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