Boogie Man (32 page)

Hooker still grumbles about the money that he feels that he should have earned back in those days, not because he particularly needs it now, but because he certainly could
have used it then, back when he was broke and scuffling. (I once asked Charlie Musselwhite if he was familiar with a song, recorded by Hooker in London in the mid-’60s, which begins
‘
You know that I love you but don’t be messing with my bread.
’ He laughed heartily and replied, ‘No, I don’t remember that one . . . but I can almost hear
it.’) Further to this, deponent sayeth not, except to point out two things: firstly, that as part of his separation from Besman, Hooker did indeed sign the agreement that relinquished his
rights and, what’s more, that he signed it again almost twenty years later when Besman commenced the first major reissue programme of his Hooker material by leasing sides to United Artists
and Specialty in the early ’70s. And secondly, that whenever Besman has found it necessary either to assert or defend the legal validity of that agreement in a court of law, he has won.

But, over and above whatever monies Hooker may or may not have received, what distresses Hooker the most about having to share composing credits with Bernard Besman is the implication that his
music isn’t really entirely his own. It’s one thing to have to give up a piece of your royalties – just about everybody in the blues world has had to do that at some time or
another – but it’s an entirely different proposition when you have to give up a piece of your soul. ‘How long since I been without him?’ Hooker asks rhetorically.
‘I’ve invented plenty stuff, right? I’m gonna say he did
not
write the songs. He did not write “Boogie Chillen”. He did not write no song
at all
. He
don’t know
how
to write a song. I never saw him play no piano. Organ: one record got that on.’ Hooker mimics the organ chord from ‘It Hurts Me Too’.
‘That’s the only one.
³¹
I don’t like to say it but I’m gonna say it: I’m a
genius
when it come to writin’ songs.
I
am
. I wrote more
blues songs than anybody, and Bernie ain’t wrote nary a song for me. Not
ever
. I haven’t seen him in the studio since,
³²
and I been writin’ ever since 1952. I write my own lyrics, my own songs, my own way’a doin’ it. I can be in the studio and write songs right in the
studio. Right in the studio. “Boom Boom”, “Dimples” – all those tunes, all the new tunes . . . I’m surprised that he said things like that. He said I had to have
him, and I ain’t usin’ him now, so who doin’ it? Me. He never wrote a song with me. He had part of it, he put his name on it, like a lot of other record companies did.’

Left to his own devices, Hooker signed himself direct to Modern. In business terms, this must have been something like jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire. Musically, Hooker was
effectively producing himself, with engineer Joe Siracuse still manning the board at United Sound. As he had done on his ‘outside’ sessions, Hooker now alternated between solo
recordings – with the occasional participation of Eddie Kirkland – and rough, rocking combo sides featuring an assortment of the local musicians with whom he worked the clubs and bars.
Whilst the economics of touring had dictated that he mostly travelled only with the faithful Kirkland, he had worked locally with a band which, at various times, included pianists Bob Thurman,
James Woods and Vernon ‘Boogie Woogie Red’ Harrison; saxophonists Otis Finch and Johnny Hooks; and drummers Jimmy Turner and Tom Whitehead.

Whitehead was a stocky Alabama-born drummer, raised by his mother variously in Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland. He’d played drums in school before he quit music to get married, but by the
early ’50s the lure of the sticks and cymbals had proved too seductive to resist, and he was back behind the kit. ‘I played with little jazz groups, met John – I hadn’t
heard nothin’ about him – in ’53. A piano player
– we’d worked together in his band – and me got a job with John. I guess he was
havin’ a problem, his drummer was ill or something, so this Bob Thurman, he deceased now, he called me up and asked me if I was busy. I said, “No, not this weekend.” So he said,
“Well c’mon, I want you to come and play with John Lee Hooker.” I said, “Who is that?” I had never heard of him. He had made “Boogie Chillen” already. I
wasn’t with him then. Fact, he did that by himself, with the box, stompin’. He was playin’ at the Club Caribe, down on Jefferson Avenue. I went there and I played with him that
night and he asked me, “What about tomorrow night?” I say, “Okay, I’ll play tomorrow night.” After that he say, “Hey, I like the way you play. What about
playin’ with me regular?” I say, “Okay.” Eddie Kirkland had played with him on and off, and Eddie Burns had played with him on and off. They knew him before I did. Reason I
enjoy playin’ with him – I’ll be frank – is that we could play everything, and then we bring him up. We could play jazz, we could play . . . you know, that’s the
reason I got attached with him, see. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have, at that time, I bein’ younger, you know. He gave the band a lot of freedom. And he was a nice person.

