b. August 22, 1917 in Clarksdale, MS, d. June 21, 2001 in Los Altos, CA. Dates vary between 1917 to 1920, but owing to the age of Hooker's mother when he was born, 1917 is the most likely. He was born into a large family, of between 10 and 12 siblings, who all worked on the fields of a large tenanted agricultural farm. Hooker's first musical experiences, like those of so many other blues singers, were in church. A contrivance made from an inner tube attached to a barn door represented his first makeshift attempts at playing an instrument, but he subsequently learned some guitar from his stepfather William Moore, and they played together at local dances. At the age of 14, he ran away to Memphis, Tennessee, where he met and played with Robert Lockwood. Two years later he moved to Cincinnati, where he stayed for about 10 years and sang with a number of gospel quartets. In 1943, he moved to Detroit, which was to be his home for many years, and while working during the day as a janitor began playing at night in the blues clubs and bars around Hastings Street, at the heart of that city's black section. Over the years he had developed the unique guitar style that was to make his music so distinctive and compelling.
In 1948 Hooker was finally given the chance to record. Accompanied only by his own electric guitar and constantly tapping foot, "Boogie Chillen", with its driving rhythm and hypnotic drone of an accompaniment, was a surprise commercial success for Modern Records. The record is rumoured to have sold over a million copies, but this is contested by Hooker as it did not tally with his royalty statement. Over the next few years, they leased a large amount of his material first from Bernie Besman and later from legendary Detroit entrepreneur Joe Von Battle (both of whom also tried a few Hooker issues on their own Sensation and JVB labels, respectively). Most of these early recordings feature Hooker performing entirely solo; only a few are duets with Eddie Kirkland or another guitarist, and there are one or two with a band. It seems that this solo setting was not typical of his live work at the time, which would have used a small band, probably including piano, second guitar and drums, but his idiosyncratic sense of timing always made him a difficult musician to accompany, and it may be that recording him solo was the most reliable way of ensuring a clean take. Nevertheless, his solo sound on these early records was remarkably self-sufficient. His unique open-tuned guitar enabled him to combine a steady rhythm with inspired lead picking, thereby making full use of his rich, very bluesy baritone vocals. Although this one-man-band format might suggest a throwback to a more down-home ambience, there is a certain hipness and urbane sophistication about these performances that represent a significant departure from the rural background of Hooker's music and contribute very strongly to his characteristic sound. While a solo blues singer was something of an anachronism by this time, there is no doubt that the records sold consistently.
From the late 40s to the early 50s, Hooker recorded prolifically and enjoyed an enormously successful run with Modern, producing such classic records as "Crawling King Snake", "In The Mood", "Rock House Boogie" and "Shake Holler & Run". Hooker became increasingly unhappy with the lack of financial reward for his recordings which appeared to sell well. He decided to moonlight, and recorded under a number of different names. Hooker's voice and style of playing is unmistakable and fans had no problem in sussing him out. With tongue firmly in cheek among the many names he adopted were; John Lee Booker, John Lee Cooker, Johnny Williams, Delta John, Sir John Lee Hooker, Little Pork Chops, Texas Slim, Birmingham Sam, John Lee, Boogie Man, Johnny Lee, and John L. Booker. Most of these were also leased from Joe Von Battle.
Hooker's recording success led to tours. He played the R&B circuit across the country and this further developed his popularity with the black American public. In 1955, he severed his connection with Modern and began a long association with Vee Jay Records of Chicago. By this time, the solo format was finally deemed too old-fashioned for the contemporary R&B market and all of these recordings used a tight little band, often including Eddie Taylor on guitar, as well as piano and various combinations of horns. The association with Vee Jay proved very satisfactory, both artistically and commercially, producing a string of hits such as the simplistic but brilliant "Dimples", "Maudie" and "Boom Boom" and promoting further extensive tours. In the late 50s, as the market for R&B was beginning to contract, a new direction opened up for Hooker and he began to appear regularly at folk clubs and folk festivals. He found himself lionized by a new audience consisting mainly of young, white listeners. The folk connection also resulted in new recordings, issued on album by Riverside Records, which reverted to the solo acoustic format. While these recordings lacked the hard edge of the best of his earlier commercial sides, they were fascinating for the fact that the producers encouraged him to dig back into his older repertoire. Several songs reflecting his rural Mississippi background, such as "Bundle Up And Go" and "Pea Vine Special" were given his distinctive treatment. These records spread his name more widely when they were released overseas.
