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Boogie chillen

John Lee Hooker: 1917-2001

by Ted Drozdowski

"Nobody sounds like John Lee Hooker" was the great bluesman's assessment of himself. "John Lee Hooker is all different -- different stories, different worries, different sounds. That's what makes me outstanding, I would think."

Anyone familiar with Hooker's 53 years of contributions to the blues will agree. His music was a spiritual tonic, whether a grease for celebration in tunes like his trademark "Boogie Chillen" or a balm for heartache and primal dread in numbers like "Dark Room" and "Tupelo." His death from natural causes in the early-morning hours of June 21 leaves an irreplaceable hole in the soul of the music. He was the very last of the generation of musicians who pioneered electric blues, a rugged and determined individual who believed so mightily in his art and himself that he spent more than 30 years traveling from rent parties to juke joints to clubs and coffeehouses before finding economic comfort and something approaching mainstream stardom.

Hooker was 83 when he passed away. He was buried a week later, after two days of viewing and memorial services at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, across San Francisco Bay from his Los Altos home. The Clarksdale (Mississippi) native made his exit as colorfully as he'd entered stages across the world for decades: in a white suit with matching fedora and his trademark dark sunglasses.

Those shades were more than an affectation for Hooker, who was one of 11 children born into a Baptist minister's family. "I get so deep when I sing that teardrops come into my eyes," he once told me. "I wear dark glasses so you won't see the teardrops."

But they could always be heard in his voice and in his guitar, which seemed hot-wired to every emotional nuance of his lyrics -- especially in his solo performances, where his low moaning and the dark, spare notes of his Gibson hollowbodies could evoke utter desolation in just a few measures, echoing the basic throb of human need. Hooker was fully aware of how profound his blues could be. "You can't go no deeper than me and my guitar," he stated, as if daring debate.

Nonetheless, he was best known for his livelier material. He was the inventor and king of guitar boogie, the chugging beat driven by upstrokes that he defined on his influential first hit in 1948, "Boogie Chillen," and redefined repeatedly on "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer," "Boom Boom," "House Rent Boogie," "Crawlin' Kingsnake," and many other signature tunes. That rhythm, rooted in both West Africa and the Mississippi Delta, became part of the basic fabric of rock and roll, being seized upon by the Rolling Stones, Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix, ZZ Top, George Thorogood, and almost every bar band in America and Europe.

Hooker recorded "Boogie Chillen" and 23 other sides for Modern Records in Detroit, where he worked by day as a janitor in an auto plant and played parties and jukes at night. Those Modern cuts were both primitive and cutting-edge, blending his take on raw electrified country blues with experiments in multi-tracking, guitar textures, and reverb. But Hooker's music always bared its roots. His slow narratives were Delta approximations of the art of the African griots -- solo performers who chronicle the history of their village and its families, often accompanied by a kora or some other stringed instrument used to amplify the events in their songs. Hooker was given the basics of his one-chord guitar approach by his stepfather, Will Moore, whose primal funk reflected the typical style of 1920s bluesmen from his native Louisiana. "He taught me, `Do it this way or no way,' " Hooker once explained. " `This is the blues. Don't come to no fancy chords, don't come to no fast playing.' And he was right." Hooker's conviction in his style was unshakable. Teo Leyasmeyer, booking agent at Harvard Square's House of Blues and a friend of his for many years, recounts: "He told me a story once about picking up his little amplifier, walking out of Chess studios. and telling them to go fuck themselves when they told him to lighten up on his foot tapping and to play the guitar differently on certain songs."

The catalogue of Hooker's albums reaches nearly 150 titles, including collections and reissues. These range from anthologies of his early Modern and Chess sides to the superb concert sets Alone and Live at Café Au-Go-Go and Soledad Prison and his latest studio CD, 1997's Don't Look Back. When he died, Hooker was working on an album with his daughter Zakiya and several other projects. Into the 1980s he could still be seen performing alone in small clubs and coffeehouses. His popularity had at last outgrown those venues by 1989, when he won the first of his three Grammys (including a Lifetime Achievement Award) for the 1.5-million-selling The Healer (Chameleon), on which he was joined by Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, Keith Richards and other students. After that he performed mostly at outdoor sheds and festivals, and the number of his appearances decreased as he become frail with age. In 1999 he opened his own club in San Francisco, John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room. He had many ties to this area from his decades of playing now-gone rooms like Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square and Boston's Jazz Workshop; they included close friendships with Peter Wolf, pianist David Maxwell, and Leyasmeyer, who was himself a blues pianist before turning to booking.

