Bring Me My Shotgun

Lightin Hopkins was my favorite musician.  I sound most like him.  Although I started with Chuck Berry and then John Lee Hooker, I ended up sounding like and listening to Lighnin the most. 

Chuck Berry's music was largely based on Rosetta Tharpe.  It was fast, upbeat, more major tonality, electric, with a band, and spoke of things American teenagers thought about. 

John Lee Hooker was a simple, small black man who played the one chord boogie.  The primitive African music on a European instrument.  If it wasn't for John Lee Hooker, there'd be no funk, disco, hip hop, or dance music of the modern era.  And most musicians don't know his name or his music now.  He had a huge influence on black people's music and nobody today knows who he is.  Thanks for nothing.

Lightnin Hopkins was a good man and a museum now stands in his honor in Houston Texas where he spent most of his life playing, performing, and living.  He was a Texas bluesman.  His music was so clever, so simple, and yet he reinvented the E blues every time he wrote a song.  You can do more with less or less with more.  Book learnin' doesn't work in a streetfight.

So today is Sunday and I am watching Lightnin Hopkins videos on YouTube.  This is entertainment to me, a simple black man playing an acoustic guitar with skill and mastery.  Some people are less ambitious but more happy and fulfilled.  More money doesn't mean more happiness.

I don't like black people's music from today.  I like their grandparents music.  The music of the 1960s blues revival.  If it wasn't for the Beatles, people would know the 1960s was about rhythm and blues and bringing white kids and black kids together through a song.

My new album, Trouble On My Way, is now out on Spotify.  This is important.  Spotify is important to me.  I am sure my following is growing and I will get a few thousand plays this year on this album alone.  Rhythm and blues will never die, and it shouldn't.  It is the music of real life, not the way we fantasize it to be.  Don't listen to pop music, hip hop, or heavy metal.  Listen to the music of the hard times. 

We are all equal in suffering, and suffering is grace.  So the more problems you have, the more God loves you.  Life is not the way it should be, it's the opposite.  So listen to the blues and therapize yourself.  It's good for you.