Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins

In his own words and music, Lightnin’ Hopkins reveals the inspiration for his blues. He sings, jives, ponders. He boogies at an outdoor barbecue and a black rodeo and takes you with him on a homecoming visit to his boyhood home of Centerville, Texas. Blank has captured Lightnin’s blues in their fullest, darkest power. The film reaches “past the impish bluesman himself into the Blues itself, into the red-clay Texas, into hard times, into blackness, into the senses… you begin to understand the reasons why black Texas people might be in love with this land and angry at poverty” (Carmen Moore, The Village Voice). “The blues is just a funny feelin’, yet people call it a mighty bad disease.” – Lightnin’ Hopkins