John Lee Hooker at 100: New Compilation Celebrates His ‘Finest’
Like any bluesman worth his salt, John Lee Hooker enveloped himself in a cloud of mystery. His backstory has the air of legend about it: the youngest son in a religious sharecropping family, his discovery of the blues as a teenager compelled him to run away from his Mississippi home, never to see his family again.
His nomadic existence makes his discography difficult to nail down, as Hooker bounced from city to city and label to label. He would record for anyone who’d pay him, using pseudonyms ranging from the flagrant (“John Lee Booker”) to the arcane (“Birmingham Sam and His Magic Guitar”).
This itinerant spirit also accounts for Hooker’s distinctive sound: he was never really part of a regional movement or defined by a particular label. Hooker departed from his roots in Delta blues by adopting an electric guitar and boogie groove, yet his stripped-down, primitive style (usually just his voice, his guitar, and his stomping feet) set him apart from the more polished sound of his contemporaries at Chess Records. Hooker was adept at the standard 12-bar blues, but his specialty was a more singular format, based on a single chord and his own idiosyncratic sense of timekeeping.
Census records indicate he was born around 1912, but as with so many things about Hooker, even that supposed fact is under dispute. The man himself claimed 1917 as the year of his birth, so in honor of that centennial comes the new 16-track compilation Whiskey & Wimmen: John Lee Hooker’s Finest, now available on compact disc and vinyl. Although Hooker’s recording career spanned half a century,
Although Hooker’s recording career spanned half a century, Whiskey & Wimmen focuses on his commercial peak in the mid-’50s through the early ’60s, when he was signed to the Chicago-based label Vee-Jay Records.
Hooker burst into the national consciousness with his very first record, 1948’s “Boogie Chillen.” Recorded in Detroit as a demo, its one-chord groove and minimalist arrangement sounded like nothing else — yet it topped the Billboard R&B chart and sold over a million copies to become best-selling “race record” of 1949.
After Hooker signed with Vee-Jay six years later, he cut a new version of his biggest hit. It’s that later version (retitled “Boogie Chillun”) that features on Whiskey & Wimmen, along with remakes of other early successes “I’m in the Mood” and “Crawlin’ Kingsnake.”
Hooker’s time at Vee-Jay wasn’t just spent rehashing past glories, however. The label sparked one of the biggest transitions in his career, fleshing out his sound courtesy of labelmate Jimmy Reed’s backing band. While Hooker was firmly entrenched on the “blues” side of rhythm & blues, the full band sound helped align him with the contemporary sounds of R&B and rock ‘n’ roll. In 1958, Hooker earned his first chart hit in seven years with “I Love You Honey.” Two years later, he notched another R&B Top 30 entry with the plaintive “No Shoes.”
Hooker was based in Detroit during his Vee-Jay period, so it was almost inevitable that he’d cross paths with the fledgling Motown sound. In early 1960, he reworked Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want)” — not yet Motown’s breakthrough — into the blues “I Need Some Money.”
Two years later, Motown would return the favor. Accounts vary as the whether the backing vocals on “Frisco Blues” (a riff on “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”) were performed by Martha & the Vandellas or by the Supremes’ Mary Wilson with the Andantes; either way, they nudge Hooker towards soul without betraying his individualistic style.
The most notable Motown collaboration, however, would result in the song that would become Hooker’s signature. In late 1961, members of Motown house band the Funk Brothers (including bassist James Jamerson and drummer Benny Benjamin) ventured to Chicago to cut a track at the Vee-Jay studios.
“Boom Boom” is another one of Hooker’s one-chord wonders, built around a start-stop rhythm and punctuated with the singer’s much-imitated vocal riffs (“how-how-how-how”). In addition to becoming Hooker’s biggest R&B hit in a decade, it crossed over into the pop charts, peaking at #60 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962.
Beyond its chart success, “Boom Boom” brought Hooker to the attention of the rock ‘n’ roll crowd. “Boom Boom” and “Boogie Chillun” would be frequent targets for covers, imitations, and knock-offs, as would “Dimples,” a strutting uptempo track Hooker cut in 1956, at one of his first Vee-Jay sessions.
Hooker’s popularity among British Invasion acts like the Animals and the Rolling Stones led to a reissue of “Dimples” in 1964, where it climbed to #23 on the UK singles chart.
In addition to such other Vee-Jay favorites as “Time is Marching,” “Big Legs, Tight Skirt,” and the title track, Whiskey & Wimmen does feature a couple of outside tracks from the era. A cover of the Roscoe Gordon hit “No More Doggin’,” cut in Detroit in 1954 for Specialty Records, appears on the compilation, as does “Grinder Man,” recorded in Miami in 1961 and released on Stax (of all places) in 1969. “Grinder Man,” a reworking of Memphis Slim’s 1941 classic “Grinder Man Blues,” is especially essential, benefitting from Hooker’s repetitive, down-and-dirty delivery.
Hooker cut his last session for Vee-Jay in mid-1964, with the single “It Serves Me Right” released late the following year. Afterward, he would pivot between simpler country blues and a jazzier take on the full-band sound he had explored at Vee-Jay.
The following decade, Hooker began joining forces with rock acts he had influenced, including 1971’s Canned Heat collaboration Hooker ’n Heat and 1989’s The Healer, featuring Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, and Los Lobos. Nevertheless, Hooker’s time at Vee-Jay would be the core of his recording career. Whiskey & Wimmen may not represent Hooker’s entire output, but it nails his one-of-a-kind blues essence.
Get your copy of Whiskey & Wimmen: John Lee Hooker’s Finest on Amazon.
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Guy Smiley