The Fat Angel Sings

John Lee Hooker – A San Francisco favourite, John Lee Hooker came a long way from Tutwiler, Mississippi to the Bay Area. He was the son of a sharecropper and rose to prominence playing an electric-guitar-style adaptation of the Delta Blues. He developed his own boogie rhythm style in the late 40s. In the mid-30s, Hooker lived in Memphis where he performed on Beale Street and house parties. He worked at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1943 and frequented Blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street in the black entertainment district on Detroit’s east side. Hookers’ style took off in a city not noted for guitar players. His recording career began in 1948 with Modern Records in Los Angeles who released a demo he had recorded in Detroit. “Boogie Chillen: became a hit and the best-selling race record of 1949. He was on his way. Later in the 60s, he recorded “Boom Boom,” (covered by the Animals) and “Dimples,” two of his most popular songs for Vee-Jay Records of Chicago. He toured Europe in the annual American Folk Blues Festival beginning in 1962. Hooker eventually began to record and perform with Rock groups such as the Groundhogs, and Canned Heat, The Heat recorded “Hooker ‘n Heat” with him in 1970. Other later collaborations included Van Morrison, Steve Miller, Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Jimmy Vaughan and others. Hooker died in 2001 at the age 83.

John Lee Hooker is a “blues legend” and you’re not just mouthing a cliche. You’re missing the specificity of what he brought to the form, the unique strand of DNA he sent coursing through the gene pool of countless rockers and blues artists in his wake. Hooker honed the blues into something new – a grinding, hymnal vamp, which he finessed for all it was worth. Hooker’s essential sound dispensed with the usual 12-bar blues progression to throw the focus on the thrust of the rhythm. It’s deep groove music he made, with a sound as indebted to the beat as funk, and as enamoured of repetition as an incantation. In Hooker’s greatest recordings, repetition bred intensity, both in his guitar playing and in his vocals which, in their chanting, droning cadence, could reach the transcendence of devotional singing.

All of this is worth noting as we approach what may or may not be the 100th anniversary of John Lee Hooker’s birth. The star, who died in 2001, upheld the blues tradition of not being overly concerned with exact birth dates. A variety of origin years have been credited by various sources, so let’s just settle on the one chosen by the record company now releasing his music, Vee-Jay Records. It picked this year to toast his centennial, marked by a well-curated, 16-song compilation of Hooker’s work, titled “Whiskey & Wimmen”.

Hooker’s anniversary arrives after the loss of another pivotal figure in 20th-century music – Chuck Berry, who was 90. In the same way Berry proved crucial to creating rock’n’roll, Hooker held a seminal role in the birth of the boogie branch of blues. On one level, his style transposed the earlier style of boogie-woogie piano to the guitar, then distilled it down to a ground breaking, minimalist kind of blues. To help create it, he used a different tuning than most blues players do. He went with “standard” tuning, as opposed to the “open” tuning favoured by most such artists. Hooker learned that style from his stepfather, Will Moore, an entertainer himself who had worked with Charley Patton and Son House.

Hooker, who was born in Coahoma County, Mississippi, left the family by age 14 and went to live in Memphis, where he performed on Beale Street. He cut his first records, starting with 1948’s Boogie Chillen, for the LA-based Modern Records. Hooker’s early songs were all singles, for a variety of labels, but he later developed into a prolific album artist imitated by thousands. Over the years, his songs were covered by stars such as the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana and countless others. Amid his sprawling catalogue, these 10 pieces best express his rarity and genius.

Boogie Chillen

Hooker’s first single became a No 1 jukebox hit, selling over 1m copies. It set the template for a style that often put its trust in a single riff, which he’d repeat, elaborate and then concentrate through the sheer dynamics of his playing and force of his vocal character. In that sense, Hooker’s approach had more in common with a Sufi singer like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan than with most anyone reared in the Mississippi delta. He was now loud enough to compete with city life, and became a regular performer in clubs on Detroit’s East Side. A demo made its way to Modern Records in LA, which released ‛Boogie Chillen’. It was an R&B chart No.1 and Hooker’s career was under way.

Sally Mae

Hooker’s follow-up to his Boogie smash finds him singing with a knowing wink, addressing a woman who’s been driving him mad. The song showcases his sexy vibrato and his darting acoustic guitar work, which finds subtle intricacies in the beat.

