Hooker, John Lee
Hooker, John Lee
Hooker, John Lee, American blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter; b. near Clarksdale, Miss., Aug. 22, 1917. A Mississippi Delta blues musician who made his mark long after relocating to a northern city, Hooker preserved a basic, direct style employing minimal, droning guitar work and idiosyncratic timing that was dubbed “boogie.” It was a style that proved remarkably popular, adaptable, and influential in a career lasting more than 50 years and including early hits like “Boogie Chilien’” and “I’m in the Mood” in the late 1940s and 1950s and award- winning collections such as The Healer in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Hooker was the son of William Hooker, a minister, and Minnie Ramsey Hooker. His parents divorced when he was a child and his mother remarried William Moore, a sharecropper and blues performer who taught his stepson to play and appeared with him locally. Hooker left home as a teenager and lived primarily in Memphis and Cincinnati in the 1930s and early 1940s, working at menial jobs while moonlighting as a musician. In 1943 he settled in Detroit, marrying a woman named Martella with whom he had four sons, two of whom, Robert and John Jr., later became musicians and worked with him. He and his wife divorced in 1970.
Hooker performed in clubs in Detroit and eventually was spotted by record distributor Bernard Besman, for whom he made his first recordings on Nov. 3, 1948. These included “Boogie Chilien’,” which, like nearly all of his songs, he was credited with having written, though in this case Besman claimed a cowriting credit. Besman leased Hooker’s recordings to L.A.-based Modern Records, which released “Boogie Chillen’” in December. In February 1949 it topped the R&B charts. By then Hooker had also begun to record for producer Joe Von Battle, who leased his recordings to other labels under pseudonyms. In this manner, though Hooker was nominally under exclusive contract to Modern, he in fact released scores of records for others over the next five years. Nevertheless, his next hit recording was on Modern, as both sides of the single “Hoogie Boogie”/“Hobo Blues” entered the R&B charts in the spring of 1949 and reached the Top Ten.
In December 1949, Hooker again entered the R&B Top Ten with “Crawlin’ King Snake” on Modern, but his next R&B chart single, “Huckle Up Baby,” in February 1950 was on Besman’s Sensation Records. In the fall of 1951, back on Modern, he scored the biggest hit single of his career with “I’m in the Mood” (music and lyrics by Hooker and Besman), which topped the R&B charts in November.
Hooker signed an exclusive contract in October 1955 with Chicago-based independent label Vee-Jay Records, after which he curtailed but did not cease his recording for other companies. He had recorded primarily alone with his electric guitar previously; on Vee-Jay he began to use a rhythm section and sometimes other instruments. By the end of the 1950s he sometimes reverted to performing with only an acoustic guitar, as he began to find work at colleges and music festivals during the folk music boom and recorded such albums as Riverside’s The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker (1959) and Vee- Jay’s The Folk Lore of John Lee Hooker (1961). His appearance at the Newport Folk Festival on June 24, 1960, was recorded and released as an album by Vee-Jay. Among his other 1960 recordings was the single “Travelin’,” which earned him his first Grammy nomination for Best Rhythm & Blues Performance.
Hooker’s next significant hit came in the spring of 1962 with “Boom Boom,” which made the Top 40 of the R&B charts and even entered the pop charts. That year, he first toured Great Britain, as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, and his records began to be released there, influencing many emerging blues bands. He returned for a month-long tour in June 1964, at which time his 1956 recording “Dimples” made the U.K. Top 40. Evidence of his impact on the British rock scene was provided by The Animals’ recording of “Boom Boom,” which became a U.S. Top 40 pop hit in January 1965.
With the demise of Vee-Jay Records, Hooker again turned to extensive freelancing, notably recording the albums John Lee Hooker and Seven Nights for Verve/Folkways (1965) and The Real Folk Blues for Chess (1966). He then signed to ABC Records, which released his albums on its Impulse! and Blues Way subsidiaries and later on ABC itself during his eight-year tenure. As usual, he made recordings for other labels as well.
Hooker moved to Oakland, Calif., in 1970 and began to associate more with younger, white rock musicians. As a result, he released two double-LPs in early 1971 that vastly expanded his following. The first was Hooker ’n Heat (Liberty Records), recorded with the blues-rock group Canned Heat, with whom he toured. The second was Endless Boogie (ABC Records), on which he was accompanied by such popular rock musicians as Steve Miller. Both albums spent several months in the charts.
