John Lee Hooker

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John Lee Hooker (c. August 22, 1912  – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie.

Some of his best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "Crawling King Snake" (1949), "Dimples" (1956), "Boom Boom" (1962), and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" (1966). Several of his later albums, including The Healer (1989), Mr. Lucky (1991), Chill Out (1995), and Don't Look Back (1997) were album chart successes in the U.S. and U.K., and Don't Look Back won a Grammy Award in 1998.

Hooker's date of birth is the subject of debate.  He is believed to have been born in Tutwiler, in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, although some sources say his birthplace was near Clarksdale, in Coahoma County,  the youngest of the 11 children of William Hooker (1871–after 1923),  a sharecropper and Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (born circa 1880, date of death unknown).

The Hooker children were home-schooled. Since they were only permitted to listen to religious songs, the spirituals sung in church were their earliest exposure to music. In 1921, his parents separated. The next year, his mother married William Moore, a blues singer, who provided Hooker with his introduction to the guitar (and whom John would later credit for his distinctive playing style). Moore was his first significant blues influence. He was a local blues guitarist, who learned in Shreveport, Louisiana, to play a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time.

Another formative influence was Tony Hollins, who dated Hooker's sister Alice, helped teach Hooker to play, and gave him his first guitar. For the rest of his life, Hooker regarded Hollins as a formative influence on his style of playing and his career as a musician. Among the songs that Hollins reputedly taught Hooker were versions of "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Catfish Blues".

At the age of 14, John Lee Hooker ran away from home, reportedly never seeing his mother or stepfather again.  In the mid 1930s, he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, where he worked on Beale Street at the New Daisy Theatre and occasionally performed at house parties.

He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, eventually landing a job in 1943 at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. He frequented the blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street, the heart of the black entertainment district on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its pianists, guitar players were scarce. Hooker's popularity grew quickly performing in Detroit clubs and, seeking a louder instrument than his acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.
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admin

#1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X70VMrH3yBg

"Boom Boom" is a song written by American blues singer/guitarist John Lee Hooker and recorded in 1961. Although a blues song, music critic Charles Shaar Murray calls it "the greatest pop song he ever wrote". "Boom Boom" was both an American R&B and pop chart success in 1962 as well as placing in the UK Singles Chart in 1992.

The song is one of Hooker's most identifiable and enduring  and "among the tunes that every band on the [early 1960s UK] R&B circuit simply had to play".  It has been recorded by numerous blues and other artists, including a 1965 North American hit by the Animals.

Prior to recording for Vee-Jay Records, John Lee Hooker was primarily a solo performer or accompanied by a second guitarist, such as early collaborators Eddie Burns or Eddie Kirkland.  However, with Vee-Jay, he usually recorded with a small backing band, as heard on the singles "Dimples", "I Love You Honey", and "No Shoes". Detroit pianist Joe Hunter, who had previously worked with Hooker, was again enlisted for the recording session.

Hunter brought with him "the cream of the Motown label's session men, later known as the Funk Brothers":  bassist James Jamerson, drummer Benny Benjamin, plus guitarist Larry Veeder, tenor saxophonist Hank Cosby, and baritone saxophonist Andrew "Mike" Terry.

They have been described as "just the right band" for "Boom Boom".  Hooker had a unique sense of timing, which demanded "big-eared sidemen".  The original "Boom Boom" is an uptempo (168 beats per minute) blues song, which has been notated in time in the key of F.  It has been described as "about the tightest musical structure of any Hooker composition: its verses sedulously adhere to the twelve-bar format over which Hooker generally rides so roughshod".  The song uses "a stop-time hook that opens up for one of the genre's most memorable guitar riffs"  and incorporates a middle instrumental section Hooker-style boogie.
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MacBook Pro  32 GB  1 Terabyte SSD
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admin

#3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEGJ8XyZw40

"Dimples" is a song written and recorded by blues singer-songwriter John Lee Hooker in 1956. It is an ensemble piece, with Hooker accompanied by Jimmy Reed's backup band. Eight years after its first release, it became Hooker's first record to appear in the British record charts. Called a "genuine Hooker classic" by music critic Bill Dahl,  it is one of his best-known songs, with interpretations by several artists.

"Dimples" was one of the first songs recorded by John Lee Hooker for Vee-Jay Records. Unlike his previous record labels, Vee-Jay producers saw Hooker as a Jimmy Reed-style performer and in fact provided him with Reed's backup band for two recording sessions in 1955 and 1956.

However, when the recording commenced, it became apparent that Hooker's sense of rhythm and timing was uniquely his. The backing musicians – guitarist Eddie Taylor, bassist George Washington, and drummer Tom Whitehead – adapted to his style and by the time "Dimples" was recorded they became "adept at anticipating his capricious moves".

According to music historian Ted Gioia, "Dimples" is a moderate-tempo blues that "sounds like a twelve-bar blues with a few beats amputated ... imparting a lopsided feeling ... [that] was precisely the 'hook' that gave the song its odd appeal".

Hooker has given at least two different accounts about what inspired the lyrics: in one, he claimed to have written the song about a friend's wife and another where the subject is his own girlfriend. Music critic Charles Shaar Murray commented that although "Dimples" just "skimmed the lower reaches of the R&B charts and nudged its way into the pop listings ... it's about as close to pop perfection in two minutes and nine seconds as any '50s bluesman ever got".
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#4
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