In a career that took him from the cotton fields of East Texas to the
concert stage at Carnegie Hall and beyond, Lightnin' Hopkins became one
of America's greatest bluesmen, renowned for songs whose topics
effortlessly ranged from his African American roots to space
exploration, the Vietnam War, and lesbianism, performed in a unique,
eccentric, and spontaneous style of guitar playing that inspired a whole
generation of rock guitarists. Hopkins's music directly and indirectly
influenced an amazing range of artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Stevie
Ray Vaughan, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan, as
well as bands such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and ZZ Top,
with whom Hopkins performed. Mojo Hand follows Lightin' Hopkins's life
and music from the acoustic country blues that he began performing in
childhood, through the rise of 1950s rock 'n' roll, which nearly
derailed his career, to his reinvention and international success as a
pioneer of electric folk blues from the 1960s to the 1980s. The authors
draw on 130 vivid oral histories, as well as extensive archival and
secondary sources, to provide the fullest account available of the
development of Hopkins's music; his idiosyncratic business practices,
such as shunning professional bookers, managers, and publicists; and his
durable and indelible influence on modern roots, blues, rock 'n' roll,
singer-songwriter, and folk music. Mojo Hand celebrates the spirit and
style, intelligence and wit, and confounding musical mystique of a
bluesman who shaped modern American music like no one else.
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