John Lee Hooker

Name: John Lee Hooker
Born/Died: 22nd August, 1917 (Clarksdale, Mississippi, US) - 21st June, 2001

Profile: He was an American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally closest to Delta blues. He developed a 'talking blues' style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was metrically free.

History: Hooker were home-schooled and were permitted to listen only to religious songs - with his earliest exposure. In 1922, his stepfather William Moore (a blues singer) provided Hooker with his first introduction to the guitar and whom he would later credit for his distinctive playing style - playing a droning, one-chord blues that was strikingly different from the Delta blues of the time.

In 1941, he settled in Detroit, worked with local bands and got his first electric guitar from T-Bone Walker, which he used to record his first USA hit "Boogie Chiliun" in 1948.

Hooker recorded over 100 albums. He lived the last years of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area where, in 1997, he opened a nightclub in San Francisco's Fillmore District called "John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom Room", after one of his hits.

He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died soon afterwards at the age of 83. The last song Hooker recorded before his death was "Ali D'Oro", a collaboration with the Italian soul singer Zucchero, in which Hooker sang the chorus "I lay down with an angel".

Influences: William Moore (stepfather)

Axology: Stella acoustic with a pickup, Gibson Les Paul, Epiphone Sorrento, Fender Twin

Signature song(s): "Boogie Chillen" (John Lee Hooker-The Ultimate Collection, 1948) and "Boom Boom" (1962).

Link(s):

http://www.johnleehooker.com/home.asp (Official website)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOyj4ciJk34

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgCpNqKyzgE

"The blues don't have no changes. The hard blues, the natural blues, the soul blues, they ain't got no changes. It's not in the book" - John L. Hooker