Crawlin’ King Snake

Hooker’s reinterpretation of this song, originally recorded by Blind Lemon Jefferson in the 1920s under a different title, gave him a top 10 R&B hit. His version takes full advantage of the directness of his acoustic guitar style, sometimes paring a solo down to a single repeated note. Better, it features a vocal that’s both low-down in its lust and elevated in its perfection. While John Lee was a juvenile, his sister took up with another bluesman, Tony Hollins, who gave him a guitar and taught him songs that would serve the kid all his days. Among them was an essential track for every John Lee Hooker playlist, ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’, which Hooker first recorded in 1949 – and copyrighted. Hence when rock came along and the likes of The Doors covered it on LA Woman in 1971, John Lee Hooker done got paid. The same goes for the times he recorded it himself, of which there were many.

I’m in the Mood

Bonnie Raitt was so moved by the need and randiness in Hooker’s original version from 1951, she later cut a take with him on an all-star duets album, The Healer, in 1989. Their tandem recording won Hooker his first Grammy, while the album earned the star his highest-listed album on the pop chart. Raitt later said working with Hooker changed the way she thought about men in their 70s and 80s. Modern enjoyed another R&B chart-topper in 1951 with ‘I’m In The Mood’ (a lewd ditty Hooker recorded eight times over the years and which tempted Bonnie Raitt into a duet with him decades later), and then he was off again, working with the Chicago label Chess, which got sued by Modern in 1952 over the single ‘Ground Hog Blues’. The thing is, John Lee was a star: his hard-rocking boogie style was hard to replicate and that made him worth fighting over. Modern finally bowed out of his increasingly tangled career in 1955

Frisco Blues

Hooker was moving in soon-to-be-famous circles as he worked with various Supremes, Vandellas and other Motown musicians during ’63-64. Taking this John Lee Hooker playlist in a slightly different direction, ‘Frisco Blues’, from an album that attempted to place him in yet another genre, The Big Soul Of John Lee Hooker, may have been a Detroit sound on a Chicago label (Vee-Jay), Only the title of this 1963 track gives you the slightest hint that Hooker took inspiration from Tony Bennett’s I Left My Heart In San Francisco, which hit the year before. Hooker’s hard blues overhaul, complete with raging electric guitar, features uncredited backup vocals from the Vandellas, who hid their role due to contractual obligations to Motown. Listening to Hooker’s vocal salute to San Francisco’s “cool, cool nights” on a “high, high hill”, we hear cadences that later influenced another singer devoted to a chanting style, Van Morrison. Unsurprisingly, Hooker and Morrison recorded many songs together decades later.

I Cover the Waterfront

Of all the Hooker/Morrison hook-ups, Waterfront features the greatest rapport between the two. Its elegant jazz melody, composed in 1933 by Johnny Green, leaves space for maximum improvisation, a hallmark of both stars’ styles. Hooker also cut his own version, in 1967, on a like-named album, letting him showcase a very different style from his usual boogie.

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

In 1966, Chess again branded him a traditional artist on The Real Folk Blues, though Hooker was working with a bruising band. The album’s most famous tune, ‛One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer’, has a history dating back to Amos Milburn’s early 50s version, though Hooker imbibed it as he saw fit. George Thorogood brought this song to the rock masses in the 70s, crediting Hooker’s version as his inspiration. In fact, the song was written by Randy Toombs and made into a hit in 1953 by Amos Milburn. Still, Hooker’s 1966 version goes deeper than the other interpretations, especially the macho one by Thorogood. Hooker leaves more space in the song, talking his blues rather than barking them. He lets the inebriation in the lyric sink in to the point where it achieves a nearly psychedelic headiness. The vibrato he puts on the word “beer” gives it a beautiful resonance. What’s more, Hooker’s rocking backing band features some players Chuck Berry used on his hits, including Lafayette Leake on loosey-goosey piano.

Boom Boom

Hooker laid down the hammer on Boom Boom, a sexy vamp with a sly guitar and a rolling piano. One of his biggest hits, cut in ’62 and redeployed in 1980 in the Blues Brothers movie, the song has been covered by everyone from the Animals to Mae West. Its stop-start rhythm lends it a killer hook while Hooker’s conversational vocal plays it cool. Folk was not the only new market opening up for Hooker. In London, rhythm’n’blues was rapidly becoming the sound of clubland, and his tunes soundtracked the fashionable dances performed by the original mods. The contemporary ‘Boom Boom’ was certainly no folk ballad: this tough dancefloor-aimed I-fancy-you ditty made the lower reaches of the US pop charts. but this version of ‘Boom Boom’ somehow didn’t make the soundtrack album – perhaps there were fears its authenticity might make some of the other tracks look weak. Hooker would have to wait until 1988, when he was apparently 76, for a big revival thanks to The Healer, an album which featured rock stars queuing up to pay homage to their hero on vinyl. Its title track, featuring guitar star Carlos Santana, attracted attention and the record made the US album chart, setting Hooker up for a rewarding old age in both financial and artistic senses.

