From Texas to the Delta: #2 Lightnin’ Hopkins

From Texas to the Delta is a free weekly video guitar lesson series covering acoustic blues picking techniques. Your instructor is Jim Bruce, who has many years of experience teaching guitar players of all skill levels and styles, and will have an online classroom at TrueFire soon — stay tuned!

Video Guitar Lesson:

The legendary Texas guitarist Lightnin’ Hopkins was Mr Cool of the blues and was a major influence on many players. His guitar style could be simple or complex, and never seemed out of place. He favored the monotonic bass style of playing, as did Broonzy, Mance Lipscomb and others, often preferring to play in the key of E. In this video I take a look at Lightnin’ way of playing ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’. The melody line on the treble strings mainly follows his voice, which is generally not advised, but of course, it works for Hopkins!

His guitar was mostly tuned low, either one or two steps, to accommodate the register of his low Texas drawl. A rythmic powerful bass line drove his music along and the result sent shivers up the spine. Comfortable with slow blues, Hopkins often displayed his complete mastery of thumb control by playing syncopated rhythms while singing at the same time. (Listen to his recording of Mojo Hand and try it out!) The tablature for my version of ‘Baby’ is included in the video – take it slow and make it real.

From Texas to the Delta is a free weekly video guitar lesson series covering acoustic blues picking techniques. Your instructor is Jim Bruce, who has many years of experience teaching guitar players of all skill levels and styles, and will have an online classroom at TrueFire soon — stay tuned!