Boogie Man (25 page)

And he changes chord again, breaking back into the sung melody: ‘
Let’s boogie-woogie while, while the band is jumpin’ on.
’ The guitar restates the intro –
wake up! –
and then slides into a trance-like repetition of a plangent blues lick. ‘
Boy, that chick can boogie-woogie
too,
’ Hooker
announces proudly. ‘
She started boogyin’, Suzy-Q-in’, jitter-buggin’ and
everything!

Then he shifts chord and moves back into the song:

The Arabic-boogie riff returns for an instant, then there’s a brief pause, lulling the listener into a sense of utterly false security . . . and then
blam!
one final chord.
It’s an astonishing, exquisite performance, but it wasn’t the one Besman wanted: that indefinable, unquantifiable, undeniable entity that is a sure-fire, can’t-miss,
all-conquering, no-argument hit single. That was when Besman took the key decision on which everything that followed depends: he demanded that Hooker perform one more take.

And
that’s
when Hooker cut ‘Boogie Chillen’.

In its own terms, the last side to emerge from that near-impromptu, spur-of-the-moment session is just about as perfect as it could be.
¹⁵
The
boogie-woogie bass-line has disappeared, and the essential Will Moore-derived guitar riff rules the tune from start
to finish. This time Hooker opens the piece with the sung
account, referring back to the ancient ‘Mama don’t allow’ line, of his desire to boogie-woogie despite his mother’s wishes, and the twin monologues, shorn of extraneous
detail however entertaining, now have the pared-down eloquence of a Delta haiku. Most crucial of all, the song now has its hookline: each section ends with a repeatedly pounded chord, a telling
pause and the exhortation – ‘
Boogie
, chillen!’ – from which the song derives its title. Besman had his hit, though it would be a few months before either he or Hooker
had the chance to prove it. ‘I told him to come back,’ says Besman, ‘and we’d sign a contract.’

John Lee Hooker signed on the line. His deal was a specific agreement with Besman, rather than with Sensation or any other particular designated label. It was Besman’s responsibility as an
independent producer to cut the records, negotiate the leasing deals with the record companies, and pass the royalties on to Hooker, who was now a genuine recording artist, even though he
hadn’t yet released any records. While he waited for his first effort to reach the market place, life went on very much as before. Occasionally Besman (and others) have suggested that
‘Boogie Chillen’ was preceded by an earlier Hooker release on Sensation which failed to sell in significant quantities, but neither Fancourt’s session logs nor the authoritative
Hooker discography by Michael J. Sweeney and Robert Pruter
¹⁶
contain any mention of such an item. On 3 November 1948, a single pairing ‘Sally
Mae’ and ‘Boogie Chillen’ was released, but not by Sensation. Instead of issuing it on his own label, which would have involved him in all the problems of wholesaling it to his
fellow distributors outside Pan American’s home turf of Michigan and Ohio, Besman leased the masters to Modern Records, an established LA-based R&B indie with proven national clout.
Modern had opened for business in 1945, and
had recorded, among others, Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers: it was a family firm, run by three brothers – Joe, Jules and
Saul Bihari – who were generally assumed to be of Lebanese origin, though Jules Bihari has more recently insisted that his family was, in fact, Hungarian.
¹⁷
Later on, a fourth Bihari, Lester, was placed in charge of a branch office in Memphis.

‘I didn’t put out “Boogie Chillen” on Sensation,’ says Besman, ‘because I had several of his records like “Sally Mae” and “Hoogie
Boogie” and at the same time Modern wanted it, so we thought we’d give it to them and then buy the records from them. So we bought it from them; it was cheaper to buy from them than me
pressing it alone. They got it going when they started playing it down South; that’s where it really took off. In Detroit you couldn’t sell Hooker. You couldn’t give it away.
Here’s another point that’s very interesting. Hooker’s style was called “dirty blues” or “low-down blues” [for] people who lived down South, the lower
class of people. The black people who lived in Detroit weren’t particularly lower class: they did not accept this music and they would not buy that type of record. I had a store with my
brother-in-law in a partially black area, but it wasn’t in the Hastings Street area. When they’d come in and ask for a Hooker record, they’d put it under their coat so nobody
would see them buying it, and no disc-jockey would play John Lee Hooker records. That’s why I leased it to Modern: they had better distribution down South. Down South, after Modern took it
up, that became a very very big hit.’