In the early 60s his reputation grew considerably as he was often cited by younger pop and rock musicians, in particular the Animals and the Rolling Stones, as a major influence. As a result international tours soon followed. Throughout this period, he continued to release singles and albums on Vee Jay, but records also appeared on other labels. Later in the 60s, he made a number of records for Bluesway, aimed at this younger market. The connection with a new generation of musicians led to various "super sessions", predictably of varying quality, but bearing fruit most successfully in the early 70s with the release of the stunning Hooker N Heat, in which he played with the American rock blues band Canned Heat. Their famous long improvised boogies clearly owed a great deal to the influence of the older man.
Although the popular enthusiasm for blues waned for a while in the late 70s and early 80s, Hooker's standing rarely faltered and he continued to tour, latterly with the Coast To Coast Blues Band. His early recordings were repackaged and re-released over and over again, with those companies who used him pseudonymously in the early days now proudly taking the opportunity to capitalize on his real name. A remarkable transformation came in 1989 when Hooker recorded The Healer. This superb album featured stellar guest artists on most tracks, including Bonnie Raitt (who is on record as saying that Hooker's guitar sound is one of the most erotic things she has ever heard), Los Lobos, and a duet with Carlos Santana on the title cut. If such a thing as "Latin blues" existed, this was it. The Healer has gone on to become one of the biggest-selling blues records of all time, and by prompting other older statesmen to record again helped fuel a new blues revival. The 1991 follow-up Mr Lucky reached number 3 in the UK album charts, setting a record for Hooker, at 74, as the oldest artist to achieve that position. On this second guest album he was paired with Ry Cooder, Van Morrison, Albert Collins, and a gamut of other superstars. In his old age, Hooker had begun to fulfil the role of elder statesman of the blues, even appearing in an advertisement for a multinational chemical corporation. The Hooker revival continued right through 1992 with the use of a new version of "Boom Boom" for a Lee Jeans television advertisement. Both the single and the subsequent album were considerable hits.
Following a hernia operation in 1994 the great man decided to slow down and enjoy his cars and houses. Another fine release, Chill Out, came in 1995. Shortly after its release it was announced that Hooker had retired from performing and was prepared to rest until they "lowered his bones into the earth". However, he was back on stage performing in 1996 and released a new album in 1997. Don't Look Back was a Van Morrison production and bore clear signs of his influence; Morrison's "The Healing Game" and Jimi Hendrix's "Red House" were the highlights, and "Don't Look Back" was beautifully understated, with some fine noodling organ and guitar from Charles Brown and Danny Caron respectively. Another reworking of "Dimples" added nothing to the classic Vee Jay recording. Three years later, Hooker's voice and guitar were cleverly sampled by Ludovic Navarre on the St. Germain track, "Sure Thing".
Hooker's discography is an absolute minefield; so many tracks have been licensed and re-licensed by so many different labels and much of his regular catalogue is in fact a series of compilations. Goldmine magazine (March 1992) is the best attempt so far. Dozens of his songs have also been issued under alternative titles, with only slight changes in the lyrics. Charles Shaar Murray's labour of love, Boogie Man, is the definitive book on Hooker. This highly readable biography does not patronise one of the key figures of post-war blues, but objectively celebrates and respects the man's massive contribution to his art. Hooker's remarkable voice came from deep within, it was hollow and creamy with a brittle edge. To hear him sing solo (as on 1976's superb Alone) gives the listener an indication of how true he was to his art. This formidable "cool dude" was the last surviving giant of the real delta folk blues, and therefore, represented a final touchstone with a body of music that is both rich in history and unmatched in its importance. It is a fitting tribute to the great man that he died peacefully in his sleep.
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More details:
John Lee Hooker (b. August 22, 1912 or 1917 in Tutwiler, Mississippi, or near Clarksdale, Mississippi, d. June 21, 2001 in Los Altos, California) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues that he developed in Detroit. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie. Hooker was ranked 35 in Rolling Stone's 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists, and has been cited as one of the greatest male blues vocalists of all time. Some of his best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "Crawling King Snake" (1949), "Dimples" (1956), "Boom Boom" (1962), and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" (1966). Several of his later albums, including The Healer (1989), Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995), and Don't Look Back (1997), were album chart successes in the U.S. and UK. The Healer (for the song "I'm in the Mood") and Chill Out (for the album) both earned him Grammy wins, as well as Don't Look Back, which went on to earn him a double-Grammy win for Best Traditional Blues Recording and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals (with Van Morrison).
