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Aug 22 TIMH – The “King of Boogie” is born….

+10 HS
Ludwig Yards's picture
August 22, 2016 at 7:11am
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….blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist, John Lee Hooker was born in 1917. Hooker recorded more than one hundred albums, one hundred singles, and appeared on more than two hundred compilation projects over his sixty-three-year career as a blues recording artist, including some of his most well-known songs - "Boogie Chillen", "Crawling King Snake", "Dimples", "Boom Boom", and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer". 

Born near Clarksdale, Mississippi, he and his 10 siblings were homeschooled, and being the children of a reverend, were only allowed to listen to religious songs and spirituals. However, when he was 4 his parents split, the defining moment in his life as his mother soon married a Shreveport bluesman, William Moore. It was Moore who taught John to play guitar and to whom Hooker attributes his unique style – a signature one-chord rhythmic style that was an adaptation of Delta Blues where he played bass patterns with his thumb, stopping to emphasize the end of a line with a series of trills, done by rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early Mississippi Hill country blues and developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the piano-derived boogie-woogie.

At the age of 14, Hooker ran away from home and landed in Memphis, where he worked and performed on and around Beale Street. By the mid-40s he found his way to Detroit, a city known for its pianists and not guitarists, so he was able to perform regularly and his popularity grew locally. He worked in a factory during the day and played clubs and house parties at night. It was at this time that he got his first electric guitar, believed by some to have been given to him by T-Bone Walker. It wasn’t until 1948 that his recording career began but it took off like a shot when LA-based Modern Records released “Boogie Chillen”, which became the best selling race record of 1949 and is still perhaps his best known song.

Recording Hooker could be a challenge because he rarely played with a standard beat, instead, he changed tempo to fit the needs of the song. This often made it difficult to use backing musicians, who were not accustomed to Hooker's musical peculiarities. As a result, he was often recorded, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden pallet. A one man band, so to speak.

Hooker was a prolific lyricist, despite the fact he was illiterate and wrote both originals and adapted traditional blues songs. Also for financial reasons, he would record variations of his own songs for new studios in order to get an upfront fee. To get around his recording contract, he used various pseudonyms, such as John Lee Booker, Johnny Lee, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, and the Boogie Man. Still, like many recording artists of the time, he made his living on the road. He maintained a solo career, popular with blues and folk music fans of the early 1960s and crossed over to white audiences (giving an early opportunity to the young Bob Dylan).

Hooker first went overseas in 1962 and returned to Europe often performing for or with members of bands that would mount the 1964 British Invasion. Artists like the Rolling Stones, the Animals and the Yardbirds introduced Hooker’s sound to new and eager audiences, whose admiration and influence helped build Hooker up to superstar status. A 1970 studio collaboration between Hooker and Canned Heat produced the album Hooker 'n Heat, which revealed how much and how well the younger group of white blues fanatics and scholars had absorbed Hooker's boogie. The album broke the top 100 on Billboard's pop charts, his first charting album.

Apart from Hooker's successful project with Canned Heat, his 1980 first-ballot induction into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, and a small role in the 1980 blockbuster The Blues Brothers, Hooker struggled. His fortunes changed in 1989, when at the age of 72 he reentered the studio after a decade's absence and recorded with contemporary blues artists Bonnie Raitt and Robert Cray, and Latin rockers Los Lobos and Carlos Santana. Those sessions became the hugely successful album, The Healer, and he rounded out the decade as a guest performer with the Rolling Stones during the national broadcast of their 1989 Steel Wheels tour.

In 1991, Hooker released Mr. Lucky, an album similar to The Healer, which showcased Hooker with a new array of celebrated artists, including guitarists Johnny Winter and Keith Richards, and Van Morrison. That same year he was inducted into the RnR HOF. He won two Grammys in 1998 for his album Don't Look Back and his duet performance with Van Morrison on the album's title track. 

After a brief illness, he died on June 21 2001 in Long Beach, CA. Married and divorced 4 times, he was survived by a fiancé, 8 children, 19 grandchildren and 18 great-children. Late in his life he had contemplated his eventual passing, telling Ben Wener of Tulsa World: "We all got to go one day. We live out this life as long as we can and try to make the best of it. Simple as that. That's what I've done. All my life, just try to make the best of it." And if you are ever in San Francisco's Fillmore District, stop in at the club he started, the Boom Boom Room. Happy Birthday, Hook. 

 

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