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John Lee Hooker (1915-2001)Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, living in Memphis and Cincinnati before arriving in Detroit in 1943 to work in an auto plant, Hooker had been a part time bluesman since his teens and sung in various gospel quartets without ever recording.
John Lee played around Detroit for a few years and attracted the attention of Bernie Besman who ran a small label and leased recordings to other labels. Consequently Hooker's first ever recordings where leased to the Modern label of Los Angeles by Besman, and "Boogie Chillin'"(listen) was released at the end of 1948, and out of nowhere he had the hottest R&B record in the country, he was 28 and a fully-formed musician. He played a standard acoustic guitar through a special chamber that sounded cranked and crisp in the top, more than amps normally could manage in those days, together with his voice and the beat it was irresistible.
Everybody wanted a piece of his music, and when a label had enough masters to last a while he practically moonlighted for other labels, and so to avoid lawsuits he masked his identity and came out under different names such as Texas Slim, Johnny Williams, The Boogie Man, Birmingham Sam and his Magic Guitar, even as John Lee Booker and plain John Lee. In his work for King as Texas Slim he made some misty acoustic recordings with a spooky ambiance in "Moaning Blues" and "Late Last Night". For Riverside he had a parallel career as an unplugged "folk blues" soloist and in 1960 he appeared on the Newport Folk Festival bill (listen). Encouraged by "Boom Boom"(listen) showing up on pop charts in Europe, he toured Europe with the first American Folk Blues in 1964. This was his first time in Europe, as well as the first of many trips to Britain and so in the late sixties he was a part of the electric blues mainstream in the folk-blues venture over composing songs about miniskirts and Vietnam.
John Lee was kept in the blues vanguard throughout the seventies thanks to the collaboration with white musicians like Canned Heat, (listen) Van Morrison (listen) and Elvin Bishop (listen). He practically vanished through the Eighties until supporters, his agent Mike Kappus and producer Roy Rogers conceived "The Healer" in 1989 the best selling blues album ever.
Most of his freelance recordings disappeared quickly, while his discs from Modern were distributed much better and consequently songs like "Hobo Blues"(listen), "Crawling Kingsnake" (listen) both from 1949, and "I'm In The Mood" from 1951 reached the R&B charts.
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