‘I found Johnny very nice to work with. Sometimes he would leave to play gigs by himself, and when he come back I might have another job waitin’ for him, because he would have me
manage the band since he saw that I was very dependable and prompt, you know. No problem, no trouble, you know what I mean. He told me he would like me to manage the band. I would hire horn players
sometimes, whatever I thought it needed. He had a group formed already when I came to him which consisted of a trumpet, saxophone – didn’t have no bass – piano and drums . . .
plus Johnny. I always was bickering all the time because I wanted a bass player. Drummers more comfortable then, more relaxed, to put more into it ’stead of just keepin’ just a steady
grind. I didn’t find it difficult. I enjoyed workin’ with him. I like workin’ with him, he give the band freedom. That’s one thing I
have to give him
credit for; a lot of musicians don’t do that. “You got to play what I’m playin’ and that’s it.” But he didn’t care what we play when he was off the stand.
We play whatever we wanted to play, but then when we call him up we play
him
, and that’s that, and you didn’t mix that up. That’s one of the reasons I really liked playing
with him, because he didn’t stay on the bandstand all the time, see. We would kinda get things warmed up, you know, and the people really
ready
for him when he come up. We played a
little jazz, a little this, a little that, a little everything. And then when he comes, they really ready for the blues, and we just played the blues, see. Say, out of a set, he might do . . . say
we were playin’ maybe about 45 minutes, he might do 15 or 20 minutes, and the band did everything else. They called us the Boogie Ramblers at that time, but we would play some boogies and
play some blues too. The saxophone player sing, and the trumpet player sing, so they would sing some blues numbers and things, so it didn’t annoy the people, you know. They kinda enjoyed it.
We would swing, but we didn’t play way
out
there, for dancin’ and stuff like that. The people liked us, they liked the band also. He’d never stay up there for the whole
set; do maybe four, five songs, and go on a break. Then the band play, you know, and the people be lined up every night at the Club Caribe. I never played with him on Hastings Street; I started
with him on Jefferson and we play various places round the city. We played at the Apex Bar on Oakland Avenue and Clay, Latin Casino on Lafayette, Prince Royal on Gratiot and McDougal, Masonic
Temple . . .’

‘That was the first outstanding band that he had, the Boogie Ramblers,’ says Burns. ‘They had horns and everything. Curtis Foster used to play with all of us. I don’t
know what happened to him. James Watkins also used to play a lot with me, and we all used to play with John. That was before he got the Boogie Ramblers: Bob Thurman, Tom Whitehead, [trumpeter]
Jimmy Miller and Johnny Hooks. It was a long time before he got a bass player, and when he got one, he got
one used to be with Paul Williams and the Hucklebucks. One of the
things that was clickin’ for him was this variety. We had that for a long time in Detroit. As a bluesman you featured, but you got this variety band. That’s been goin’ on here for
years. The band is playin’ everything, including your thing. See what I’m sayin’? That way, you gettin’ a mixed clientele. You was gettin’ a mixed crowd when it was
like that. Couldn’t nobody say, “Well, I don’t like blues”, because they could say, “But I like swing music and this rhythm’n’blues.”’

And with the Boogie Ramblers behind him, the Crawling King Snake consolidated his status as king of the Detroit ghetto. No ’bout-a-doubt it: he ruled his den.

