Lightnin’ Hopkins and Texas Blues - UTSA Institute Of Texan Cultures

The blues have an incredible reach and influence on music and culture. Like jazz, blues music evolved and flourished as an American art form, and specifically an African-American art. Though blues music has some structural patterns and common themes, individual artists found ways to make their own styles stand out: a penchant for improvisation, a certain style to keeping rhythm, or even flipping a right-handed guitar to play the strings with the left hand.

The Mississippi Delta is credited as the birthplace of the blues, but it didn’t take long to get to Texas. Before taking on a young Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Lemon Jefferson played with Blind Willie Johnson, and they influenced contemporaries such as Alger “Texas” Alexander and Son Horse (who later taught famed Mississippian Robert Johnson).

For most of the first half of the twentieth century, blues music was often labeled as “roots” or “race music” and not considered for wider play unless it was from a white musician (for example, Elvis Presley). But when folk music began gaining popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, record producers and individual enthusiasts went searching for those founding artists. Blues musicians such as Hopkins, Lipscomb, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf saw their careers revived for new audiences while Buddy Guy and B.B. King began their long careers; the style infused mainstream music acts from Nina Simone to Booker T. and the M.G.’s (and of course the Beatles and the Rolling Stones).

Want to go beyond the blues? Check out the UTSA Library Peer Coaches’ playlist for Black History Month: Texas Artist Edition!

Lightnin' Hopkins Kay Guitar

Texas Blues Music

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