Well, my mama don't 'low me, said, to stay out all night long
Oh lord!
I don't care what Mama don't 'low - I must boogie now!
John Lee Hooker
The coolest man in show business!
This site was voted 
for March 11, 1998!
In the beginning was a stomping right foot, accompanied by a distorted electric guitar. A fast, simple rhythm that strikes a bridge from Africa to Mississippi, from the rainforest to the cotton fields, from prehistory WHAM! straight into the 20th century. Then the voice, deep as the darkness at the center of the earth; John Lee raps, 35 years before anyone would think about calling it that. And then the break: the guitar stops (the foot keeps stomping, relentlessly) and *twang* *twang* *twang* *twang* braaaaaang! Dead silence. Boogie Chillun! and the rhythm starts over again and each stomp, each bass note from the worn guitar is a hammer stroke on the chisel that is hewing rock’n’roll out of the ancient rock.
"One night I was layin down, I heard Mama and Papa talkin
I heard Papa tell Mama: 'You let that boy boogie-woogie!
It's in him, and it's got to come out!'
And I felt so good..."
John Lee Hooker’s stepfather... who was he? Where is his grave? Between shifts on the little farm in Clarksdale, Mississippi he taught the young John Lee to play guitar in a way nobody has been able to imitate. A sound straight out of a time long gone, a hard, primitive, raging boogie. John Lee doesn’t stomp his foot, the music stomps his foot. John Lee doesn’t play, he doesn’t do, he just is.
He was unique already in the 40s and 50s. All of the others had big bands, electric guitars, pianos, electric harmonicas, saxophones, drum kits, John Lee had his guitar and his right foot. Nevertheless, he was further than anyone from the old delta blues. What he played was much older.
The lyrics are about mean women, booze and poverty. Goin’ Mad: a furious boogie, one of the horniest songs ever to stick to vinyl. Hobo Blues: blues cliche 1A, the black man drifting from town to town with his guitar on his shoulder. Crawlin’ King Snake: a voodoo curse from the roots of the world. House Rent Boogie: half joke, half dead serious - a bluesman burns the money from his crappy job fast, whiskey and wimmen, one bourbon, one scotch, one beer, how do you come up with rent money? You make hits. You do songs like Boom Boom and Dimples, that even sell to a white audience, that enter hit lists all over the world, that scare the fertilizer out of young white brats like the Rolling Stones and Canned Heat. Then come the 70s and everytyhing goes quiet.
Where did John Lee go? Nowhere, he sat where he had always sat, on a chair with a guitar and his right foot stomping. But his records don’t sell - who's going to listen to a 55-year-old bluesman when there’s Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake and Palmer? What has a 10-minute boogie got to offer against an ABBA song? Who wants to hear I’ll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive when there’s Staying Alive? John Lee changes record company a number of times, he doesn’t exactly live the high life. As Woody Guthrie said: the smartest rob you with a fountain pen. In 1979 he appears in The Blues Brothers, playing himself and Boom Boom, disappears again.
Then something happens. 1989: together with guest musicians from three generations, John Lee records The Healer. The record contains some of the best recordings he’s ever done, and at 72, Hooker even gets two MTV hits - the title track, a latino-influenced swamp blues with Carlos Santana on guitar, and the duet with Bonnie Raitt on I’m in the Mood. That song is the sexiest recording ever.
Since then, John Lee has released four albums of fantastic recordings. Sometimes with guest artists - hear how happy Keith Richards’ guitar is to get to play Crawlin’ King Snake, listen to the furious version of Boom Boom with Jimmie Vaughan, the duet with Robert Cray (who could be John Lee’s grandson) on Mr. Lucky... but he’s still at his best when it’s just him and his guitar. I’m Bad Like Jesse James: the stomping foot, a simple guitar riff, and the voice, deeper than ever before: "Mmmm... yeah... I’m baaaaad."
On the cover of his latest record an 80-year-old man sits on his porch and grins into the camera, a man who is finally in control, who is finally reaping the benefits of what he’s been sowing for 50 years. And behind him they are lining up, the ones who you can’t see but always were there. The oldest – Leadbelly, Blind Lemon, Charlie, Bessie. The younger - Robert, Lightnin', Elmore, Muddy, Walter and Howlin' Wolf. The youngest, who should have outlived John Lee - Jimi, Janis, Stevie Ray. John Lee stands there, the only one left. But the title of the album says it all: Don't Look Back.
people have visited this site since 3-27-98.
John Lee stuff that is here:
A list of my John Lee records, with reviews
What artists have been influenced by John Lee Hooker?
John Lee stuff elsewhere:
The official John Lee Hooker site
The John Lee Hooker Link Page
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