John Lee Hooker: An Appreciation
By Peter Stone Brown/Gadfly Online


John Lee Hooker's death is tragic not so much for the loss of one of
the
greatest blues artists, but because there are so few of the original
blues
masters left. Yes, there will be blues bands across the country and
the
world
playing his songs whether "Boom Boom," "Dimples," "One Bourbon, One
Scotch,
One Beer" or "Boogie Chillun" for some time to come. Blues societies
and
other
organizations will try to keep the tradition going. Young musicians
will
listen to his records and try to do what he did, and they may
approximate
the sound,
but they won't be able to touch it.

Hooker lived to be 83 (two months shy of 84), died peacefully at
home, and
unlike most of his fellow blues artists received recognition, honors,
and
apparently enough money to have a couple of homes in California and a
fleet
of
expensive cars. The recognition and money came late in his life, but
at
least
he had some time to enjoy it.

Hooker was perhaps the epitome of the blues-solitary, mysterious,
deep,
dark,
spooky and scary. He wasn't a first-time easy listen. You had to work
your
way
into his stuff and let him get to you. But once he got to you there
was no
letting go. He was the 3 a.m. crying whisper in the night with an
empty
bottle
of whiskey. He was the lone figure on the deserted endless highway
with
nowhere to go and no one to go to.

Hooker made hundreds of records for hundreds of labels under all
kinds of
names, and his greatest records weren't the ones he was famous for.
Hooker
was
best playing alone or maybe with another guitarist, or just a bass
and a
drummer. But he didn't need anyone else. All he needed was his voice,
his
guitar and his stomping foot. He could shout when he had to, but he
wasn't
a
blues shouter. He seemed to sing as naturally as he spoke and in his
voice
you
could feel both the steamy Mississippi swamps and the cold, hard
Detroit
streets.

He could get more sounds of one chord than any guitar player on
earth, and
his
big Gibson hollow body electric had a tone that was rawer and nastier
than
any
punk or metal band. In 1977, I had a chance to interview him at the
Main
Point
outside of Philly. I asked him how he got his sound. I'd been playing
along
with his records and trying to get my guitar to sound like that. I
was
hoping
he would say something like I turn the bass all the way up and the
treble
all
the way down, but he said, "I use different settings. I get that
funky
sound,
that funky settings. It's my style, nobody else got."

After the interview I went back to watch the second set and ran into
George
Thorogood. I said to Thorogood, "I asked him how he gets that sound."
George
laughed and said, "He doesn't know." And I realized Thorogood was
right.
He
didn't know. He could just do it. I think Hooker could've plugged any
guitar
into any amp and gotten that sound. It was in his fingers. Like Muddy
Waters
and Howling Wolf, he was a natural force.

I was lucky to see that show because it ended up being the only time
I saw
him
play alone, his crazy guitar licks reaching out like a crawling king
snake
curling around your spine.

I saw him a few more times after that, but it was never the same.
Whatever

band he had didn't know how to back him up. They forced him into
their
groove.
Hooker had his own sense of meter and his own sense of time. His
blues
were
never standard 12-bar blues, not even in the lyrics. One line would
be
long,
another short, another somewhere in between. It was almost comical.
The
band
would play the "Boom Boom" riff or one of Hooker's boogie riffs, and
he
would
go up to the mike, and shout "How how how how" or "Boogie Chillun,"
and
the
crowds whether in a bar or a festival would go nuts. The people who
thought
blues was about black hats and Wayfarer shades.

To hear the essence of the John Lee Hooker I'm talking about, check
out
the
album (available on CD) Don't Turn Me From Your Door, on Atco: ten
classic
songs from 1953 (originally issued on Deluxe) and six more for
Atlantic
recorded by Henry Stone. For one thing, the title track is a
brilliant
example
of how Hooker would take an existing song and turn it into something
totally
his own, which he also did with the ballad "I'm In The Mood For
Love,"
making
it "I'm In The Mood." In this case, "Don't Turn Me From Your Door" is
kind

of a combination of two songs that are close to hymns, "Wayfaring
Stranger"
and "I
Am A Pilgrim." Over a loping, bassy blues riff that you wouldn't want
to
encounter on the street at night alone, Hooker in the true folk
tradition
borrows lines from both songs, adds some of his own and ominously
mutters,

"I'm a stranger and a pilgrim/Traveling through this world alone/Got
no
place of my
own..." And it never lets up; in fact it gets more intense with each
line.
The
blues doesn't get any scarier or more isolated than this. Van
Morrison
would
later take this song and incorporate it into his song "Astral Weeks."

It's one of the sad injustices of the music business that the albums
Hooker
was honored for were the ones littered with various rock stars
sitting in
who may
have appreciated Hooker's music but didn't have a clue how to play
with
him,
except for Van Morrison and John Hammond.

When I met Hooker, he was a genuinely nice guy, happy to talk about
his
music
and grateful that people were interested. When I asked him about
Dylan
opening
for him at Gerdes Folk City, he said, "I heard he was gonna make it
and I
knowed he was gonna make it. I was the first man to put him on stage.
And
he
used to hang around with me every night and every day. I was livin'
at the
Broadway Somer Hotel right there on 4th Avenue and he would stay
right
there
with me and I had this big suite every night, him and his gal, the
one he
called Suze, Susan. He would stay right there and we'd have this
party
every
night and we'd play. He was so unusual. He had an unusual voice, and
he
could
write a helluva lyrics."

Hooker also had a sense of humor. In the mid-'80s, he played along
with
Spin
Magazine when they asked him about the style of dress of the white
blues
musicians, saying something along the lines of: they got it right,
but
none
of
those guys wear the see-through socks.

Whether Hooker's later records were great or not is beside the point.
He
enjoyed his role as elder statesman of the blues and he stayed true
to
himself
and knew who he was. As he told me in 1977, "I like playin' the blues
and
nothin' else. You gotta change with the times. I do a lot of boogie
blues,
but
I like it better just sittin' down and playin' the funky blues. I
like 'em
both, but I see the young kids and they like to dance so you gotta
boogie.
I
enjoy seein' the kids and they're havin' a lot of fun while we're
doing
it,
but I sit there and play a slow, slow blues to get 'em all in a
trance and
then
all of a sudden I hit 'em and they really move."