Boogie Man (34 page)

Motown, which was founded on the hitherto-untapped talent lurking in the city’s housing projects, had packed up and moved to California in 1971, soon after Hooker himself had made the same
trek. All they left behind was a tourist-trap museum based in the original offices and studios; they couldn’t even be bothered to maintain a regional branch-office, where the successors to
the hungry and ambitious young Detroiters upon whose talents the empire was built could audition and train. And admirers of the great country bluesman Son House, at whose feet the likes of Robert
Johnson and Muddy Waters had knelt to learn their trade, are still saving up to buy a memorial headstone to mark his grave in the city where he had moved to spend his last years, and where he
died.

But nevertheless, John Lee Hooker is coming back to town to grace the Meadow Brook Music Festival – headlined on this particular 5 July by the Robert Cray Band – with his presence.
And, for a few spectacular minutes, the glory days of Hastings Street will be revisited, as the Detroit lions of the ’50s assemble to roar once more, to sit in with Hooker on the final encore
of his set. Boogie Woogie Red has, tragically, been called away to a more pressing engagement, and Eddie Burns is stranded somewhere out on the road, unable to arrange his return to the city in
time for the show. Still, Tom Whitehead, Eddie Kirkland, Mr Bo and Little Sonny are all confirmed, to boogie together with the Hook for what could possibly be the last time. Ever.

The afternoon before the show, Hooker and his party arrive in Auburn
Hills on the outskirts of Detroit to check into a suburban hostelry which, though claiming to be a
Hilton, more closely resembles a dizzyingly pretentious motel with severe delusions of grandeur. It can’t even boast all-day room service, which deficit causes no end of annoyance to the
elderly gentleman in the trilby and shades who’s registered, under an old Staff and Gotham pseudonym, as ‘Johnny Williams’. Mr Williams is
tired
. Mr Williams is
hungry.
Mr Williams has just flown all the way from San Francisco, and Mr Williams wants some food.
Now
.

This particular Hilton’s policy
vis-à-vis
guest nourishment outside designated restaurant hours is to sell microwavable cold snacks from the gift shop. This is
not good
enough
. A manager is summoned. He is instructed, not least vehemently by Vala Cupp and Lizz Fischer, whose rooms adjoin that of Mr Williams and who, in addition to their musical duties, take
special responsibility for Mr Williams’s comfort and welfare, that
something is going to have to be done.
Something
is
done. A chef is pressed into emergency service, and soon a
reasonably appetizing buffet of cold cuts, dips, corn chips and
crudités
materialises in Mr Williams’ suite. Mr Williams rumbles his grudging approval, and picks haphazardly at
an item or two, leaving the bulk of the buffet untouched. Nevertheless, the point has been made. If John Lee Hooker wants food, he gets food, and nobody – most especially not some perspiring
hotel flunky – is going to tell him he can’t have it. The days when John Lee Hooker wanted something and couldn’t get it are over. That’s all there is to it.

The Coast To Coast Blues Band also check in, but in their own inimitable manner. Lizz Fischer checks out the gym and most of her colleagues investigate the bar. Rich Kirch and Deacon Jones are
sharing a nominally non-smoking room but –
hey, fuck that!
– cigarettes are fired up anyway. Jones is, as ever, on the hunt for a card game and, disdaining the house cuisine even
once the restaurant has come online, phones out for pizza and ends up in a spirited cussing contest with the sister who eventually delivers it.

Meadow Brook is an open-air auditorium with a capacity of 7,500: the eventual audience ends up numbering a little over 5,000. Members of the Hooker and Cray bands, plus
assorted crew members, are soon swarming over and behind the stage, which resounds to the assorted clangs, honks and tweets which inevitably constitute what’s generally known in rockbiz
parlance as a ‘sound check’. Eddie Kirkland arrives in a black leather waistcoat
sans
shirt and an impressive selection of bandanas, medallions and chains. The Road Warrior
wheels in an Acoustic combo amplifier wired up to a battered little practice amp and parts of some ancient hi-fi. He sets up a couple of effects pedals, and then carefully arrays three examples of
his awesome collection of junkshop guitars – two Peaveys (including a jagged thing resprayed in an eyeball-torturing gold metal-flake) and a weird no-brand Strat copy – against his
jury-rigged amp stack. Standing in the wings, Hooker’s manager Mike Kappus watches all this activity in disbelief. Finally, he ambles across the stage and hoists a quizzical eyebrow at
Kirkland, still fussing with his gear. ‘Excuse me,’ he says eventually, ‘but you’re only playing on one song, Ed die.’ ‘Looks good, though, don’t
it,’ Kirkland replies. It’s not a question.

