Boogie Man (86 page)

Simply The Truth
(BGO, Europe; Universal, US)

Tantalisin’ With The Blues
(MCA, Europe)

Hooker ’N Heat
(Rhino, US) or
Hooker ’N Heat: The Best Of . . . Plus
(See For Miles, Europe)

Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive
(Universal, US; See For Miles, Europe)

The Wilderness, 1974 –1989

Alone
(Tomato)

Jealous
(PointBlank)

The Healer
And After, 1989–present

The Healer
(Chameleon, US; Silvertone, Europe)

Mr Lucky
(PointBlank, US; Silvertone, Europe)

Boom Boom
(PointBlank)

Chill Out
(PointBlank)

Don’t Look Back
(PointBlank)

Plus:

Original Soundtrack: The Hot Spot
(with Miles Davis and Taj Mahal)

(Antilles)

The Iron Man
(Pete Townshend, plus Nina Simone, The Who et al)

(Virgin)

ENDNOTES

1
. Mike Kappus: ‘John Lee advises that he spent between three days and a week in Knoxville . . . he’d travelled with a guy called Jack, but
they split up when he got to Cincinnati.’

2
. One example – taken from the current pop charts as this section is written – is the rap hit ‘Come Baby Come’ by K7. Its
call-and-response chorus is virtually an unalloyed field holler (which qualifies it as ‘folk’); it’s selling in the hundreds of thousands (which makes it ‘pop’); and
its hi-tech mode of creation deploys techniques which, only a short while ago, were considered avant-garde (which, I guess, makes it art).

3
. Da Capo Books, 1982

4
. Henry’s Swing Club wasn’t actually on Hastings Street itself, but on nearby Madison. Nevertheless, it was part of the Hastings Street
milieu: Hooker was flexing justifiable poetic licence and adhering to the general usage of the community.

5
. Besman has previously been quoted as stating that the demos he heard featured Hooker’s gigging sidemen James Watkin (piano) and Curtis
Foster (drums). If these two differing accounts are in any way reconcilable, all I can say is that it must have been a very
large
record-your-voice booth.

6
. Todd Rhodes’ greatest contribution to the rock and roll era was the use of one of his tunes, ‘Blues For Moondog’, as the
signature tune of Cleveland-based DJ Alan Freed’s hugely influential rock and roll radio show
Moondog Matinee
.

7
.
Boogie Chillen: A Guide To John Lee Hooker On Disc
(Blues & Rhythm, 1992)

8
. Actually, Muddy’s breakthrough hit ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied’ was an 11-bar rather than a strict 12-bar. The song loses one
bar, the nominal sixth, halfway through the second A-line of its A-A-B structure. but it does this regularly – and, once you’re aware of it, predictably – in each and every
verse.

9
. The familiar version of ‘Sally Mae’ on most of the recent reissue compilations of Hooker’s work with Bernard Besman is actually
the second take, which is stronger and more measured than its immediate predecessor. However, it was the first take – which seems more spontaneous, has more vitality and boasts the wonderful
line
‘If I was the chief of police, baby, I would run you out of town’ –
which Besman decided to pair with ‘Boogie Chillen’ for Hooker’s first single
release. The second take which eventually supplanted it stayed in the can until it was released on album in 1960.

10
. Pianist Joe Willie Perkins (b. 1913 in Belzona, Mississippi) mastered this piece so thoroughly in his youth that his admiring friends nicknamed
him ‘Pinetop’, after Clarence Smith. As Pinetop Perkins, he replaced Otis Spann in Muddy Waters’ band in 1970, and as of the time of writing still plays the boogie as well as any
man living.

11
. Which makes this piece an ancestor of Jerry Lee Lewis’s ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ and Ray Charles’s
‘What’d I Say’ – in both of which the Girl In The Red Dress reappears, still shaking her stuff – as well as various other things.

12
. ASCAP also excluded what was then known as ‘hillbilly’ music, which meant that the rival BMI organisation – the initials
stood for ‘Broadcast Music Incorporated’ – was able to scoop up vast tracts of these burgeoning markets, much to ASCAP’s fury.