Though John Lee Hooker was far and away the biggest fish in the Detroit blues pond, the trouble was that it was a very small pond
indeed. Detroit and its environs boasted a
rich variety of musical traditions during the postwar years, of which the Motown empire is merely the most famous, but if it hadn’t been for John Lee Hooker, the city’s
electric-downhome scene would be merely a footnote. Consider some of the talent either spawned or nurtured in Detroit during Hooker’s sojourn: Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson, Johnny Ray
and Wilson Pickett, to name but four, all lived and worked there, as did the Reverend C.L. Franklin, African-America’s most charismatic churchman. Franklin recorded sermons and services for
Chess Records’ gospel line, but he was based in Detroit, as was his daughter Aretha, who subsequently did pretty well for herself in the 1960s. There was also a thriving jazz scene and
– in the late ’60s – a highly distinctive high-energy white rock scene developed around performers like the MC5, the Stooges (starring Iggy Pop), the Amboy Dukes (led by Ted
Nugent), Bob Seger and Alice Cooper.
³⁴
Hooker was, and is, the only one of the city’s bluesmen to make an equivalent impact on the greater world
outside.

There was a heaping handful of talented bluesmen in Detroit, including harpist Aaron ‘Little Sonny’ Willis (who surfaced with a couple of ’70s albums for the Memphis-based Stax
Records as the company attempted to follow its successes with Albert King and Little Milton) plus guitarists Robert ‘Baby Boy’ Warren and Louis ‘Mr Bo’ Collins, as well as
Hooker’s own associates and jamming partners like Eddie Kirkland, Eddie Burns, Andrew Dunham and Sylvester Cotton. However, once we subtract Hooker himself from this line-up, the age-old
rivalry between the local blues scenes of Detroit and Chicago begins to look decidedly unequal. For a start, the Chicago scene – with its plentiful recording facilities and massive population
of Delta expats
– had been established far longer, with prewar roots stretching back to the heyday of Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red and John Lee (the original Sonny Boy)
Williamson. An average night out in Chicago could offer the footloose punter Chess Records stalwarts like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson II as well as
Elmore James and numerous lesser lights, including veteran pianist Sunnyland Slim and the up-and-coming harpist Junior Wells.

‘Unfortunately, Detroit is not the same kind of scene that Chicago was, or is today,’ says Eddie Burns. ‘You got a lot of great musicians here, but [Detroit is] a strange
scene, has always been, still is. To be successful in Detroit you cannot just become a real successful blues musicians only; you have to learn to play something else in Detroit. You don’t
have to do that in Chicago, but here you do. The biggest, strongest musicians is the ones that has a large variety of what they doing, and the city is still like that today.’ Tom Whitehead
agrees. ‘The Detroit style is a little different,’ he says. ‘See, the Chicago [blues style] is exactly like it was in the Deep South. Detroit doesn’t sound direct from
Mississippi or Alabama.’ This is possibly the reason why, ever since Hooker left town, the Detroit blues scene has enjoyed little respect from its more famous cousin across the lake. As
Famous Coachman states, more than somewhat resentfully, ‘Every year we bring Chicago guys in and all through the year we put ’em in places, in the nightclubs here, but Chicago never see
fit to book any Detroit acts over to Chicago, not even playin’ in a nightclub, or on the festival. Nine years they had a festival; this year is the first they put
one guy
on there;
that was Eddie Burns.’

‘Since I’ve been travellin’ around,’ Burns concurs, ‘I find that the Detroit musicians gets less recognition than any of the musicians I know. Now why that is I
don’t know, but it’s true, and if you is not a fighter, you won’t make it in Detroit. See what I’m sayin’? You
will not make it
in Detroit, because Chicago has
always gotten all of the recognition. You got some super good musicians here, but they
trapped. They don’t know how to get out. It’s politics, you know, just like
cattle or sheeps standing in the stall, and they separatin’ them, you know. It’s not another bluesman here today that’s more better known than me. Since Hooker left here,
I’m Number One, but I’m not the only one here, and I feel for these other guys, but the connections is so delicate to come by it’s pathetic. And that remains today that way. I
guess the reason I’m still survivin’ is because I
am
a fighter.’