John Lee Hooker

JOHN LEE HOOKER
 
 
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 were album chart successes in the U.S. and U.K.; additionally, Don’t Look Back (1997) won a Grammy Award in 1998.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

The Soul Agents released their second single on October 15, 1964, also on Pye Records; the band picked two other traditional songs for this 45, “The Seventh Son” b/w “Let’s Make it Pretty Baby”.  Of the “B” side, Greg Shaw said in his liner notes for English Freakbeat, Volume 2:  “‘Let’s Make it Pretty Baby’ is my favourite, a John Lee Hooker number but with an urgency that was wholly their own.” 

 

(May 2014)

 

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As described above, the resulting debut album, Crawdaddy Express by the Crawdaddys was comprised mostly of covers of R&B classics by Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, and John Lee Hooker; plus a few from other sources, such as the old Hank Snow tune “I’m Movin’ On” and the magnificent Van Morrison song “Mystic Eyes” that opened the first album by Them.  Only a few familiar songs were included on the album, such as “You Can’t Judge a Book” and “Down the Road a Piece”.  Just two original recordings were included on the album, the title song “Crawdaddy Express” and “Got You in My Soul” (both written by Ron Silva and Steve Potterf). 

 

(January 2015/2)

 

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There is a great story in Keith Richards’ autobiography, Life about a chance meeting that he had with Mick Jagger; I saw something on TV about it also, probably on CBS Sunday Morning.  In a series called Letters of Note that was printed (or reprinted) in The Huffington Post is this section of a letter that Keith Richards wrote to his aunt about this meeting – I think the very next day: 
 
“You know I was keen on Chuck Berry and I thought I was the only fan for miles but one mornin’ on Dartford Stn. [that’s so I don’t have to write a long word like station] I was holding one of Chuck’s records when a guy I knew at primary school 7-11 yrs y’know came up to me.  He’s got every record Chuck Berry ever made and all his mates have too, they are all rhythm and blues fans, real R&B I mean (not this Dinah Shore, Brook Benton crap) Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Chuck, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker all the Chicago bluesmen real lowdown stuff, marvelous.  Bo Diddley he’s another great. 
 

“Anyways the guy on the station, he is called Mick Jagger and all the chicks and the boys meet every Saturday morning in the ‘Carousel’ some juke-joint.  Well one morning in Jan. I was walking past and decided to look him up.” 

I think I also remember Keith’s saying in that letter, or telling his mother or something, that Mick Jagger was going to be famous. 

 

(May 2015)