Hopkins Is The Embodiment Of The Jazz-Poetry Spirit!
Walkin' This Road By Myself was originally released in 1962.
Sam Hopkins, better known as Lightnin' Hopkins, was included at number 71 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
Throughout the '60s and '70s, Hopkins released one or sometimes two albums a year. He went from back-alley juke joints to college coffeehouses, national TV, playing major folk festivals, folk clubs and tours of Europe. He even overcame his fear of flying to join the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival.
Hopkins' style emanated from playing most of his life unaccompanied at his own insistence. His fingerstyle picking of playing alternating and monotonic bass, rhythm, lead, and percussion all the while improvising lyrics, even 'talking' his lyrics. He incorporated creative, chromatic turnarounds and single note lead lines. Tapping or slapping the body of his guitar adding his own percussive effects. While most of his songs are standard 12-bar blues, his phrasing was loose and free.
"Hopkins is the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act." - Robert "Mack" McCormick, Lightnin's producer in the '50s and Smithsonian musicologist
"One of the great country blues and perhaps the greatest single influence on rock guitar players." - New York Times, January 31, 1982
Features:
Vinyl LP
Selections:
Side A:
1. Walkin' This Road By Myself
2. Black Gal
3. How Many More Years I Got To Let You Dog Me Around
4. Baby Don't You Tear My Clothes
5. Worried Life Blues
Side B:
1. Happy Blues For John Glenn
2. Good Morning Little School Girl
3. The Devil Jumped the Black Man
4. Coffee Blues
5. Black Cadillac
Walkin' This Road By Myself was originally released in 1962.
Sam Hopkins, better known as Lightnin' Hopkins, was included at number 71 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
Throughout the '60s and '70s, Hopkins released one or sometimes two albums a year. He went from back-alley juke joints to college coffeehouses, national TV, playing major folk festivals, folk clubs and tours of Europe. He even overcame his fear of flying to join the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival.
Hopkins' style emanated from playing most of his life unaccompanied at his own insistence. His fingerstyle picking of playing alternating and monotonic bass, rhythm, lead, and percussion all the while improvising lyrics, even 'talking' his lyrics. He incorporated creative, chromatic turnarounds and single note lead lines. Tapping or slapping the body of his guitar adding his own percussive effects. While most of his songs are standard 12-bar blues, his phrasing was loose and free.
"Hopkins is the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit, representing its ancient form in the single creator whose words and music are one act." - Robert "Mack" McCormick, Lightnin's producer in the '50s and Smithsonian musicologist
"One of the great country blues and perhaps the greatest single influence on rock guitar players." - New York Times, January 31, 1982
Features:
Vinyl LP
Selections:
Side A:
1. Walkin' This Road By Myself
2. Black Gal
3. How Many More Years I Got To Let You Dog Me Around
4. Baby Don't You Tear My Clothes
5. Worried Life Blues
Side B:
1. Happy Blues For John Glenn
2. Good Morning Little School Girl
3. The Devil Jumped the Black Man
4. Coffee Blues
5. Black Cadillac
