Authors: Charles Shaar Murray
Boogie Man
Charles Shaar Murray is an award-winning author, journalist, musician and cultural infidel: ‘the rock critic’s rock critic’ (
Q Magazine
),
‘front-line cultural warrior’ and ‘original gunslinger’ (
Independent on Sunday
). He first appeared in print in 1970 in the notorious ‘School-kids’ issue
of
OZ
magazine. By 1972, he was working for
NME
, subsequently becoming Associate Editor.
Crosstown Traffic
, his acclaimed study of Jimi Hendrix, won the prestigious Ralph J.
Gleason Music Book Award in 1990: a decade later,
Boogie Man
was shortlisted for the same award. The first two decades of his ‘journalism, criticism and vulgar abuse’, to use his
own description, were collected in
Shots from the Hip
. In 2010 he received a Record Of The Day for his contributions to music journalism and a novel,
The Hellhound Sample
, appeared in
2011. He is currently at work on a ‘somewhat unconventional’ book about The Clash and playing blues guitar with his band Crosstown Lightnin’. He aspires to be the missing link
between George Orwell and Robert Johnson.
http://charlesshaarmurray.com/
This edition published in 2011 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Copyright © Charles Shaar Murray, 1999, 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by the Penguin Group
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85786 203 7
eISBN 978 0 85786 204 4
This digital edition first published by Canongate in 2011
Join the discussion
:
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Dedicated to the Memory of
KATHY ACKER
(1947–1997)
and
AGNES SCHAAR MURRAY
(1912–1997)
and to
ANNA CHEN
Here’s looking at you, comrade . . .
forever, babes
CONTENTS
2. Bluebird, Bluebird, Take a Letter Down South for Me
5. When I First Come to Town, People
6. ‘Boogie Chillen’ Came Out Burnin’
14. Hey, You Just Gotta Make the Change: Iron John and the Healing Game
FOREWORD
I Fought The Lore And The Lore Won
In the months immediately preceding the preparation of this new edition of
Boogie Man
, two things happened. The first was that I received a communication from a reader in
the US which reopened questions I’d previously considered settled.
It suggested that newly discovered documentary information implied that the birthdate I’d been given for John Lee Hooker was inaccurate, and that he had been born in 1911 or 1912, rather
than 1917 – and was therefore actually five or six years older than previously thought. This would radically reshape the chronology of my narrative – the primary source for which was,
of course, John Lee Hooker himself and members of his immediate family – thereby overturning quite a few applecarts, since, as part of the agreement struck with John Lee’s then-manager,
Mike Kappus, when this project was first mooted, I had made a commitment to construct the narrative around John Lee’s own version of events unless I could come up with solid evidence to the
contrary.
This fresh revelation would mean that John Lee could’ve gotten to Detroit a few years earlier than he claimed in our interviews: some other sources have placed his arrival in his adopted
hometown as early as 1937. It would also invalidate John Lee’s own account of his military service (which you’ll find in Chapter 5) because, obviously, if he had been five years older
he wouldn’t have been underage, and therefore the entire anecdote would be ceremonially blown out of the water.
A promising Google link tantalisingly offers the snippet
that ‘later he avoided military service in World War II due to a stabbing wound’, but the site in question (Nothin’ But The Blues at http://www.t4p.com/blues/artists.html) offers
no further elucidation. If this was indeed the case, the wound in question may well have been the hand-tendon injury inflicted by his then-wife Maude and mentioned by Zakiya Hooker in Chapter
8.
Also . . . when John Lee made his triumphant return to the cultural forefront in 1989 with
The Healer
, his ‘official’ birthdate was given in contemporary press releases as
1920, which would’ve made him 69 years old. Even with the ‘revised official’ birthdate of 1917, he would’ve been 72 . . . and if my correspondent’s information could
be properly verified and authenticated, John Lee would have been all of 77 at the time, which makes his achievement all the more astonishing and impressive. So when he eventually passed away in
2001 – having outlived, among others, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon and two (Albert and Freddie) of the Three Kings – he had reached the seriously impressive age of 89:
still performing, still able to rock a house to the bone and raise the spirits and consciousness of an audience at a time in life when most of his few surviving contemporaries could, sadly, barely
lift a spoon. He would also have been a fractionally closer contemporary of Robert Johnson, T-Bone Walker and Howlin’ Wolf than of Muddy Waters or Willie Dixon, let alone B.B. King.
