I had a Lightnin Hopkins LP back around 1970 or so that I played over and over again. Hopkins played what was called Texas blues. He alternated lines of verse with lines of guitar licks in a style that sounded deceivingly simple. Deceiving because he had no band backing him up, just the one guitar. Hopkins got his nickname from a record executive, when he was playing in a piano/guitar duo with Wilson Smith in California in the 1940s, Aladdin Records, in their wisdom, dubbed them “Thunder” and Lightnin.”
Hopkins spent most of his career playing in Houston Texas clubs and recording for a small record label there. In the 1960s he was swept up in the general folk revival and toured nationally, playing many festivals and folk clubs. This clip shows him in Houston in 1960, just before he went off to fame and fortune. He is playing a cheap acoustic guitar, perhaps a Kay a Stella or a Silvertone which he has modified with the addition of a pickup.
Here he is ten years later, playing a Fender Stratocaster and being backed by a bass and drums, in a high paying venue.
I just love Lightnin. Here is one more. The YouTube poster describes this as Hopkins’ lask gig. It was filmed in the Netherlands.
Hound Dog was the first song produced by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. Thornton has said that they brought the song in to the studio written on a brown paper bag. Thornton’s 1952 slow blues version of Hound Dog sold two million copies. Elvis Presley’s 1956 recording sold even more.
This clip is from a 1965 TV appearance and features a young Buddy Guy, sans polka dots, on guitar.
Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker was one of the first, if not the first person to record a hit record using an electric guitar, with his 1942 recording of “Mean Old World.” (Ernest Tubb also has a claim to this distinction.) Walker’s single note soloing style is being copied by blues guitarists to this day. Musicians as diverse as B. B. King, Jimi Hendrix and Chuck Berry claim Walker as an influence.
Walker recorded “Stormy Monday” in 1947. He uses a fairly sophisticated, jazz influenced chord structure, playing in the key of A flat, to accommodate his saxophone player, and using 9th chords on IV (D FLAT) and V (E flat.) He also accents the A flat with a momentary move up to A7 in each verse.
Notice how he turns his guitar up on it’s side so that he can see the fingerboard when he plays a solo. This causes an uncomfortable extension of the left wrist and limits is ability to play on the D, A and low E strings. When he is playing chords, or singing and playing short riffs, he holds the guitar in a more upright position.
One day I was cruising YouTube, playing videos of various guitarists and I said to my wife " I'm just amazed that I can be sitting here watching Doc Watson's fingers for free." It dawned on me that it would be a valuable service to share these gems with other people. The videos posted here are the ones that really caught my eye.