13
.
Country: Living Legends And Dying Metaphors In America’s Biggest Music
(Secker & Warburg, 1988)

14
. Comparatively recently, rapper KRS-1 used the name ‘Boogie Down Productions’ for his group, originally a team-up with the late DJ
Scott La Rock. This is as good a time as any to state that for much of the above information, I am indebted to Pete Silvester’s
A Left Hand Like God: The Story Of Boogie-Woogie
(Quartet Books, 1988), about as useful a history of all things boogoid and pianistic as it’s possible to buy, even for real money.

15
. The author must confess a perverse fondness for a remake of ‘Boogie Chillen’ which Hooker cut a decade later for Vee Jay Records:
the performance is fractionally steadier and more assured and the guitar Hooker used for the session has an odd resonance which creates a sour, eerie, sitar-like twang. However, it’s marred
by a clumsy, seemingly premature fade ending, and there’s no question that the historical significance of the original renders it the truly definitive account of the truly definitive John Lee
Hooker song. It’s the Vee Jay version, however, which is featured in
The Blues Brothers
as the BBs are pulling up outside Bob’s Country Bunker.

16
.
Goldmine
magazine, March 20, 1992

17
. E-mail from Ed Ward to the author: ‘All the books say the Biharis were Lebanese, a fact I duly noted in
Rock of Ages
(Rolling
Stone/Viking Penguin). Then I got this violent letter from I think Jules, typed on an ancient manual typewriter, excoriating me. ‘Our father was Hungarian and he always told us to be proud we
were Hungarian and we had nothing to hide and for you to call us Lebanese is awful and I oughta sue’, and on and on in that vein. I wrote him a mollifying letter and asked him if he was up
for an interview and . . . nothing.’

18
. For an account of what
did
happen to Tupac and Snoop, consult Ronin Ro’s devastating
Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise
And Violent Fall Of Death Row Records
(Quartet Books, 1999). It also demonstrates that the more the music biz changes, the more it remains the same.

19
. The late Willie Dixon’s autobiography –
I Am The Blues: The Willie Dixon Story
, co-written by Don Snowden (Quartet Books,
1989) – provides as authoritative an account as could be desired of the business methods and operational procedures of a typical front-rank blues indie of the ’50s and ’60s.

20
. This threat has subsequently been rescinded.

21
. Guitarist/inventor Les Paul was not only creating far more sophisticated multitrack recordings with his singer wife Mary Ford by this time, but
had already enjoyed the first of a string of eerie hits in this style with ‘How High The Moon’. Nevertheless, the procedure was still far from standard practice and it would be churlish
to quibble with Besman’s achievement.

22
.
The Bluesman: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas
(Quartet Books, 1989). This extraordinary work, currently
– and unforgivably – out of print, is the most obscure and underrated of the essential texts on the subject of the blues.

23
. Quoted in Hershey’s
Nowhere To Run: The Story Of Soul Music
(Times Books, 1984).

24
. Eddison Bluesbooks, 1973

25
.W.H. Allen, 1974

26
. Besman refers here to ‘Strike Blues’, recorded in April 1950, but unissued until the early ’70s.

27
. For what it’s worth, Les Fancourt attributes this track – a scary, swirling pre-psychedelic piece drenched in echo and slightly
reminiscent of ‘I’m In The Mood’ – to a session cut for Fortune Records soon after Hooker’s final session for Besman. It was subsequently acquired by Chess, who
released it in 1954. The superb blues piano on this cut is generally credited to Bob Thurman, a Detroit pianist who worked occasionally with Hooker between 1952 and 1954.

28
. Released on Collectables COL-CD-516, with a cover photo of Burns rather than Hooker. The British edition of the same collection (Flyright FLY
CD 23) features nineteen tracks as opposed to the Collectables edition’s sixteen. It includes three additional tracks (one extra by Burns, plus two by Robert ‘Baby Boy’ Warren),
but the booklet contains only an abbreviated version of Rowe’s liner note text.

29
. These three gentlemen were associated with Vee Jay Records of Chicago, for whom Hooker recorded between 1955 and 1964. We’ll meet them
later.

30
. As it happens, he says precisely that.

31
.
Almost
the only one, but the principle remains the same. See above.

32
. Again, not
strictly
correct. According to Fancourt, Hooker and Besman cut a reunion session in Culver City, California, in 1961. The
resulting album, for the now-defunct Lauren label, was decidedly non-vintage, and certainly doesn’t invalidate Hooker’s point.