That’s something of an understatement. ‘Boogie Chillen’ was a
smash.
By the time Besman got around to recording Hooker again
– in February
1949 – ‘Boogie Chillen’ had already boogied its way to Number One in
Billboard
’s R&B charts. ‘The label was so little, they didn’t have distribution
all over the country. But “Boogie Chillen” came out
burnin’
,’ Hooker says proudly. ‘It was so big that they couldn’t support it theyself, and they went to
this label called Modern Records out in Los Angeles, the Bihari brothers. And they picked it up nationwide, and that thing was Number One everywhere. When I had “Boogie Chillen” it were
ringin’ all over the country. It was a real dancing thing; it was a big, big, big hit. Boy, everywhere you went it was all you could hear. Every jukebox, every department store. Everywhere
you went – all the drugstores, in the markets – that was all they played. Something new, new,
new
: “Boogie Chillen.”’

‘It didn’t surprise me when “Boogie Chillen” got to be a hit,’ says Hooker’s running buddy Famous Coachman, ‘because John had pretensions of making hits
anyway. He would do a lot of songs at the time in the clubs and get standing ovations and what-not, but when he did “Boogie Chillen” it was one of the great things that he could have
done. That’s why I said it wasn’t really a surprise, because he’d been doing some of the same things [in the clubs], and somebody picked it up and made it be a hit. That’s
the thing. “Boogie Chillen” started him bein’ the Boogie Man, and he is the Boogie Man now.’

‘Boogie Chillen’ struck the R&B industry like a bolt of lightning. B.B. King, a year or so away from his own first big hit and soon to join Hooker on the Modern label, was still
deejaying on the Memphis-based radio station WDIA when it hit. ‘John and I go back . . . oh God, at least 40 years almost,’ he recalls. ‘See, John was
playin’
when I
was
ploughin’
. John was an artist long before I was. “Boogie Chillen” was such a big, big record. I was on the radio and I did play “Boogie Chillen” quite often
on my show because it was such a very, very good boogie tune that you could boogie on. There
was no crossover as you have today. It was mostly in the black areas, on the black
radio that was playing “Boogie Chillen”, but it was very, very big at that time and hardly anybody around who was playing at that time didn’t play “Boogie Chillen”.
That’s just how heavy it was. Generally, when there’s a hit record out all the musicians will hop on whatever’s ahead at that time, and for most of us – I, for one, and many
others who would go out and play – if you didn’t play “Boogie Chillen” at that time, people probably look at you and wonder what was wrong with you. It was such a big record
. . .’

For many younger musicians and wannabes, it was the wondrous simplicity of Hooker’s ‘Boogie Chillen’ riff that intrigued them. It sounded totally cool, plus it created the
illusion that it was easy enough not to be intimidating: by the time you got past its deceptive crudeness and naïvity to the complexity and sophistication that lay beneath, you were already
hooked. In that respect, it was the R&B equivalent of punk rock. At least, that was how it seemed in Chicago to Mississippi-born Ellas McDaniel, not yet ready to mutate into the mighty Bo
Diddley, and encountering ‘Boogie Chillen’ a few months shy of his twelfth birthday. ‘I think the first record I paid attention to was John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie
Chillen”,’ he told Andy McKaie. ‘When I found John Lee Hooker on the radio, I said, “If that guy can play, I know I can.” I mean, John Lee’s got a hell of a
style.’

