LIGHTNING HOPKINS :: AIN’T NO CADILLAC - [Don’s Tunes] TEXAS MONTHLY

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"It’s one of the all-time great Lightnin’ moments: Austin City Limits, 1979, less than three years before he died. He was 67 and wearing a bright-blue leisure suit with rhinestones that sparkled in the TV lights and a beige fedora cocked at a 45-degree angle on the side of his head. He looked like a fabulous old pimp. He played a Fender Stratocaster in front of a rhythm section that included bass player Ron Wilson, a member of the Texas House of Representatives. Lightnin’ had been playing live music for almost sixty years, though his performances the previous decade had been rather unpredictable—flashes of brilliance competing with the age-related tendency toward sloth and crankiness. This show was no different: great riffing, uninspired noodling, blues clichés, bizarre stage patter, and angry glares at the bass player, who gamely tried to keep up with the impulsive chord changes.

The moment came halfway through “Ain’t No Cadillac,” when, after doing some soloing, Lightnin’ decided to do some more. For some reason he had a wah-wah pedal, and he either stomped it too hard or it had been turned up way too high, because his amplifier let out a high-pitched squeal—a loud, intense, and not unpleasant sound that lasted about three seconds. At first he appeared taken aback, but he kept playing, and a satisfied smile crossed his face. This late in his career, there were very few surprises. He may not have planned that particular outburst, but like all the other notes he played and noises he plucked, he was proud of it. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” he said, and jammed the pedal down again. Then he went on to craft a solo that began quietly and cascaded through a fall of bad notes, bringing the song to an early, crashing end, dragging his rhythm section down with him, as he’d been doing for years. 

Lightnin’ Hopkins was ornery, stubborn, flashy, and capable of great inspiration followed by obstinate and calculated destruction. In thirty years of recording, he created a body of work as wide, deep, and maddening as anyone’s in American music history: some five hundred songs, or maybe six hundred, or maybe seven hundred. Nobody knows, because Lightnin’ would record for anyone who waved a $50 bill at him. He might play and sing something fierce and new, but just as likely he’d redo a song he’d done the day before, changing a line or two because he felt like it. Or he’d record a song by one of his peers and call it his own. Ultimately, the words didn’t matter. It was the sound of his voice—a deep drawl that was so lonely and sad it seemed to come from another existence—and his loping, finger-picking guitar style, which sounded like the rolling, rough cotton country between the Brazos and Trinity rivers where he was raised."

- By Michael Hall - Texas Monthly