I’m Bad Like Jesse James

Another notable Riverside session delivered ‛I’m Gonna Use My Rod’, later retitled ‘I’m Bad Like Jesse James’ and ‛I’m Mad Again’. Hooker seemed fine with being portrayed as a folk singer, despite his gun-totin’ lyric, which was hardly peace and love. Was he gettin’ paid? Then call him what you like – he’d already changed his name numerous times on record. Should you be in any doubt as to his credibility with the folk crowd, Hooker played in New York in 1961 – and the support act was Bob Dylan, making his debut in the big city.

Dimples

Hooker proved he could be as effective in a more conventional blues as in a boogie with Dimples. He wrote it about a friend’s wife, whom he had a crush on. His delivery laces his leer with a self-aware humour. The original 1956 take features wailing lead guitar from Eddie Taylor. Signing to Vee-Jay, Hooker issued ‘Dimples’ in 1956. By now he was recording with a full band and this easy-rolling hit about an attractive woman enjoyed an extended afterlife. In 1959, Vee-Jay realised the burgeoning folk boom in the US might provide Hooker with an opportunity, and also realised that it was not the label to facilitate it, so it licensed Hooker out to the New York company Riverside, which extended Hooker’s reach into a white audience through two albums, the first of which, The Country Blues Of, included another John Lee Hooker playlist staple, ‘Tupelo Blues’: a much-revisited song about a flood in the Mississippi town Elvis Presley had been born in. The song possessed a sense of history just like ‘Natchez Burning’ had for Howlin’ Wolf, establishing Hooker as a man with roots.

Hooker ’n Heat

By the late 60s, the hippie generation was returning to the roots of rock’n’roll, and Canned Heat, perhaps the band most steeped in Hooker’s boogie style, cut a double-LP with the singer, Hooker’n’Heat, the first of several they’d make together – and the first of his high-profile collaborations to feature on this John Lee Hooker playlist. It featured a fine version of ‘Whiskey And Wimmen’.

To Hooker, it was Groundhog Day: he’d already recorded with white bands he’d inspired, having cut an album in London with The Groundhogs in ’64. They’d named themselves after his ‘Ground Hog Blues’. There’s a bit of a cheat going on here. Hooker ’n Heat is actually a full album – a double set, in fact – rather than a single song. In 1971, when Hooker was living in LA, he met the members of the boogie-rock band Canned Heat. Together, they cut a classic, 17-track set that contains some of the star’s most committed performances, as well as some of his most intuitive collaborative works. Together, that resulted in Hooker’s first charted album. In deference to his genius, the band gives all of side one to him alone. For side two, the Canned Heat member’s Alan Wilson comes in on piano and harmonica; in the final songs, the whole band chimes in. It culminates in a sprawling, 11-minute rethink on Hooker’s very first record, Boogie Chillen No 2, demonstrating just how far, and free, his vamps could roam.

He couldn’t boast the effortless authority of Muddy Waters. He wasn’t an outlandish marketable character like Bo Diddley. He couldn’t terrify you from across the hall like Howlin’ Wolf. But John Lee Hooker was a blues survivor who’d rock you to the socks that were poking out of the hole in your soles; he was street-smart, adaptable, even crafty. And armed with nothing but a guitar and his dark, moody, mumblin’, barking voice, he’d make you dance with: ‘Boogie Chillen’, as he once called it. but isn’t the blues a noble cry of the poor African-American who is suffering? Hell yes, but Hooker’s telling us if you got feet, you can use them to beat the blues.

Hooker’s final album before he passed away, in 2001, was Don’t Look Back, a moving affair that nonetheless still bore his boogie-and-coulda-bin trademarks. The title track might have been ironic, as Hooker was doubtless aware of his impending demise. And he was looking back: he’d recorded the song before, but it had never sounded like this. Now it was a spiritual affair and an apt finale to a unique career