My Review of The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins directed by Les Blank (and Skip Gleason)

 I hate to be one of those "I liked X before it was popular"  hipster-types, but I really was into the Blues before Sinners (2025). I got into the Blues and Jazz after watching Ken Burns' Jazz documentary as a kid. It (and old-school music in general) has been a personal love of mine ever since. Of course, even in the early-2000s it was unusual for an African-American millennial to be into African-American folk music (which the Blues is), but it didn't bother me none. As it is, one of my favorite Blues musicians if Samuel "Lightnin'" Hopkins and this 30 minute Les Blank documentary is about him and the people of his neighborhood in Centerville, Texas. 

This documentary works on the classic "stream-of-consciousness" style of most of Les Blank's documentaries. We get introduced to the subject(s) of the doc and we just follow them around and let them show us what they want. In this case, Lighnin' Hopkins wanted to show his neighbors and some of his fellow musicians at a rodeo show and cookout where they would socialize and play some of their songs. While this doc is mainly about Hopkins—the breakout star would be Mance Liscomb who would get his own Les Blank documentary a few years later. The people are all quintessential Les Blank docu-subjects that you are use to seeing in his works. 

I glad that docs like this exist that just let the people show themselves as they wanted to be seen and I can't wait to watch more docs from him.