Lightnin' Hopkins - Walkin' This Road By Myself

The lyrical eccentricity of Sam Lightnin' Hopkins is highlighted on this 1962 Bluesville LP with songs like 'Happy Blues For John Glenn'. It's certainly out there.
 
His blues have ranged from the forthright bawdiness of Black Cadillac to a fearful description of a DC-7 (included in his "Blues In th'e Bottle" album). But even as he sings about a flight through space, Lightnin is a man in transition and his dress typifies it: greased hair and gilt-edged sunglasses, a white collar shirt, a Texian string tie, and a chamarra from a Mexican handloom. As a man he mocks and carps at the devil, berates the women who dog him around, and wails over his worried life, but it is with sincere delight that he thinks of John Glenn's triple orbit of the earth, not for its scientific or political values, but because it fulfilled the dreams of a small boy.

This is the first time that Lightnin has been ac­companied on record by a group of the musicians who regularly play with him in Houston. In their company Lightnin uses an amplified guitar and the sound here suggests what can be heard nightly in the city's danCe halls, sans the uproar and frenzy of the audience. 62-year old, 132-pound powerhouse drummer Spider Kilpatrick is Lightnin's most regular companion at such events. Harmonica player Billy Bizor, pianist Buster Pickens, and bass man Don Cook work with him spasmodically as they have been doing for more than a decade. Since Lightnin is a self-de­termined instrumentalist, recognizing no orthodoxy save his own, it is difficult for most musicians to ac­company him. In his home town he has built up a select group of men, taught them, warped them, or instilled in them the ability to anticipate his next move. Mixed with these selections are four songs in which Lightnin uses the acoustical guitar, and a style closer to that cf his day as a sidewalk minstrel.