Hooker's date of birth is a subject of debate; the years 1912, 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923 have all been suggested. Most official sources list 1917, though at times Hooker stated he was born in 1920. Information found in the 1920 and 1930 censuses indicates that he was actually born in 1912. In 2017, a series of events was held to celebrate the supposed centenary of his birth. In the 1920 federal census, John Hooker is seven years old and one of nine children living with William and Minnie Hooker in Tutwiler, Mississippi. It is believed that he was born in Tutwiler, in Tallahatchie County, although some sources say his birthplace was near Clarksdale, in Coahoma County. He was the youngest of the 11 children of William Hooker (born 1871, died after 1923), a sharecropper and Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (born c. 1880, date of death unknown). In the 1920 federal census, William and Minnie were recorded as being 48 and 39 years old, respectively, which implies that Minnie was born about 1880, not 1875. She was said to have been a "decade or so younger" than her husband, which gives additional credibility to this census record as evidence of Hooker's origins. The Hooker children were homeschooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs; the spirituals sung in church were their earliest exposure to music. In 1921, their parents separated. The next year, their mother married William Moore, a blues singer, who provided John Lee with an introduction to the guitar (and whom he would later credit for his distinctive playing style). Moore was his first significant blues influence. He was a local blues guitarist who, in Shreveport, Louisiana, learned to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time. Another influence was Tony Hollins, who dated Hooker's sister Alice, helped teach Hooker to play, and gave him his first guitar. For the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician. Among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Catfish Blues". At the age of 14, Hooker ran away from home, reportedly never seeing his mother or stepfather again. In the mid-1930s, he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, where he performed on Beale Street, at the New Daisy Theatre and occasionally at house parties. He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, eventually getting a job with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943. He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district, on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce. Hooker's popularity grew quickly as he performed in Detroit clubs, and, seeking an instrument louder than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.
Hooker was working as a janitor in a Detroit steel mill when his recording career began in 1948, when Modern Records, based in Los Angeles, released a demo he had recorded for Bernie Besman in Detroit. The single, "Boogie Chillen'", became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949. Though illiterate, Hooker was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting traditional blues lyrics, he composed original songs. In the 1950s, like many black musicians, Hooker earned little from record sales, and so he often recorded variations of his songs for different studios for an up-front fee. To evade his recording contract, he used various pseudonyms, including John Lee Booker (for Chess Records and Chance Records in 1951–1952), Johnny Lee (for De Luxe Records in 1953–1954), John Lee, John Lee Cooker, Texas Slim, Delta John, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, Johnny Williams, and the Boogie Man. His early solo songs were recorded by Bernie Besman. Hooker rarely played with a standard beat, opting instead to adjust the 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 vagaries. As a result, Besman recorded Hooker playing guitar, singing, and stomping on a wooden pallet in time with the music. For much of this period, he recorded and toured with Eddie Kirkland. In Hooker's later sessions for Vee-Jay Records in Chicago, studio musicians accompanied him on most of his recordings, including Eddie Taylor, who could handle his musical idiosyncrasies. "Boom Boom" (1962) and "Dimples," two popular songs by Hooker, were originally released by Vee-Jay.
Beginning in 1962, Hooker gained greater exposure when he toured Europe in the annual American Folk Blues Festival. His "Dimples" became a successful single on the UK Singles Charts in 1964, eight years after its first US release. Hooker began to perform and record with rock musicians. One of his earliest collaborations was with British blues rock band the Groundhogs. In 1970, he recorded the joint album Hooker 'n Heat, with the American blues and boogie rock group Canned Heat, whose repertoire included adaptations of Hooker songs. It became the first of Hooker's albums to reach the Billboard charts, peaking at number 78 on the Billboard 200. Other collaboration albums soon followed, including Endless Boogie (1971) and Never Get Out of These Blues Alive (1972), which included Steve Miller, Elvin Bishop, Van Morrison, and others. Hooker appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers as a street musician playing "Boom Boom." In 1989, he recorded the album The Healer with Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and others. The 1990s saw additional collaboration albums: Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995), and Don't Look Back (1997) with Morrison, Santana, Los Lobos, and additional guest musicians. His re-recording of "Boom Boom" (the title track for his 1992 album) with guitarist Jimmie Vaughan became Hooker's highest charting single (number 16) in the UK. Come See About Me, a 2004 DVD, includes performances filmed between 1960 and 1994 and interviews with several of the musicians.
Hooker owned five houses in his later life, including ones in the California cities of Los Altos, Redwood City, and Long Beach. On June 21, 2001, Hooker died in his sleep at home in Los Altos.
