Remembering John Lee Hooker on his Birthday

Remembering American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist, John Lee Hooker on his Birthday (August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001).

John Lee Hooker and Bonnie Raitt – I’m in the Mood – 1991.

John Lee Hooker: “I don’t like no fancy chords. Just the boogie. The drive. The feeling. A lot of people play fancy but they don’t have no style. It’s a deep feeling-you just can’t stop listening to that sad blues sound. My sound.”

A Birthday shout-out to John Lee Hooker, born August 22, 1917 (that’s the commonly accepted year; other years put forth as possible include 1912, 1915, 1920 and 1923) –

Said to have run away from home at the age of fourteen, he settled down in Detroit during World War II, and recorded his first 78 in 1948.

John Lee Hooker And Van Morrison – Baby Please Don’t Go – 1992.

One of the most prolific recording artists in any genre, he cut hundreds of sides between 1948 and 1952 for a slew of different labels under a wide array of pseudonyms from the obvious, John Lee Booker to the surreal, Little Pork Chops –

In 1955 he signed with Vee-Jay Records and stayed with them for nine years.

He may have been unschooled, but he understood the music business and was among the first to collaborate with rock bands and to reinvent himself as a “folk-blues” performer, unplugging his guitar and reworking his catalog in acoustic re-recordings.

As the decades rolled on, he kept on recording before settling into semi-retirement in the early eighties, and that might have been the end of an already remarkable story, but in 1987 guitarist / producer Roy Rogers brought him back into the studio with numerous special guests, including Bonnie Raitt, Canned Heat, Los Lobos and Carlos Santana to record “The Healer”. An unexpected commercial smash, Hooker improbably became the second most recognized elder statesman of the blues behind B. B. King –

With the volume of material that Hooker recorded at his sessions, it is small wonder that record labels were able to rummage through their vaults and turn up LPs worth of unreleased material after Hooker became a viable commercial prospect again.

Hooker had first recorded for the Chess label in 1960 and returned for more sessions in 1966. They released (some) of the tracks under the title “The Real Folk Blues”. At the time, the label was reissuing early acoustic recordings of their biggest names, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf amongst them, under that banner.

But Hooker’s was a band session, featuring Eddie Burns on second guitar. Oh well.

In 1991, the label released an additional nine songs from the 1966 sessions under the title “More Real Folk Blues – The Missing Album”.

It is pianist Lafayette Leake who provides the musical waves that Hooker rides upon on this number.