John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker was born August 22, 1917 in Coahoma County, near the blues mecca of Clarksdale, MS. He was first exposed to gospel music from his father. John Lee began studying under his stepfather William Moore, a popular blues musician in the area. William Moore taught his young stepson to play the guitar. John Lee later credited Moore for his unique style on the instrument. Some of Moore’s blues peers, including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Blind Blake passed through and were house guests during their travels.
These musicians influenced Hooker profoundly. Exposed to the early blues tradition of Son House, Robert Johnson, and Charley Patton, Hooker left Mississippi for Memphis while still in his teens. Through the 1930s, Hooker lived in Memphis, Tennessee and played on Beale Street and occasionally performed at house parties. Hooker lived and worked there but couldn’t gain much of a foothold on its blues scene. He relocated to Cincinnati for seven years before making the big move to Detroit, the Motor City, in 1942.
He found work at Ford Motor Company in Detroit during World War II. His factory job brought in enough bread to replace his acoustic guitar with an electric one. In the late 1940s, Hooker became a staple of the Detroit blues scene and began to consider himself a professional musician. T-Bone Walker, the pioneering electric blues guitarist, became a friend and mentor to Hooker and gifted him his first electric guitar. Hooker began playing his unique free-form brand of blues in bars. A burgeoning club scene along Hastings Street didn’t hurt his chances any.
Hooker became the house talent at hot spot Henry’s Swing Club. In 1948, the aspiring bluesman, was seen by Elmer Barbee, a Black Detroit record store owner. Barbee wanted to recorded one of Hooker’s tune, “Boogie Chillen,” based on a song he had once heard his stepfather Moore play. They took the song to Bernard Bessman of Sensation Records and Hooker recorded the song for Sensation. They also recorded another song by Hooker, “Sally Mae“. With those two songs, Hooker began recording for the Modern Records label in Detroit around 1949.
The first song they recorded, “Boogie Chillen” became his breakthrough hit, selling over one million copies. Hooker followed up with an even bigger hit, “I’m in the Mood” (1951), as well as with other releases under his own name and under pseudonyms. About a year later Hooker signed a contract with Modern Records in Los Angeles for an advance of $1000. Between 1949 and 1951, Hooker had three hits for Modern: “Hobo Blues,” “In The Mood,” and “Crawling Kingsnake“. In 1959, he released his debut record album, “I’m John Lee Hooker,” and ushered in yet another new stage of his career.
Now that his music was accessible to people across the world, Hooker gained a legion of new fans, many of them living overseas. During the 1960s Hooker was part of the British blues movement, traveling to Europe to play alongside such artists as B. B. King, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters. John Lee Hooker was well known to the English blues men and to the American Woodstock crowd as well. In 1962 he toured Europe for the first time with the American Folk Blues Festival.
Ultimately, John Lee Hooker recorded many, many albums, probably more than any other of the early bluesmen. Yet he often is left out of the conversation when we talk of the most-influential of the originators of the blues. He clearly was a big factor in spreading the blues, particularly his “boogie” style. It was partly because he was from Detroit and not Chicago. During a 50-year career, he melded regional sounds from the Delta, Detroit, and Chicago in a trademark, oft-imitated approach.