This video is an excerpt from an interview conducted for the 2001 PBS series American Roots.

Watch Video

Windows Media

HI Bandwidth » LO Bandwidth »

Read an excerpt from the interview:

Chris Stachwitz: My sister needed her car driven to Texas, I mean to New Mexico. (She was working in Albuquerque.) And I said, “Sure, I’ll drive your car to Albuquerque, and I figure I’ll hop on the bus and go to Houston. I gotta meet my man named Lightnin' Hopkins."

And so I literally took a pilgrimage down there. Stayed at the YMCA and Mac greeted me and introduced me that same afternoon to Lightnin'. And “Glad to meet you,” you know. And of course I wanted to hear him play, you know. So he said I’m playing at Pop’s Place tonight, so come on out there, you know.

He told Mac how to get to it and we somehow went out there and here was this man in this little tiny beer joint with maybe oh, six, seven, eight, nine people in there, jivin’, you know, and hardly paying much attention. But he was playing his electric guitar with the Spider on drums. And I’ll never forget it: walking into that door, he started immediately breaking, he was continuing the blues, he was singing, “Why’d this man come all the way from California just to hear poor Lightnin’ sing?” And then he went right back into his blues about how his shoulder was aching that day because the rain had been so bad the chuck holes were covering the holes, I mean the rain was covering the chuck holes in the street and he could hardly get there. And then he would point at this woman, and “Woman, you’d better just hush your mouth” or something, and she would just be yelling back at him, you know. And this was a conversation I’d never encountered before. I said, “My god, somebody’s got to document this. This has never been done.” So that’s how I met Lightnin'.

Video Copyright © 2000 Ginger Group Productions

Back to Videos »