Revisit: John Lee Hooker: King of the Boogie
ABOUT THE EXHIBIT
The GRAMMY Museum celebrated the centennial of legendary GRAMMY-winning bluesman, John Lee Hooker, with the opening of John Lee Hooker: King of the Boogie, on Aug. 22, 2017, at GRAMMY Museum Mississippi in Cleveland, Miss., Hooker’s home state. The exhibit opened on what would have been the late blues icon’s 100th birthday and celebrated Hooker’s lasting legacy through rare recordings, photos, and one-of-a-kind artifacts.
The centennial celebration continued in Los Angeles when John Lee Hooker: King of the Boogie opened at the GRAMMY Museum at LA Live on March 29, 2018. The exhibit then traveled to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Exhibit Locations and Duration:
GRAMMY Museum Mississippi (August 22, 2017 – February 18, 2018)
GRAMMY Museum at LA Live (March 29, 2018 – June 2018)
Woody Guthrie Center, Tulsa, OK (May 8, 2019 – August 5, 2019)
JOHN LEE HOOKER: KING OF THE BOOGIE
John Lee Hooker helped define the post-World War II electric blues with his hypnotic, one-chord grooves that were at once both ultra-primitive and modern. Born near Clarksdale, MS, on August 22, 1917, he learned the blues and the beat he called “country boogie” from his stepfather William Moore, a local musician who was friendly with bluesmen such as Charley Patton, Blind Blake, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. As a teenager, Hooker ran away to Memphis, finally settling in Detroit in 1943. His first hit, “Boogie Chillen,” was released in 1948. As primal as any blues ever recorded, it became an unlikely hit for Modern Records and Hooker’s career had begun in earnest. Other hits followed, including “Crawling King Snake Blues,” “I’m in the Mood,” and, in 1962, “Boom Boom.” By that point, rock musicians had discovered the “boogie” and British Invasion bands like the Rolling Stones and the Animals acknowledged Hooker’s influence and covered his songs. In 1989, Hooker recorded The Healer, an album that included guest artists such as Carlos Santana, Los Lobos, and Robert Cray. The result was a full career renaissance that culminated in a GRAMMY Award and headlining appearances at major festivals and clubs around the world. John Lee Hooker was a true pioneer and the bridge from the rural sounds of the Mississippi Delta to the urban, electric blues we know today.
THE BLUES
The blues originated on Southern plantations in the 19th century, likely evolving from African spirituals, chants, field hollers, rural fife and drum, and country dance music. Legend has it that pianist and composer W.C. Handy encountered an itinerant guitarist while waiting for a train at a Mississippi railroad station in 1903. He heard the man sing while accompanying himself with a knife pressed against the strings of the guitar, describing it as “the weirdest music I had ever heard.” This is likely the first known account of what we now understand as the Delta Blues. Spreading from the South to the urban areas of the Midwest in the 1930s and ‘40s, the blues evolved and electrified (Muddy Waters, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker), giving birth to R&B and ultimately, rock & roll. John Lee Hooker’s evolution as a musician, from the rural Delta to urban Detroit, mirrored a revolution in music.
EARLY YEARS – FROM MISSISSIPPI TO DETROIT
John Lee Hooker was one of 11 children in a sharecropper family on a cotton plantation. His sister’s boyfriend, Tony Hollins, gave Hooker his first guitar at age seven and introduced him to fundamental blues themes. Following his parents’ split, his mother married Will Moore, a guitarist and local “bluesman” who was believed to have played with Charley Patton and Blind Blake. Moore taught his young stepson the elements of a gritty and haunting Delta guitar style that Hooker would explore for the rest of his life. Hooker recognized that his future was limited if he stayed in Mississippi, and as a teenager, he ran away to become a musician. He first went to Memphis, then on to Cincinnati at the end of the 1930s, where he sang with gospel groups like the Fairfield Four and the Big Six, before moving to Detroit in the late 1930s. He found work in the steel and automobile factories, playing house parties and clubs on weekends as part of a burgeoning Detroit blues scene. It would be just a few years before he would begin to make his mark in music.
EARLY RECORDINGS
John Lee Hooker‘s first electric guitar was a gift from the legendary guitarist T-Bone Walker. A gift that allowed Hooker the opportunity to merge the rural blues he knew with the urgency and driving energy of his urban surroundings. After becoming a fixture on the Detroit blues scene, Hooker made his first recording for Bernard Besman, a Detroit music distributor and label owner in 1948. He immediately struck gold with his song “Boogie Chillen.” The raw, riveting sound was like nothing else on the radio or in jukeboxes at the time and reached No. 1 on the R&B charts in 1949. Subsequent hits included “Crawlin’ King Snake,” “Hobo Blues,” “I’m in the Mood,” (a million-selling single in 1951), “Dimples,” and, in 1962, “Boom Boom.”
BOOGIE BLUES
John Lee Hooker acknowledged that his hypnotic, one chord boogie groove came directly from Will Moore. “I got that from my stepdad. That was his tune, that was his beat.” The strength of his songs is found in his deeply personal approach to making music. Whether primitive and almost free-form (“Boogie Chillen”), or hewing more closely to traditional blues structures (“Boom Boom”), Hooker’s music invariably included the “beat,” often created by his own insistent foot-stomping. Hooker’s boogie and blues style came out of the soil of the Delta, traveled up the Mississippi River to the urban north and across the Atlantic. By the 1960s, British Invasion artists such as Van Morrison and Eric Burdon & the Animals, juxtaposed what they heard and reflected something uniquely their own: a new kind of rock & roll.
MUSICAL RENAISSANCE AND LATER YEARS
The folk revival of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s introduced Hooker to white audiences. His international popularity grew with tours behind the release of his albums in markets overseas. Hooker moved to Northern California, but in the ‘70s and ‘80s, rock & roll was ascendant and, for a time, demand for blues music was on the decline. In 1989, Hooker recorded The Healer, which saw him join forces with contemporary artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, Robert Cray, and Los Lobos. The Healer became one of the biggest-selling blues albums of all time, with Hooker’s songs appearing on soundtracks and ads for major brands. Hooker won a GRAMMY Award for a duet with Raitt on “I’m in the Mood.” He was never more popular or more in-demand, all of this a remarkable achievement for an artist approaching the sixth decade of his career.
LASTING LEGACY
John Lee Hooker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. He received two more GRAMMY Awards in 1998 for his album Don’t Look Back and for a duet of the same name with Van Morrison. In 2000, the Recording Academy presented Hooker with a Lifetime Achievement Award. His syncopated riffs have become a cornerstone of rock, and artists from Bonnie Raitt and Eric Clapton, to Carlos Santana, B.B. King, Van Morrison, Keith Richards, and many others acknowledge him as the last connection to the blues roots from which they built their careers. He made the blues his personal story, lifting the burden of his audience by sharing his own. At the time of his passing in 2001, John Lee Hooker had recorded more than 500 tracks, making him one of the most recorded and influential blues musicians of all time.
“We all got to go one day. We live out this life as long as we can and try to make the best of it. Simple as that. That’s what I’ve done. All my life, just try to make the best of it.”
