100 Greatest Guitarists: David Fricke's Picks: Lightnin' Hopkins

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Lightnin' Hopkins

Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

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Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins learned the blues from Blind Lemon Jefferson in the Twenties. He was a ferocious electric stylist in the Fifties, though he's perhaps best known for his nimble acoustic fingerpicking during the Sixties folk-blues revival. As unpredictable as John Lee Hooker, he seemed to be making it up as he went along, and often was.