The original boogie man, John Lee Hooker (1917–2001) sustained a career of more than 50 years with his incessant one-chord stomp and half-spoken vocal style.

But behind the captivating, hypnotic rhythm, Hooker found his own deep blues – one with dark tones and mysterious flurries of notes – as he groped to express, often with a wicked irony, his own feelings of pain and desire. His style was particularly infectious among British blues bands of the 1960s, notably The Animals. In America, Canned Heat built a multi-platinum career out of Hooker’s boogie.

The youngest of 11 children, Hooker was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to a family of sharecroppers. After his parents separated, he learned guitar from his stepfather before leaving home for Memphis, followed by Cincinnati and Detroit, where he made his first recordings in 1948. ‘Boogie Chillen’ contained all the basic elements of his style and was a No. 1 rhythm and blues hit. Hooker immediately cashed in, recording for several different labels under a variety of pseudonyms (a laughable ploy, given his distinctive style), and had more hits with ‘Hobo Blues’, ‘Crawling Kingsnake’ (1949) and ‘I’m In The Mood’ (1951).

In the mid-1950s, Hooker started recording with an electric band, heightening the rhythmic emphasis of his boogie with songs like ‘Dimples’ and ‘Boom Boom’. When these records became successful in Britain in the 1960s, he toured the UK and Europe regularly. Meanwhile, he was enjoying a parallel career as a solo folk/blues artist in America, although by the end of the decade, he was back in the rock fold, thanks to the success of his disciples Canned Heat, who repaid their debt by recruiting him for Hooker ‘N’ Heat (1970).

Further collaborations with Van Morrison and guitarist Elvin Bishop maintained Hooker’s profile in the 1970s, but his career sagged in the 1980s, before a sudden and unlikely revival in 1989 with The Healer, which featured duets with Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, George Thorogood, Los Lobos and the remnants of Canned Heat. The album’s success set Hooker up for the 1990s, as Van Morrison, Keith Richards, Ry Cooder, Robert Cray and Albert Collins queued up to appear on subsequent albums, including Mr Lucky (1991), Boom Boom (1992) and Don't Look Back (1997). Hooker died in 2001 at the age of 83.

Essential Recordings

1948
Solo: ‘Boogie Chillen’

1956
Solo: ‘Dimples’

1970
with Canned Heat: Hooker ‘N’ Heat

1989
Solo: The Healer

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