Way down in Letchworth, Louisiana, the record had a similar effect on thirteen-year-old George Guy, known to his friends and relations as ‘Buddy’. ‘Actually, that’s the
first thing I learned how to play. I was half asleep, my brothers and sisters had ran me out of the house with an acoustic guitar. Don’t know how to tune it, don’t know how to finger
it, and you know what I’m talkin’ about if you in the house with somebody that can’t play
nothin’
, so they say, “Mama, get him
outta
here.” Down
South in Louisiana this time of year, you can go out and lay in the sun and if the wind’s not blowin’ it’s warm. So I
was layin’ out there on a wood
pile just pickin’ away, and I dozed off. And when I woke up I had a riff like “Boogie Chillen” and I played it for six hours, because I thought if I moved my fingers I never would
find it again. I went found all of my country friends, which is about four, and I said, “I got it.” And that was the first thing I thought I learned how to play that I knew sounded
right when someone would listen. And each time I got to one of ’em that followed me I’d say, “I got it.” “Yes, you got it, that’s it.” I’d say,
“I got this John Lee Hooker”, and that’s the first thing I learned how to play.’

Over in Texas, in Houston’s Third Ward, the revelatory ‘Boogie Chillen’ effect was similarly experienced by a young man named Albert Collins. ‘He was my influence:
between him and Lightnin’ Hopkins was my influence,’ Collins told a British TV crew during a break in filming a tribute concert to Hooker. ‘And the first tune I learned to play on
the guitar was “Boogie Chillen”. He have been my idol all these years, and I’m so glad that he still here to carry me along with him. I was raised up with Lightnin’ Hopkins,
who was a cousin of mine, in the family, but I said, “John Lee Hooker, I always wanted to meet the man and one of these days I’m gonna play ‘Boogie Chillen’ with him.”
Because he’s my influence. I learned how to play listening to his type of music.’

In taverns and pool halls, in barber shops and record stalls, down South, up North, in the Delta itself and throughout the Delta’s urban diaspora, ‘Boogie Chillen’ just kept
blasting, hanging in there on the
Billboard
chart for three full months. Legend has it that the record sold a million copies, though Besman disputes that. ‘Well, that’s probably
a crock of shit, pardon my French. I’m glad people say that now, but we didn’t get paid for a million copies. No blues or any race record at that time sold a million, no way, but
it’s good publicity. I never said anything about it, and when you’re writing you can use it or not use it, but that’s what they all claimed. I think it’s great, but I sure
never saw that money. I know we hardly sold what you’d sell today
in Detroit on a black artist, and on this thing – which wasn’t accepted – I doubt that
we sold five hundred in Detroit maybe. I would say that Modern probably sold more than the other blues records: there’s a possibility that it could have gone to a quarter of a million,
because down South they bought a hell of a lot more records than they did in the North. But I’m proud that they’re saying a million. It’s a good feeling. Hooker never got paid for
a million, because we paid him royalties on what we got from Modern. The Biharis were a charming, terrific family, but as far as money was concerned? No. But everybody in the record business was
crooked.’

And therein lies the rub. Imagine, if you will, what happens in today’s music industry when a young African-American artist with a brand-new sound scores an R&B Number One within a few
weeks of the release of his debut single. He’s all over MTV. He’s on the cover of dozens of magazines. The record stands a considerably-better-than-even chance of ‘crossing
over’ to the far more lucrative pop market and scoring big in the pop charts. The artist then hits the mainstream rock magazines and gets played on pop radio. The record maybe gets used in
commercials and the artist knocks down some very useful, high-paying endorsement deals. Then the artist sells a few songs to Hollywood for the soundtrack of an upcoming action movie and, given
sufficient charisma, is offered the chance to do some acting. On the back of the hit single, the subsequent album racks up enough advance orders to ship platinum. Most important of all, the artist,
and everybody associated with the artist’s career, makes a hell of a lot of money.

Well, that may be what happened to Tupac Shakur and Snoop Doggy Dogg,
¹⁸
but it’s not what happened to John Lee Hooker. In one sense, his troubles
had just begun.