In February, Leyasmeyer traveled to Los Altos to spend a few days as a guest in Hooker's home. "John himself seemed a bit more frail and slower-moving than the last time I had seen him about a year before. His sense of humor was magnificent. He could make himself as well as the whole room laugh instantly by retelling a great story from the past or describing some new hilarious event. He was a born storyteller.

"John was completely generous with his hospitality -- selfless, encouraging, and gracious. He seemed completely unencumbered by the mundane in his life. He asked about my job, about our mutual friends in the music business and in Boston. We talked about song lyrics and old girlfriends. He radiated peace and quiet wisdom."

Condolences to the Hooker family should be sent in care of Bates Meyer, Inc., 714 Brookside Lane, Sierra Madre, California 91024. Donations can be made to the John Lee Hooker Foundation, c/o Metro Commerce Bank, 1248 Fifth Avenue, San Rafael, California 94901, Attn: Larry Tidwell. All funds will be directed to Hooker's favorite music-education-for-children and musician-assistance charities.

Hooker and B.B. King on life and death

In October 1998, I had the thrill of moderating a joint interview with John Lee Hooker and B.B. King, the then reigning titans of the blues, and close friends since the early '50s. The great love and admiration these two warm and generous men had for each other moved me, so I did my best to stay out of their way and let them reminisce and catch up. Mortality and old age entered the conversation as it wound to a close, tempered -- as in any discussion with Hooker or King -- by humor. I asked these aging lions of American music how they'd like to be remembered:

B.B. King: I'd like people to think of me as a good neighbor, a good friend . . .

John Lee Hooker: Me too, the same thing.

King: . . . a guy that loved music and loved to play it. And loved the people that loved it.

Hooker: I want to be remembered for my music and for bein' a good person, which I am and B.B. am, too. I talk to people all the time, give autographs. I love that about B., too. He never get too tired to talk to people.

Ted Drozdowski: You're both very inspiring. When I hit your ages, I want to be as active and positive as you are.

Hooker: Well, I'm doin' the best I can.

King: I'm a diabetic, and I've had a bout with that. But I'm doin' better now.

Hooker: Well, I got arthritis.

King: Oh, don't tell me about arthritis. I've got Arthur and all of his friends. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.

Hooker: Well, Arthur go and come, and when he go he come right back. And my blood pressure bother me.

King: Well, my blood pressure's pretty good.

Hooker: I take my pills. You know, you can't do the things you used to do. I don't drink anymore. I'll have a beer once in a while.

King: I had one at Christmas. I don't drink or smoke.

Hooker: Well, I quit smokin'.

King: A good time for me is somethin' like we're doin' now. Get together with old friends and talk and make new friends, talk about music and look at girls.

Hooker: That's right -- look at the girls.

King: I didn't say catch 'em. Just look at them. I was tellin' a guy a few days ago -- they was teasin' me -- and I said, "Yeah, I'm 73 but I ain't dead."

Hooker: That's right. I like the young women. Sure I do!

King: I like 'em all.

Hooker: Sure, me too. But when you get too old, you know . . .

King: Well, we ain't gonna talk about it like that! [Both erupt in laughter.] You know the way I see it, John?

Hooker: What?

King: Somebody was asking me what kind of woman did I want to marry. I said she got to be over 18 and under 73.

Hooker: She gotta be younger than me. I wanna smell perfume, not liniment. [More hearty laughter, then a silent pause.] I remember the days when B. would come to Detroit and he'd come down to the house and be around all my kids.

King: John was always good to me every time I'd visit him. He was always a great man. Still is.

Hooker: My kid, my oldest one, "little" John, remember him?

King: Of course I remember little John. He was my boy!

Hooker: Well, he's gone. [Hooker is referring to his grandson, the son of his daughter Zakiya Hooker. He died in a car accident in 1994.]

King: [somber] I know, I know. He was crazy about me. He used to follow me all the time.

Hooker: Yeah, he was always crazy about his Uncle B.

King: You know, I lost one of my grandsons as well.

Hooker: Man, that's life.

King: Yeah, he got killed in Chicago. He'd been in that war . . . Desert Storm, and had an honorable discharge and all that, and then in Chicago some boys shot . . . [He trails off.]

Hooker: Well, we hope there's a better place where you go.

King: Yeah, we always believe.

Hooker: Yep, we believe. But we don't know. And I ain't rarin' to find out.

-- TD

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