Todays Featured Blues Artist: Todays Featured Blues Artist - John Lee Hooker

100 Featured Blues Artist: Todays Featured Blues Artist - John Lee Hooker

He was beloved worldwide as the king of the endless boogie, a genuine blues superstar whose droning, hypnotic one-chord grooves were at once both ultra-primitive and timeless. But John Lee Hooker recorded in a great many more styles than that over a career that stretched across more than half a century.
"The Hook" was a Mississippi native who became the top gent on the Detroit blues circuit in the years following World War II. The seeds for his eerily mournful guitar sound were planted by his stepfather, Will Moore, while Hooker was in his teens. Hooker had been singing spirituals before that, but the blues took hold and simply wouldn't let go. Overnight visitors left their mark on the youth, too: legends like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Blind Blake, who all knew Moore.

Hooker heard Memphis calling while he was still in his teens, but he couldn't gain much of a foothold there. So he relocated to Cincinnati for a seven-year stretch before making the big move to the Motor City in 1943. Jobs were plentiful, but Hooker drifted away from day gigs in favor of playing his unique free-form brand of blues. A burgeoning club scene along Hastings Street didn't hurt his chances any.

In 1948, the aspiring bluesman hooked up with entrepreneur Bernie Besman, who helped him hammer out his solo debut sides, "Sally Mae" and its seminal flip, "Boogie Chillen." This was blues as primitive as anything then on the market; Hooker's dark, ruminative vocals were backed only by his own ringing, heavily amplified guitar and insistently pounding foot. Their efforts were quickly rewarded. Los Angeles-based Modern Records issued the sides and "Boogie Chillen" -- a colorful, unique travelogue of Detroit's blues scene -- made an improbable jaunt to the very peak of the R&B charts.

Modern released several more major hits by "the Boogie Man" after that: "Hobo Blues" and its raw-as-an-open wound flip, "Hoogie Boogie"; "Crawling King Snake Blues" (all three 1949 smashes); and the unusual 1951 chart-topper "I'm in the Mood," where Hooker overdubbed his voice three times in a crude early attempt at multi-tracking.

But Hooker never, ever let something as meaningless as a contract stop him for making recordings for other labels. His early catalog is stretched across a road map of diskeries so complex that it's nearly impossible to fully comprehend (a vast array of recording aliases don't make things any easier).


Continue Reading Bio Here... http://www.allmusic.com/artist/john-lee-hooker-mn0000815039

 John Lee Hooker
"the Boogie Man"
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John Lee Hooker
and the "Rolling Stones"
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  Down In The Alley.
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John Lee Hooker
at the Mandolin Cafe'
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 Demonstrating his favorite chord.
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Looking menacing for the camera.
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John Lee Hooker
and Boogie Chillen'
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Well it has been a long HOT, tough week without electricity, cable TV and internet service for most of us in the Mid-Atlantic Region.  Being located in the Metro DC area, it has been brutally HOT with temperatures up into the 100's and when you're without airconditioning, wow, it can be so uncomfortable in the evenings trying to sleep.

Now, I've been lost not being able to do my regular research and posting for my followers so tonight is a treat for me.  I want wish all of you a Happy 4th of July Holiday tomorrow.  I hope you enjoy the festivities, whatever you have planned for the day and evening.

So until next time, "Remember to Keep Your Boogie On".

MUSICIAN by Night

"Help Keep The Blues Alive"