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By Thom Jurek
John Lee Hooker was the king of the endless boogie, a globally cherished bluesman whose droning, hypnotic, one-chord grooves were driving, primitive, and timeless. During a 50-year career, he melded regional sounds from the Delta, Detroit, and Chicago in a trademark, oft-imitated approach. From the late 1940s until 1969, he cut more than 100 singles for labels such as Modern, Chess, Federal, Atco, and Vee-Jay, including hits such as "I'm in the Mood," "Hobo Blues," "Boogie Chillen," "Crawling Kingsnake," and "Boom Boom." In 1966 he resurrected and reinvented the '50s R&B hit "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" and made it his own. He spent most of the '70s and '80s touring. 1989's The Healer initiated a charting, award-winning, five-album run of Hooker recording new songs and revisioning some of his classics backed by well-known contemporary guests. His commercial success led to Mr. Lucky in 1991, 1995's Chill Out, and 1997's Don't Look Back, a multi-Grammy-winning, album-length collaboration with Van Morrison.
Hooker was born in Tutwiler, Mississippi in 1912. He was the youngest of 11 children born to Minnie Ramsey and husband William Hooker, a sharecropper and Baptist preacher. The children were all homeschooled and only permitted to listen to religious songs sung in church. In 1921, Hooker's parents separated. The following year, Minnie married Will Moore, a blues singer, who provided John Lee with an introduction to the guitar during his teens (and whom the great bluesman would later credit for the roots of his distinctive playing style). Some of Moore's blues peers, including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Blind Blake passed through and were house guests during their travels. These musicians influenced Hooker profoundly.
Hooker heard Memphis calling during his late teens. He moved there but couldn't gain much of a foothold on its blues scene. He relocated to Cincinnati for seven years before making the big move to Detroit, the Motor City, in 1942. Jobs were plentiful, but Hooker drifted away from day gigs in favor of playing his unique free-form brand of blues in bars. A burgeoning club scene along Hastings Street didn't hurt his chances any. Hooker became the house talent at hot spot Henry's Swing Club.
In 1948, the aspiring bluesman hooked up with entrepreneur Bernie Besman, who helped him hammer out his solo debut sides, "Sally Mae" and its seminal flip, "Boogie Chillen." This was blues as primitive as anything then on the market; Hooker's dark, ruminative vocals were backed only by his own ringing, heavily amplified guitar and insistently pounding foot. Their efforts were quickly rewarded. Los Angeles-based Modern Records issued the sides and "Boogie Chillen" -- a colorful, unique travelog of Detroit's blues scene -- made an improbable jaunt to the very peak of the R&B charts.
Modern subsequently released several more hits by Hooker including "Hobo Blues" b/w the raw "Hoogie Boogie" and "Crawling King Snake Blues." (All three were hits in 1949.) The unusual 1951 chart-topper "I'm in the Mood" found Hooker overdubbing his voice in an early attempt at multitracking.
Hooker never, ever let something as meaningless as a contract stop him for making recordings for other labels. His early catalog is stretched across a road map of companies so complex that it's nearly impossible to fully comprehend (a vast array of recording aliases doesn't make things any easier).
Along with Modern, Hooker recorded for King (as the geographically challenged Texas Slim), Regent (as Delta John, a far more accurate handle), Savoy (as the wonderfully surreal Birmingham Sam & His Magic Guitar), Danceland (as the downright delicious Little Pork Chops), Staff (as Johnny Williams), Sensation (for whom he scored a national hit in 1950 with "Huckle Up, Baby"), Gotham, Regal, Swing Time, Federal, Gone (as John Lee Booker), Chess, Acorn (as the Boogie Man), Chance, DeLuxe (as Johnny Lee), JVB, Chart, and Specialty before finally settling down at Vee-Jay in 1955 under his own name. Hooker became the point man for the growing Detroit blues scene during this incredibly prolific period, recruiting guitarist Eddie Kirkland as his frequent duet partner while still recording for Modern.
Once tied in with Vee-Jay, the rough-and-tumble sound of Hooker's solo and duet waxings was adapted to a band format. Hooker had recorded with various combos before, but never with sidemen as versatile and sympathetic as guitarist Eddie Taylor and harpist Jimmy Reed, who backed him at his initial Vee-Jay date that produced "Time Is Marching" and the superfluous sequel "Mambo Chillun."
Taylor stuck around for a 1956 session that elicited two genuine Hooker classics, "Baby Lee" and "Dimples," and he was still deftly anchoring the rhythm section (Hooker's sense of timing was his and his alone, demanding big-eared sidemen) when the Boogie Man finally made it back to the R&B charts in 1958 with "I Love You Honey."
