Dancing on Bud Russell's Grave: Lightnin' Hopkins

Sam Houston 'Lightning' Hopkins

“Goin’ back to Dallas, take my razor and my gun / . . . There’s so much shit in Texas, I’m bound to step in some.”

Texas had a reputation for many decades of being full of the stinky stuff, especially for African Americans, as tonight’s opening lyric from an unknown blues singer rather grimly attests.  Places like Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi usually get the rap for having been the real shit holes but Black Americans have known for decades that Texas, the Lone Star State, has never been that far behind.

Lightnin’ Hopkins was a Texan. He was also one of the most influential blues guitarists America has ever produced. His electric guitar playing style is raw and gritty. His voice sounds like sandpaper scraping slowly against a 2X4. Sit him in room, plug in his guitar and he’d make up a blues.

Generally speaking, Lightnin’ was not a political bluesman. He sang about love gone wrong, love so right, leaky roofs, drinking too much and gambling. The usual blues world. His songs rarely addressed (head on, anyway) racism or police brutality.  But not always.

He sang a song called Bud Russell Blues which opens like this

Sure is hot out here/ Bud Russell don’t care/You know Bud Russell drove them pretty womens/ just like he did those ugly mens

For 44 years Bud Russell was a hated and feared man in Texas. His job was to transfer prisoners from the 256 county jails across Texas to the State Penitentiary in Huntsville. He and his brother Roy would shackle the prisoners, often by the neck, toss them in a metal cage on wheels, and drive them across the second biggest state in the Union to the Big House. A brutal man and a womanizer Bud carried a shotgun and had no problem shooting to kill. 

The picture below of Roy (left) and Bud Russell with their infamous wagon is from 1934. 

So feared was he that America’s best known bandit, Clyde Barrow (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) wrote letters to his lover full of dread of being caught by ‘Uncle Bud’.  Such was his presence on the State’s consciousness that one of America’s most famous songs, Midnight Special goes like this:

Let the Midnight Special shine her light on me

Let the Midnight Special shine her ever-lovin' light on me

"Here come Bud Russell," How in the world do you know?"

Well he know him by his wagon, and his forty-fo'

Big gun on his shoulder, big knife in his hand

He's comin' to carry you back to Sugarland.

Texas Blues is my favorite Lightnin’ Hopkins record. It is so full of great songs, including Bud Russell Blues. Equally harrowing and startling in their starkness are Slavery Time a song that laments

One thousand years my peoples was slaves/ When I was born they teach me this way

Tip your hat to the peoples/ Be careful son about what you say.

And Black and Evil, a song of sad defiant self hate. 

It’s not all darkness though in Texas. Hopkins shows off his humor (Bald Headed Woman) and finger picking genius (Watch My Fingers) on this absolutely essential recording.  If you have even the smallest interest in the blues and real, good music you need this album.

          Track Listing:

01 Once Was a Gambler

02 Meet You at the Chicken Shack

03 Bald Headed Woman

04 Tom Moore Blues

05 Watch My Fingers

06 Love Like a Hydrant

07 Slavery Time

08 I Would If I Could

09 Bud Russell Blues

10 Come On Baby

11 Money Taker

12 Mama's Fight

13 My Woman

14 Send My Child Home To Me

15 Have You Ever Loved a Woman

16 Black and Evil

Listen here.