100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #95 Lightnin’ Hopkins – Mojo Hand

Released: 1962

The early history of the blues has many familiar characteristcs for ecclesiastical scholars to old religious texts: there are numerous competing versions, the truth is in the eye of the beholder, and many of the purported miracles are likely products of folklore, superstition, or worse.

We will for instance never know if Robert Johnson actually sold his soul to old St.Nick for stardom, or if Gertrude “Ma” Rainey really did hear her first ever blues number as far back as 1902. We do know however about the life of Sam (Lightnin’) Hopkins, one of movement’s first wave of prominent artists and who became a contemporary of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and John Lee Hooker.

Like them, Hopkins multi-dimensional guitar style would go on to influence a generation of disciples such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Townes Van Zandt. Mojo Hand found Hopkins calling up hoodoo spirits in the vain hope of escaping a curse that sings and hollers it’s way through all the too brief solos, a mercy which would never come, a tune that had the old world and the new one living in an uneasy harmony.