John Lee Hooker is arguably one of the most famous and successful of all blues singers. He is best known for his style of performing Delta blues with a signature electric guitar-style adaptation. He would grow to have tremendous success in the music industry, earning multiple Grammy’s in the late 1990s and an appearance in the movie “The Blues Brothers” in 1980. Hooker is known for having a distinctive “boogie” style that harked back to the early days of the blues, but it was his ability to mix in down-home sounds and urban sensibilities that resounded with many southerners who, like him, had migrated north seeking a better life.
As a child, he was home schooled and only permitted to listen to religious songs and the spirituals sung in church. His parents separated and his mother soon married a blues singer named William Moore. Moore was his first influence in the blues genre and John Lee credited his playing style to him. Hooker is also said to have been heavily influenced by his sister Alice’s boyfriend, Tony Hollins, who is said to have given him his first guitar.
During World War II, Hooker worked in various cities in factories, settling in Detroit in the 1940s and working for the Ford Motor Company. While in Detroit he played in blues clubs and bars on Hastings Street in the heart of the black entertainment district on the city’s east side. He was a rarity as a guitar player, as Detroit was known as a pianist’s town. His first single “Boogie Chillen” reached No. 1 on the R&B charts in 1949, as did his single “I’m in the Mood” in 1951. He grew immensely popular and in looking for an instrument louder and more vocal, he purchased his first electric guitar. The rest is history.
Experiencing a revival in his career in the late 1980s after crossing over into the rock ‘n’ roll and folk genre, he would go on to be inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Blues Halls of Fame.
Some of Hooker’s best-known songs include “Boogie Chillen’,” “Crawling King Snake,” “Dimples,” “Boom Boom,” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”. “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” would be famously covered by George Thorogood and The Destroyers in 1977. This would be his first well-known song on the charts before his massive hit “Bad to the Bone” in 1982.
