pipp Gillette, whose grandfather
ran the cafe decades ago. The Cafe
is now one of the best music venues in East
Texas, thanks to the Gillette brothers.
Before Houston
decided to erect the historical marker in Hopkins’
honor, the only place where he was honored was a modest footstone in Houston’s
Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery.
For those unfamiliar with Hopkins’
music, his approach to the blues was a thing of his own making, It was marked
by a laid-back, countrified vocal delivery and a percussive guitar-playing style
with his spidery fingers snapping the length of his fretboard like typewriter
keys.
There has been much debate if he was playing an acoustic or electric
guitar, but one musician summed it up with a simple statement: “He played whatever
guitar wasn’t in hock at the time.”
Hopkins
could create songs on the spot. Weariness was a common theme, but his songs could
also be very funny. “If My Starter Won’t Start” wasn’t about a car, but about
the indignities of growing old.
Hopkins’
historical marker stands at the corner of Dowling and Francis in Houston.
Fittingly, the ceremony included some of the Hopkins
blues songs.
Bob Bowman's East
Texas
January 3, 2011Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
More
Texas
People | Texas Music & Musicians |
|
|