Well . . . I replied to my correspondent, requesting his permission to reproduce the relevant portions of his communication in this new edition and credit him fully for his research. Literally
days before our final production deadline, he got back in touch to tell me that he had been unable to verify his preliminary findings to his own satisfaction, and was therefore unwilling to commit
himself (or me!) to them.
So there the matter rests, so to speak. Good old John . . . a man of mystery to the last, and beyond.
I mentioned two things. The other is that, on 27 February 2011, Hooker’s former collaborator and running buddy Eddie Kirkland died in Florida after a Greyhound bus
smashed into his Ford Taurus. True to form, the Road Warrior was driving himself to a gig. He was 87 years old.
That was one tough generation.
‘I’ll be here forever, but my body won’t.’ About that, at least, John Lee was entirely right. His art was indeed immortal, and he
is
still here:
or, to be precise, his voice and his songs are still very much with us, as is his brooding image on film. What isn’t here anymore is his sheer physical presence: hugely impressive but never
imposing; towering but never overbearing. I’m thinking both of his physical presence in a room during our many hours of conversation (both on- and off-tape) and socialising, and the presence
he could bring to a stage, be it in blazing afternoon sunshine at open-air festivals or under the late-night mood lighting of intimate clubs and theatres.
As I’ve said, here and elsewhere, John Lee Hooker was deeply mysterious. Not the ersatz trick-lighting-smoke-and-mirrors mysteriousness of a stage magician, but the genuine broad-daylight
mysteriousness of a
real
magician. He could, and did, explain exactly what he was doing and how he was doing it . . . and not one iota of the mystery would be dispelled.
Now, because my agent tells me that folks love lists, allow me to leave you with my own entirely personal and infinitely subjective mini-list of my half-dozen favourite covers and
reinterpretations of John Lee Hooker’s songs.
Covering his compositions is a tricky business, to be sure. Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, let alone the simultaneously sainted and damned Robert
Johnson, were also hugely distinctive performers as well
as gifted and eloquent songwriters – hell, while we’re at it we could also toss in Bob Dylan, Lennon &
McCartney and a regiment more – but hundreds, if not thousands, of performers have managed to sing their songs without having to travel deep into their musical landscapes and specifically
engage with the spirit of the originals.
Hooker is different. With the exception of a few bar-band staples which can be rocked-up a treat by any halfway-competent group (‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Dimples’ come
immediately to mind), composition and performance are virtually indivisible. The only real options open to most performers would be either to mimic Hooker (which sounds ridiculous) or to obliterate
him (which reduces the songs to generic boogies with cute lyrics). The only way it can work is for the performer to delve deep within him- (or her-)self to find an aspect of that self which can
connect with some aspect of Hooker. The easiest to reach is his dark, ominous, brooding side, with its undercurrents of lust and anger. The hardest, and most elusive, is his warmth, compassion and
humour.
Six, therefore, of the very,
very
best.
JUNIOR PARKER & THE BLUE FLAMES:
‘Feelin’ Good’ (1953)
Not so much a ‘cover’ as an audacious ‘Parkerising’ of Hooker’s ‘Boogie Chillen’, this primo example of pre-Elvis Sun Records
Memphis R&B speeds the sensuous, hip-twitching lope of Hooker’s original groove up to a faster-rocking itchy-foot kind of boogie messaround which still preserves the ethos of the
original.
THE ANIMALS: ‘I’m Mad Again’ (1964)
For a chubby kid from Newcastle to attempt not only to sing John Lee Hooker songs but also to redeliver one of his most idiosyncratic dramatic monologues would’ve
been a spectacular
act of hubris if Eric Burdon hadn’t pulled off this variation on the ‘Bad Like Jesse James’ theme so impressively. This bravura
performance appeared on The Animals’ very first album as one of no less than three Hooker reinterpretations, alongside rocking covers of both ‘Boom Boom’ (with which they enjoyed
a medium-sized US hit single) and ‘Dimples’. The latter also served as Steve Winwood’s pro recording debut (albeit medleyed up with ‘Boom Boom’) on the very first
single by The Spencer Davis Group. In a rare triumph for natural justice, it was Hooker’s own original and timeless 1956 recording ‘Dimples’ which came out on top in the UK
singles chart.