Lightnin’ Hopkins – Shotgun Blues

You know I’m gonna shoot my woman
Cause she’s foolin’ around with too many men

Before I start this I want to thank Randy from Mostly Music Covers. While writing this up the song title I had was “Bring Me My Shotgun” but I couldn’t find the album it was on. I’m a babe in the woods with blues…so I asked Randy and Shotgun Blues was recorded in 1948. As far as I can tell he did re-record many of his songs and this one around 1960. I’ll include the earlier version of Shotgun Blues and the 1960 version named Bring Me My Shotgun..at least for this post. He would change up the lyrics in some versions. What made it confusing was that he changed the way he did the vocals a little as well… again thank you, Randy.

I’m sitting with headphones on listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins and it’s like he is in the room with me. I’ve never posted anything about him before but I wanted to clear that up today.

He was born in Texas and He grew up in a musical family and learned the blues from his older cousin, country blues legend Blind Lemon Jefferson. Jefferson and Hopkins started to play together at church gatherings. Hopkins started performing in the 1920s and 1930s in the local Texas blues scene. By the mid-30s Hopkins was sent to a prison farm but the reason is unknown. He described working on a road gang and being shackled to his bunk at night.

In the mid-1940s he was teamed with a Houston piano player named Wilson “Thunder” Smith. They were known as Thunder an’ Lightnin’ and they had a local hit named Katie May with Aladdin Records. Hopkins would record with many different labels throughout the rest of his life. The Folk-Blues revival was stirring in 1959, and Folkways producer Sam Charters persuaded Lightning (with the help of a bottle of gin!) to record 10 tracks in the shabby room where he had been living in Houston. I have one of them below called “Hopkins Sky Hop.” Bring Me My Shotgun was released in 1960.

He started to get popular, especially with the British white soon-to-be musicians. He worked the College and club circuit, toured Europe with the Folk/Blues Festival, and starred at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He found an appreciative new audience of rock fans who heard this great guitarist who lived the blues.

He later headlined over the Jefferson Airplane and he played with the Grateful Dead a few times. He recorded dozens of albums through the 60s and 70s. He finally left us in 1982.

Bring Me My Shotgun

Woah, go bring me my shotgun
Oh I’m gonna start shootin’ again
Go bring me my shotgun
You know I just got to start shootin’ again
You know I’m gonna shoot my woman
Cause she’s foolin’ around with too many men

Yes bring me my shotgun
Yes man and a pocket full of shells
Yes go bring me my shotgun
Yes man and a pocket full of shells
Yeah you know I’m gonna kill that woman
I’m gonna throw her in that old deep dug well
Hide her from everybody they won’t know where she at

That woman said Lightnin’ you can’t shoot me
She said now you is dead of tryin’
I don’t take a day off for nobody
She said Lightnin’ you can’t shoot me
She said yes and you dare to try
I said the only reason I don’t shoot you little woman
My double barrel shotgun, it just won’t fire

…

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

36 thoughts on “Lightnin’ Hopkins – Shotgun Blues”

  1. Thanks very much for the mention Max. You picked a quintessential artist and song. It really demonstrates how fluid the genre was, people re-recording their own songs and changing the lyrics can be confusing enough, let alone cover versions doing the same with different song titles!

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    1. Yea it was going good until I dug deeper…the deeper I went the more confusing it got… but the important thing is…I love his music.

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    1. Yea I had it as Bring Me My Shotgun…it got so confusing…that is why I got Randy’s help…he knows more about the history of these guys.

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    1. LOL…right here right now I’m confused! No it wasn’t you confused…it was ME. I think the rest of my picks are great.
      Christian I put some headphones on and got lost in Hopkins…the way he played guitar was just totally different.

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    1. I must have missed that part in their bios I have read or the authors never mentioned it….that is so cool they actually played with him as well.

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      2. Yes…Pig Pen recorded this song as well on his personal tapes also that he was working on by the time he passed I believe.

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  6. While Pigpen was alive, the Grateful Dead covered Lightnin’s “Katie Mae”. Lightnin’ was young enough (or stuck around long enough) to straddle the years when the blues moved north and were electrified, but learned at the time when he was the whole band himself. Bass line with a thumb pick, melody with his index finger, strumming chords on the neck for rhythm. There are some great YouTube videos of him (one of “Baby Please Don’t Go”) so you can see his hands.

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    1. I was really impressed with his playing…it’s different than many of his peers. Yea…he did have the whole band with himself…just incredible playing.

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    1. I love the music…it’s the backgrounds whew…confusing stuff but it’s worth the pay off. I do like Hite a lot…love that Canned Heat stuff and you got me on that Hooker ‘n’ Heat album…it’s great.

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    1. actually my face is red… two different songs, they always kind of ran together in my mind somehow. Still, they did do a song called ‘Lighnin’ Hopkins’

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      2. The song Lightnin Hopkins…I don’t remember…its edgy for them…really like it.

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    2. I haven’t thought of that song in forever…I’m listening to it now….it’s been a long long time.

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  12. You can’t play them blues unless your guitar has been in a pawn shop, same with your shotgun. One of the greats that used to play in Deep Ellum, Dallas. I based a character of mine on Lightning. Blind Jellyroll Jackson of Fort Worth, Texas. He played at the Hip Herford Coffee House and was accompanied by his nurse Carpathia who played the Harmonica. Dallas and Fort Worth turned out some great bluesmen from the 1920s on. Good writeup, Max.

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