Hooker’s next ABC album, Never Get Out of These Blues Alive (1972) featured guest appearances by Van Morrison and Elvin Bishop, among others, and was another pop chart entry. He followed it later in the year with Live at Soledad Prison (ABC), which earned him a second Grammy nomination for Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording. His third Grammy nomination, in the same category, came for the July 1973 United Artists album John Lee Hooker’s Detroit (1948–52), a triple-LP set of his vintage recordings. Meanwhile, his musical influence on blues-based rock performers was highlighted by the Top 40 success of ZZ Top’s Hookerlike boogie song “La Grange” (music and lyrics by Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard, and Joe Hill) in June 1974.
Hooker concluded his ABC Records contract with the September 1974 release of Free Beer and Chicken, on which listeners noted uncredited guest appearances by Joe Cocker and others. After leaving ABC, he was less active as a recording artist, although a 1978 double album, The Cream (Tomato Records), recorded at the Keynote club in Palo Alto, Calif., is notable. In June 1980 his profile was heightened by a guest appearance in the film The Blues Brothers, and he contributed to the 1986 film The Color Purple. His next album release also came in 1986 with Jealous on Pausa Records, which earned his fourth Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Recording.
Hooker enjoyed a major comeback and the biggest record sales of his career when the Chameleon label released his album The Healer in September 1989. The disc featured guest appearances by several performers who acknowledged his influence, including Canned Heat, Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Cray, Los Lobos, and George Thorogood. It spent eight months in the U.S. charts while going gold in six other countries. Both the album and a track from it, Hooker’s duet with Raitt on a remake of “I’m in the Mood,” earned Grammy nominations for Best Traditional Blues Recording, with the latter winning the award. Hooker earned his seventh Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Recording in 1990 for his participation in an all-star group assembled to play music for the film The Hot Spot. Released by Antilles Records in September 1990, the movie’s soundtrack album also featured Miles Davis, and the Grammy-nominated track was “Coming to Town” (music and lyrics by Jack Nitzsche).
Released in September 1991 on the Virgin Records subsidiary Charisma, Hooker’s follow-up to The Healer was Mr. Lucky, on which he was joined by Booker T. Jones, Van Morrison, Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, Carlos Santana, and Johnny Winter, among others. The album spent three months in the U.S. charts and hit the Top Ten in the U.K. It brought Hooker his eighth Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album. Boom Boom, released in November 1992, was less successful, though it reached the U.K. charts and spawned a U.K. Top 40 hit in the title song. Hooker returned to the U.K. Top 40 in May 1993, cobilled with Van Morrison on a remake of Morrison’s hit with the rock group Them, “Gloria” (music and lyrics by Van Morrison). Upon the release of Chill Out in February 1995, Hooker announced that he would no longer tour. The album spent several weeks in the U.S. charts and won a Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album. Van Morrison produced Hooker’s next album, Don’t Look Back, released in March 1997. It reached the U.S. charts and won two Grammys, for Best Traditional Blues Album and for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, for the track “The Healing Game” (music and lyrics by Van Morrison), a duet between Hooker and Morrison. Hooker was presented a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2000 Grammy Award ceremonies.
Discography
The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker (1959); House of the Blues (1959); That’s My Story (1960); John Lee Hooker Plays and Sings the Blues (1961); Burnin (1962); Boogie Chillun (1962); The Big Soul of John Lee Hooker (1963); It Serves You Right to Suffer (1965); The Real Folk Blues (1966); Hooker ’N’ Heat (with Canned Heat; 1970); Endless Boogie (1971); Free Beer and Chicken (1974); The Cream (1977); Never Get out of These Blues Alive (1978); This Is Hip (1980); Chess Masters (1982); Solid Sender (1984); Jealous (1986); Simply the Truth (1988); The Healer (1989); Mr. Lucky (1991); The Ultimate Collection, 1948-1990 (1991); The Best of John Lee Hooker, 1963 to 1974 (1992); John Lee Hooker: The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948-1954 (1993); I Feel Good (1995); Chill Out (1995); Boom Boom (1995); The Very Best of John Lee Hooker (1995); Alone (1996); Don’t Look Back (1997); His Best Chess Sides (1997); Best of Friends (1998); The Complete ’50s Chess Recordings (1998); 20th Century Masters: The Best of John Lee Hooker—The Millennium Collection (1999).
—William Ruhlmann