His fellow veterans are also in evidence: Little Sonny, clutching his satchel of harps, turns out in a white safari suit and hat. The towering Mr Bo, brandishing a cherry-red Gibson 345, is a
symphony in pearl grey but, stealing the sartorial show beyond any shadow of a doubt, is Tom Whitehead, immaculate in matching white suit, hat and shoes, and carrying his sticks in a monogrammed
leather case. ‘My daughter say, “You goin’ with John Lee Hooker? Go
sharp!
”’ he laughs. ‘“There’s gonna be a
who-o-o-o-ole
lotta people
there. Go ’head, dress up, look good, man.”’ And he does. The Hastings Street alumni barely have time for a sound-check of their own. Kirkland can do little more than test his
ramshackle pile of amps and pedals to make sure that everything’s wired-up and working, while Little Sonny takes a quick honk’n wail on his harp. Whitehead has to content himself with a
desultory
whomp
around the tom-toms and a quick
pah-tish tish-dup
on the hi-hats. Some of the Coast-to-Coasters enjoy a few discreet jokes at the expense of the
senior citizens and their ‘old-time’ sound.

Shortly before 8 p.m., the lanky, bedenimed, baseball-capped Famous Coachman strides to centre-stage, commandeers the microphone and brings on the Coast To Coast Blues Band. Vala Cupp, looking
like a Sindy doll and sounding like Etta James, kicks off the proceedings with a scorching take on T-Bone Walker’s ‘Cold Cold Feeling’: Mike Osborn’s impassioned B.B.
King-style solo rates two separate rounds of applause. Deacon Jones – part-preacher, part-rapper – launches into his patented intro from behind the rented Hammond: ‘In the whole
wide world, there’s only one man/who can look into muddy water and spot dry land!’ he hollers. On cue, John Lee Hooker enters from the wings, resplendent in a pearl-grey suit at least
the equal in elegance of Mr Bo’s. Stumping to centre-stage, he proclaims, ‘This is
my
town: Detroit, Michigan! I love you; I love the whole world.’ Then he goes to work.
Planting himself in his chair, he settles his guitar on his lap and unleashes a torrential blizzard of razor-edged notes. ‘I’m back home again!’ he crows. ‘Boom Boom’
careers along like a runaway express train. ‘I’m gonna get real funky now with “Crawlin’ King Snake”.’ he announces, and he is as good as his word.

Garnished with a bravura tenor sax solo by Kenny Baker, ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’ positively smoulders: an erotic set-piece guaranteed to disturb the nocturnal
thoughts of anybody who won’t have anybody to sleep with that night. ‘
Well, well, well . . .
’ croons Hooker, as Cupp darts around his chair, leaning so close to him that
she’s practically inside his guitar. ‘
Crawl up in your bed, your bed, your bed, wrap around your pretty body, feel good this mornin’
’ Hooker incants, their duelling
‘
mm-hmm’
s raising the temperature almost beyond endurance until Hooker cuts the proceedings short with a crisp thank-you. On ‘Baby
Lee,’ Rich
Kirch, who’s spent most of the night playing rhythm while Hooker and Osborn take care of the soloing, steps out to plays the spiky Strat parts blueprinted by Robert Cray on the
Mr
Lucky
version. Just out of sight of the audience, Little Sonny, Tom Whitehead, Mr Bo and Eddie Kirkland watch carefully from the wings. The band kick into a slow blues featuring a killer solo
by Lizz Fischer. ‘Play the blues!’ commands Hooker. She does. ‘
Just a lonely man tryin’ to find love, in New York City
,’ he sings. ‘Do you dig
it?!’

‘Serve Me Right To Suffer’ is next up, complete with a deep neon-blue solo by Deacon Jones. The Hammond organ is the essential sound of the after-hours ghetto bars of the ’50s
and ’60s, and the oceanic build Jones pumps into his solo makes the Hammond roar like an entire brass section. His ovation is more than earned.

