The first thing that strikes a listener of John Lee Hooker's classic "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" is how untogether it is, even as the crack studio band keeps it together; Hooker is singing one thing, seemingly oblivious to the 12-bar blues pattern that the band is playing, while the group tries to keep him grounded. The experience is like watching Chuck Berry in his later days, visibly fuming while some poor, unrehearsed pick-up band (he would travel solo, paying new bands in each town to sit in with him) tries to follow his uneven measures and spur-of-the-moment key changes. Hooker's M.O. must have been like that of another singer/songwriter used to playing solo acoustically, Bob Dylan. Dylan also seemed to flummox bands as he dragged out lines, following a whim. The track -- from the 1966 LP Real Folk Blues -- features some of Chicago's best blues session players, like Lafayette Leake on piano, Eddie Burns on second guitar, and Fred Below on drums. They all do a pretty good job of playing along, but it is the uncredited bass player who can't really fake it and does not try to; he plows ahead as if Hooker is right with him. Nevertheless, the record manages to swing convincingly, and most listeners would focus on Hooker's story, "One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer/Well, my baby she gone, she been gone two nights/I ain't seen my baby since night before last/I wanna get drunk till I'm off of my mind/One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer." It is certainly a crowd-pleaser for bar bands everywhere, as Hooker intended. While his sad-sack narrator is clearly hurting, his choice of remedy -- trying to drink his woman back to him, or at least off of his mind completely -- rings with bar-room humor, a sentiment with which most audience members could sympathize.
Delaware bar-room kings George Thorogood & the Destroyers did a more coherent -- if slightly overlong -- version of "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" for their 1977 self-titled debut album. It is surely an audience favorite for them as well. Thorogood answers his own vocals with blistering and raunchy-toned guitar riffs.
by Bill Janovitz
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One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
Hey mister bartender come here
I want another drink and I want it now
My baby she gone, she been gone two night
I ain't seen my baby since night before last
One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
(spoken:)
And then I sit there
Gettin' high
Mellow
Knocked out
Feeling good
And by the time
I look on the wall
At the old clock on the wall
By that time
It was ten thirty daddy
I looked down the bar
At the bartender
He said
"Now what do you want Johnny?"
One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
Well my baby she gone, she been gone two night
I ain't seen my baby since night before last
I want to get drunk till I'm off of my mind
One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
(spoken:)
And I sat there
Gettin' high
Stoned
Knocked out
And by the time
I looked on the wall
At the old clock again
And by that time
'T was a quarter to two
Last call
For alcohol
I said "Hey mister bartender!"
"Well what do you want?"
One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer ... (fade)
...