Discovering the Blues of John Lee Hooker

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Figure 1: John Lee Hooker, at the microphone, and his band (photo courtesy of Burton Wilson, Austin, TX).

Pulling up stakes to head to California

In 1970, Hooker moved from Detroit to Oakland. Once there, he recorded the Hooker 'n' Heat album with blues-rockers Canned Heat. John Lee Hooker issued new albums by the truckload in the 1970s, with the occasional misguided attempt to update his sound by pairing him with rock musicians who had little sensitivity for his spontaneous changes in timing and his unconventional modal approach to song.

Highlights for Hooker in the 1980s were his being inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame and a flurry of reissues of his early recordings on a variety of foreign and domestic labels. He also made a cameo appearance in the movie The Blues Brothers, stomping out his trademark boogie patterns on the tune "Boom Boom."

Bigger than ever

John Lee's career took a major upswing with the 1989 release of The Healer, featuring newly recorded material and guest appearances by Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, Robert Cray, and others. The album was nominated for a Grammy award for best blues recording, and Hooker won a Grammy for "I'm in the Mood," a duet recorded with Raitt.

In 1990, Hooker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in the years following, he was honored at a star-studded tribute concert at Madison Square Garden, played dates with the Rolling Stones, and even appeared in a Pepsi commercial. In 1997, he opened his own blues club in California — John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room — and continued to record and perform until his death in 2001.

The Ultimate Collection (Rhino). This two-disc set covers Hooker's best known numbers from 1948 to 1990. Blues doesn't sound any deeper and isn't played with more intensity than when it's done by John Lee.

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