Suddenly it’s 8.45. The best part of an hour has passed, though it seems like little more than five or ten minutes. Hooker switches to his open-A-tuned guitar, which means that it’s
time for the boogie. In MC mode, Deacon Jones launches into one of his signature jivey intros to bring on Tom Whitehead, Mr Bo, Eddie Kirkland and Little Sonny, who defy expectations by remaining
right where they are: in the wings. Hooker dumps his Epiphone, pulls the microphone from its stand, and begins to work the front row. No matter how many times you may have seen him do it, it
remains an astonishing
coup de théâtre
, a symbolic magical resurrection, all frailness forgotten, all fatigue transcended, all limitations cast aside under the healing spell of
the boogie. Suddenly, a thought occurs: Hooker must have been some kind of a sight to see, way back in the day, as a young man dancing the nights away in the Hastings Street clubs. He and Vala are
striking real sparks off each other tonight, rocking and raving, microphone to microphone. Rich Kirch takes his turn for a solo: he’s cookin’ too, Mike Osborn and Jim Guyett doing
soul-revue steps behind him as they play. Lizz Fischer and Kenny Baker turn up the heat still further as they solo over the remorseless, churning groove. ‘I thought I had
enough,’ roars Hooker, ‘but I
ain’t
had enough!’ Deacon Jones rolls a sardonic quote from ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ into his
climactic organ break. He’s a JAMF of the first water, but he delivers every time.

‘The Godfather of Detroit, Michigan, misses his home town!’ Deacon declaims as Hooker carefully removes his shades to inspect the front rows before, smiling and waving with
grandfatherly benevolence, he ambles off the stage. ‘Peace, love and blues power!’ Jones howls into the utter pandemonium which now ensues. At 9.05 the old guard finally take the stage:
first Kirkland, then Mr Bo, then Little Sonny (‘on Mississipi saxophone’) and Tom Whitehead. Jim Guyett, Mike Osborn and Deacon Jones return to their stations as Starship Boogie takes
off once more, this time with a loose-limbed swingbeat very different from Coast To Coast’s smooth, power-driven crank: Little Sonny wailing on his harp, the towering Mr Bo rippling away on
his red 345, Eddie Kirkland grunging like a champ, low and dirty, and Tom Whitehead, his hat set well back on his head, putting a subtly vicious kick behind that time-honoured beat. This is
Hastings Street’s last stand. Chrysler Freeway or no Chrysler Freeway, this night Hastings Street lives again.

After allowing a decent interval to elapse, the Cray band take the stage to close out the night. They’re fine, as they always are, but what has preceded them was something more than simply
fine. It was unique, irreplaceable, unrepeatable.

Back at the hotel, after the leaders repair to their respective suites for what is no doubt a tranquil and well-earned rest, various members of the Cray and Hooker bands assemble in the bar for
the traditional post-gig pursuits of drinking beer and talking shit. One notable absentee is the teetotal, vegetarian Lizz Fischer: while her male colleagues chill out in the bar, inflating their
waistlines by lifting bottles, she winds down in the hotel gym, inflating her already-impressive biceps by lifting weights. One acquaintance of the
musicians comes
this
close to getting himself punched off a barstool by Memphis Horns trumpeter Wayne Jackson, the Stax graduate whose blasting, brassy tone contributes so much soulful authenticity to the Cray Band,
for the nigh-capital crime of comparing Hooker’s
Mr Lucky
album to Ice-T’s
O.G. Original Gangster
, claiming them both as primo contemporary examples of the
African-American genius for story-telling. Like most of the musicians in the Cray and Hooker ensembles, Jackson has zero tolerance for rap, and any notions of a ‘cultural continuum’ are
deemed to be little more than trendy, pretentious Brit-crit crap. Fortunately, all is resolved in beery camaraderie by the time the bar finally closes.

Eddie Kirkland isn’t around to contribute his thoughts to this informal symposium, however. He’s back at the wheel of the Dodge, cigar clamped between his teeth and heading Lord
knows where,
en route
to his next job. And who can honestly say whether, at this particular time, on this particular night, there might just be a few ghostses on the highway after all.

8

TIME IS MARCHIN’ ON

In 1990s usage, the expression ‘Vee Jay’ generally designates a person gainfully employed to spout banalities on cable or satellite TV to link bursts of rock or rap
videos. In the world of mid-1950s R&B, by contrast, ‘Vee Jay’ meant the sparky independent record label which was the only significant rival to Chess Records’ historical
domination of Chicago’s black music scene.