At first, he ran into problems having to work with other musicians as it cramped his improvisational style of performance. Nevertheless, he soon learned to adapt his style to accommodate other players and continued his early success. During the sixties, he was able to cash in on the folk revival by utilizing his one-man show persona, but the demand for the more traditional types of Blues was on the wan and soon dried up altogether.
After more than a decade of no new John Lee Hooker releases, The Healer – featuring Hooker and various contemporary musicians like Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder was released in 1990, and thus marking the beginning of his second career, which would last until his death in 2001. Ironically, it was during these last years of his life that he achieved the most renown winning Grammies, getting a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It was almost as if the music business was trying to make up for fifty years of neglecting Black artists by pouring heaps of recognition upon one of the few surviving members of the fraternity. After all these years of playing and struggling, John Lee Hooker's style of Blues music was being heard and recognised by more people in a short space of time than had heard it during his whole career to that point.
A new double CD release of John Lee Hooker's recordings from the Detroit era, King Of The Boogie, captures the sound perfectly. A few tracks feature some sparse accompaniment but primarily we are listening to the man himself ripping through the familiar "Boogie Chillen," "Boom Boom," and less well know pieces like "Do My Baby Think Of Me?"
No matter the song, this collection captures the essential components of what made a Hooker song such a unique experience as compared to so many of his contemporaries and those who would follow in his footsteps. Ry Cooder referred to him as "the last of those unstructured, free players", meaning that his music still held true to its rawest and most essential elements.
Article comments
1 - Jim mcAllister
I agreee with the writer about John Lee Hooker. As much as he was fussed over in later life he should have been studied even more intently because he was a "living Fossil" so to speak. Like the alligator that has existed unchanged for millions of years, John Lee Hooker was a classic example of how Blues was played when it was first developed as a new form of music. He stubbornly refused to become contemporary, despite the industry pairing him up with all and sundry. No matter who he played with his style never changed. I've no doubt that his step-father was an actual Blues originator who was there when it was being conceived at the turn of the 20th Century. He taught the young John Lee what he himself had learned and for whatever reason John didn't feel he needed anything else. So we had in our midst a living example of the way it was done, as authentic as any lost Robert Johnson recording. John Lee was boogie-ing before it was even called that.