33
.
Where Did Our Love Go: The Rise & Fall of the Motown Sound
, Omnibus Press, 1986.

34
. This isn’t the appropriate time or place for a history, however concise, of the indigenous music scene of the Detroit area, but
it’s worth pointing out that the city can also claim Suzi Quatro and Madonna – though they had to relocate (to London and New York, respectively, to achieve anything) and successful and
unique variants of House and Techno music.

35
. Not to mention a few sides for Fortune, which subsequently ended up being purchased by Chess.

36
. Modern and Chart continued to issue Hooker singles, competing with his new Vee Jay product, well into 1956.

37
. In the booklet to the compilation album
John Lee Hooker: The Ultimate Collection 1948–1990
(Rhino, 1991)

38
. Actually, it wasn’t the Vandellas but Motown’s in-house backing singers the Andantes, plus Mary Wilson from the Supremes. Still,
we’ll get to that a little later. Be patient!

39
. Since ‘Big Town Playboy’ sold a more than respectable 37,000 copies, Taylor hadn’t done too badly by the admittedly shoddy
standards of the time. It’s worth remembering that, during the late ’50s and early ’60s, royalties were less than generous for white artists also. Under the terms of their
original British contract with EMI, a highly respectable multinational corporation, the Beatles received one farthing – a quarter of an old penny – for each single sold. Without wishing
to delve into the intricacies of Britain’s pre-metric currency and the pound-to-dollar exchange rate, it should be sufficient to state that, for every thousand singles sold, each Beatle would
have had just about enough money left, before taxes and deductions, to buy one packet of cigarettes.

40
. Available on CD as New World Records 80252-2 and highly recommended, despite the petulance of Lomax’s contemptuous dismissal –
subsequently recanted, thankfully – of amplified urban blues.

41
. This enormously influential book, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1966, was the first major study of the blues to focus on the
music as it was then, rather than simply to use the pre-war rural blues as a stick with which to beat its vulgar, degenerate urban offspring.

42
. Not to be confused either with Ivory Joe Hunter, the silky-smooth West Coast blues-balladeer and composer of ‘I Almost Lost My
Mind’, or with his near-homonym ‘Ivy Jo’ Hunter, the Motown producer/songwriter best-known for co-writing Martha and the Vandellas’ anthemic hit ‘Dancing In The
Street’ with Marvin Gaye and William Stevenson.

43
. Quoted in
Blues
, Latimer, 1976.

44
. You’ll search the Hooker discography in vain for anything entitled ‘Two White Horses’; that was the original title of the
Blind Lemon Jefferson song from which Hooker developed the piece he calls ‘Church Bell Tone’, one of two Jefferson-derived numbers featured on
Country Blues
. The other,
‘Black Snake Blues’, was, along with a similar piece by Victoria Spivey, one of the primary sources for the ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’ which Hooker learned from Tony
Hollins.

45
. From his liner-note to the British version of
Country Blues
; reprinted, along with a generous helping of Oliver’s other
sleeve-notes and journalism, in
Blues Off the Record: Thirty Years of Blues Commentary
(The Baton Press, 1984).

46
. Listed, for some obscure reason, as ‘Tat Harris’ in the credits of the original edition of the
Muddy Waters At Newport
live
album, Auburn ‘Pat’ Hare achieved a particular kind of Staggerlee notoriety by recording a song called ‘I’m Gonna Murder My Baby’ for Sun Records in 1954 and doing
exactly that, eight years later, after being fired by Waters shortly after Newport for persistent drunkenness. Locked down for a 99-year stretch, he died of cancer in a prison hospital after
serving 18 years of his sentence.

47
. Quoted in
Guitar Player
, August 1983.

48
. Included in
The Jazz Life
(Peter Davies, 1962).

49
. Go on, look it up. I had to.

50
. And let’s leave Bill Clinton out of this.

51
. Quoted in Scaduto’s
Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography
(W.H. Allen, 1972).

52
. More recently, of course, Dylan has oscillated between high-octane rock-band work and a neo-folk stance which has included an MTV
Unplugged
special and albums of traditional material performed solo. Just as Hooker himself did, we might say.