Many of Hopkins’s sardonic and over-the-top songs would make for great music videos directed by Quentin Tarantino. In “Bring Me My Shotgun,” Lightnin’ discovers his significant other has been “fooling around with too many men.” He confronts her with his weapon, then shows he’s a softie by letting her live, citing: “I said the only reason I don’t shoot you, little woman, my double-barrel shotgun, it just won’t fire.”But for all his (hopefully) fictional acts of violence, Lightnin’ was said to be a friendly sort and quick with the quip (as well as more than a few nips): “If you’re gonna play the blues, you shouldn’t even be able to stand up.”When asked to explain the origin of the blues, Lightnin’ wisecracked, “They’re somewhere between the greens and yellows.” And when a frustrated bandmate wanted to know what key they were playing in, Hopkins calmly answered, “In the key of Lightnin’ Hopkins.”When Hopkins was a lad of eight living in Leona, Texas, his first guitar didn’t have any keys because it was a cardboard cigar box. He remembered: “I cut me a round hole in the middle of it, take me a little piece of plank, nailed it onto that cigar box, and I got me some [chicken screen] wire. I made me a bridge back there and raised it up high enough that it would make a sound inside that little box, and got me a tune out of it. I kept my tune and I played from then on.”
Source: Mark Daponte / Culture Sonar
Photo by David Gahr
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