Vee-Jay presented Hooker in many settings during the early '60s. His grinding, tough blues "No Shoes" proved a surprisingly sizable hit in 1960, while the storming "Boom Boom," from the album Burnin', was his top seller for the firm in 1962 (it even cracked the pop airwaves). An infectious R&B dance number, it benefited from the backing studio presence of Motown's first generation of the Funk Brothers. But there were also acoustic outings aimed squarely at the blossoming folk-blues crowd, as well as some attempts at up-to-date R&B that featured highly intrusive female background vocals (allegedly by the Vandellas) and utterly unyielding structures that hemmed Hooker in unmercifully.
British blues bands such as the Animals and Yardbirds idolized Hooker during the early '60s; Eric Burdon's boys cut a credible 1964 cover of "Boom Boom" that outsold Hooker's original on the American pop charts. Hooker visited Europe in 1962 under the auspices of the first American Folk Blues Festival, leaving behind the popular waxings "Let's Make It" and "Shake It Baby" for foreign consumption.
Back home, Hooker cranked out gems for Vee-Jay through 1964 ("Big Legs, Tight Skirt," one of his last offerings for the label, was also one of his best), before undergoing another extended round of label-hopping (except this time, he was recording whole LPs instead of scattered 78s). In 1965 and 1966, several labels contracted recordings from Hooker including Verve-Folkways (... And Seven Nights), Impulse! (It Serve You Right to Suffer), Chess (The Real Folk Blues), and Bluesway (Urban Blues). His reputation among hip rock cognoscenti in the United States and abroad was growing too -- especially after he teamed up with blues-rockers Canned Heat for the popular Hooker 'n Heat album in 1970.
Eventually, though, the endless boogie formula grew stagnant. Much of Hooker's '70s output found him lying back while plodding rock or R&B rhythm sections assumed much of the workload. 1974's Free Beer & Chicken for ABC was a funky R&B album framed in blues; its personnel included Wah-Wah Watson, Howard Roberts, Sugarcane Harris, and Joe Cocker. In 1978, Hooker issued the double-live set The Cream for Tomato. Recorded at the legendary Keystone in Palo Alto the year before, it offered the bluesman, a killer Bay Area band, and guest Charlie Musslewhite on harmonica running through a steamy, riveting set.
In 1980, Hooker made a cameo appearance in The Blues Brothers.
He may have spent the majority of the '70s and '80s touring, but he wasn't through recording by a long shot. With the help of slide guitarist /producer Roy Rogers, Hooker recorded 1989's The Healer for Chameleon. This album was the first to include a large cast of guests like Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Musselwhite, Los Lobos, Robert Cray, and George Thorogood. The set peaked at 62 in the Top 200 and won Hooker a Grammy for his duet with Raitt on "I'm in the Mood."
Major labels were just beginning to take notice of the growing demand for blues records, and Pointblank snapped up Hooker's contract and released four albums beginning with 1991's Mr. Lucky. It followed the same basic formula as its predecessor, but this time Hooker teamed with bluesmen Albert Collins and John Hammond, as well as Van Morrison and Keith Richards. It only reached number 101 on the Top 200, but peaked at number three on the blues album charts. 1993's Boom Boom altered the formula a bit by placing Hooker in front of a core band with guests including Cray, Collins, and Hammond. It peaked at 15 on the blues album charts. 1995's Chill Out offered a smoking core band buoyed by guests who included Morrison and Booker T. Jones. It peaked at three on the blues albums list. 1997's Don't Look Back, was produced by Morrison, who also played rhythm guitar and duetted on ten of the album's 11 tracks; there were also glorious readings of Hooker's hit "Blues Before Sunrise," Morrison's "The Healing Game," Lowell Fulsom's "San Francisco Blues," and Jimi Hendrix's "Red House." While it went to number three on the blues chart, it also placed inside the Top 200 in the U.S. and in the Top 100 in the U.K.
Hooker enjoyed the good life during the '90s as a semi-retired world-renowned blues icon. He spent much of his time in semi-retirement at his homes on the California coast. He cut an amusing TV commercial for Pepsi but didn't record again.
When Hooker died on June 21, 2001, his stature as an American cultural icon was all but set in stone. In 2017, to celebrate the then-mistaken centennial of Hooker's birth, his estate cooperated with Craft Records to create the commemorative box set King of the Boogie. It featured a career-spanning collection of his recordings spread over three discs, a fourth disc devoted to live recordings, and a fifth featuring duets.
The following year, Third Man Records released Detroit and Beyond, Vol. 1 and 2, a double-length overview of Hooker's time in the Motor City. In 2023, Craft Recordings offered a 60th anniversary reissue of Hooker's seminal 1962 album Burnin' that netted his first nationwide hit, "Boom Boom."