John Lee Hooker  1917(?) - 2001

On this day, John Lee Hooker died in his sleep, and started a long term engagement in the great blues bar in the sky...

I have seen many of the blues greats perform in my time, I have even known one or two, but no one quite got to me on stage the way Johnny Lee did the first time I saw him play.

It was comparatively late on in his career, at the London Blues Festival of 1984, a one off show at The Hammersmith Odeon on a bill that also featured Bobby Blue Bland and BB King. John Lee had his 'Coast To Coast' band spluttering away and he approached the edge of the stage barking out to the audience "You don't give me no satisfaction". I felt like I should rush up to him and apologise on everyone elses behalf. His stage prescence was incredible, his voice so deep. The way down deep deep blues, as he himself might have said. When he played 'Boom Boom' a personal ambition of mine had been fulfilled. Later, Mr Bland and BB would give us fine yet Vegas tinged shows, but I realised that John Lee was the real thing that night!

A few years later, and I was living in the USA, playing out my own blues fantasies, playing the mid West bar band circuit. I saw John Lee Hooker again, playing in front of 200 people in Indianapolis. It was not a great gig, with John scarcely interested in proceedings, but a month or two later, I saw him again, and this time, the man was engaged, baiting the audience, and regaling us with oft forgotten classic blues such as 'TB Sheets'. In the meantime, I had met Yank Rachell, a blues mandolin player whose recording career went all the way back to 1929. All had been sweetness and light till he asked me who my favourite players were. He had even heard of Peter Green,  my own favourite, but when I mentioned John Lee Hooker, the mood changed. It seems the two of them had some kind of dispute (over a woman, I was led to believe) going back to 1954. No love lost there, and just another episode in the story of the blues.

John Lee Hooker has left an extraordinarily rich recorded legacy, spanning the time in the late 40's when he recorded 'Boogie Chillun', right up to a year or so ago. All those amazing early 50's sides recorded under names such as 'Johnny Lee', 'John Lee Booker' and the like. There is the stuff that came out on Chess, the folk blues recordings of the early 60's, the strange loud band recordings of the later 60's, and latterly, the celeb fuelled albums that brought his music to a dfifferent generation, and a different audience. John Lee Hooker was one of the most significant blues performers ever, a great American entertainer, and by all accounts one heck of a man. Listen to the music, read the wonderful biography by Charles Shaar Murray, and enter the world of the blues, where everything is possible, and some of it is even legal. Thanks John Lee.
 
 

 
 

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