Lightnin' Hopkins

Lightnin' Hopkins! I've been listening to his music for fifty years, a thousand permutations of the same slow blues and fast boogies. A great blues-poet, who was over-recorded, but what a voice and incredible ability to improvise new lyrics.

My guitar-style, if I can call it that, seems to be a distant echo and combination of the way he and John Lee Hooker played, ie difficult for a band to follow, with irregular bars and idiosynchratic timings, with odd jabs, pulls and bent notes. It suits me fine. It's the blues.

Lightnin' signed the photo, way back then.