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Fact #88342

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Lightnin

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Barry Melton (guitarist, Country Joe And The Fish) : The other person I can think of who was like a real transitional figure for me in the legitimization of electric music was Lightning Hopkins, who did both. He was really big on the folk circuit, he was like a star on the folk circuit. He always put the people in the club. But Lightning, kind of like half the time, would play electric. I remember when he used to come Berkeley and play the Jabberwock. Sometimes he'd play acoustic, and sometimes he'd play electric. One of the people who used to play drums for Lightning when he came through was Rolf Cahn's son, and Barbara Dane was his mom.

Lightning was one of those bridges because he made...I don't know if you'd call 'em like pop records. I guess [he] made rhythm and blues records, like amplified. They weren't sort of like the full repartee of what we now consider to be a blues band. It was basically just his guitar part into an amplifier with maybe bass and drums. Maybe just drums. Lightning had a real authenticity on the folk circuit, and no one said boo when he would come amplified. And he pretty much did whatever he wanted to do (laughs). On a personal level, he was kind of caustic. He freely switched between 'em. You didn't know when he came into town to play your club whether he was going electric that night or acoustic, and it didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason or pattern. I consider him one of the genuine legimitizers of the electric form. So he's part of the equation.

There were some people who were allowed to sort of cross over. Lightning was one of them, and the Chicago blues guys. Lightning Hopkins was definitely thought of as an authentic blues singer, whether he decided to play electric that night or acoustic. So I think in a way, and I don't want to sound like a racist when I end up quoted, it's as if African-American musicians had permission to do electric music, but white guys didn't (laugh). Is that a weird thing to say? But I think somehow on the folk circuit, African-American musicians were given sort of permission to amplify if they wanted to. It wasn't necessarily extended to white musicians, and particularly young white musicians. When young white musicians did it, they were crossing the line of legitimacy to that illegitimate music which was known as rock and roll. Whereas when African-American people did it, it was like, that was a permissible extension of where the blues could go.
(Source : Eight Miles High, book by Ritchie Unterberger, 2003)