John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his masterful and idiosyncratic blues guitar and singing. His best known songs include "Boogie Chillen" (1948) and "Boom Boom" (1962).
There is some debate as to the year of John Lee Hooker's birth, 1915, 1917, 1920, and 1923 have all been cited, 1917 (the date on his grave marker in Oakland, California) is the one most commonly cited although Hooker himself claimed, at times, 1920.
Hooker was the youngest of the eleven children of William Hooker (1871–1923), a sharecropper and a Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey (1875–?).
Hooker and his siblings were home-schooled. They were permitted to listen only to religious songs, with his earliest musical exposure being the spirituals sung in church.
In 1921, his parents separated. The next year, his mother married William Moore, a blues singer who provided John's first introduction to the guitar (and whom John would later credit for his distinctive playing style). The year after that (1923), John's natural father died; and at age 15, John ran away from home, never to see his mother and stepfather again.
He was a cousin of Earl Hooker,
Throughout the 1930s, Hooker lived in Memphis where he worked on Beale Street and occasionally performed at house parties. He worked in factories in various cities during World War II, drifting until he found himself in Detroit in 1948 working at Ford Motor Company. He felt right at home near the blues venues and saloons on Hastings Street, the heart of black entertainment on Detroit's east side. In a city noted for its piano players, guitar players were scarce. Performing in Detroit clubs, his popularity grew quickly, and seeking a louder instrument than his crude acoustic guitar, he bought his first electric guitar.
Though he stuttered slightly in his normal speech, he performed in a half-spoken style that became his trademark. Rhythmically, his music was free, a property common with early acoustic Delta blues musicians. His vocal phrasing was less closely tied to specific bars than most blues singers'. This casual, rambling style had been gradually diminishing with the onset of electric blues bands from Chicago but, even when not playing solo, Hooker retained it in his sound.
Hooker's recording career began in 1948 with the hit single, "Boogie Chillen" cut in a studio near Wayne State University.
Despite being illiterate, he was a prolific lyricist. In addition to adapting the occasionally traditional blues lyric (such as "if I was chief of police, I would run her right out of town"), he freely invented many of his songs from scratch. Recording studios in the 50s rarely paid black musicians more than a pittance, so Hooker would spend the night wandering from studio to studio, coming up with new songs or variations on his songs for each studio. Due to his recording contract, he would record these songs under obvious pseudonyms such as "John Lee Booker," "Johnny Hooker", or "John Cooker".
His early solo songs were recorded under Bernie Besman.
John Lee Hooker rarely played on a standard beat, changing tempo to fit the needs of the song. This made it nearly impossible to add backing tracks. As a result, Besman would record Hooker, in addition to playing guitar and singing, stomping along with the music on a wooden palette.
John Lee Hooker's guitar playing is closely aligned with piano Boogie Woogie. He would play the walking bass pattern with his thumb, stopping to emphasize the end of a line with a series of trills, done by rapid hammer-ons and pull-offs. The songs that most epitomize his early sound are "Boogie Chillen," about being 17 and wanting to go out to dance at the Boogie clubs, "Baby Please Don't Go," a more typical blues song, summed up by its title, and "Tupelo," a stunningly sad song about the flooding of Tupelo, Mississippi.
He maintained a solo career, popular with blues and folk music fans of the early 1960s and crossed over to white audiences, giving an early opportunity to the young Bob Dylan. As he got older, he added more and more people to his band, changing his live show from simply Hooker with his guitar to a large band, with Hooker singing.
In 1989 he joined with a number of musicians, including Keith Richards and Carlos Santana to record The Healer, which won a Grammy award — one of many awards.
He fell ill just before a tour of Europe in 2001 and died soon afterwards at the age of 83.
Hooker recorded over 100 albums and lived the last years of his life in San Francisco, California, where he licensed a nightclub to use the name Boom Boom Room, after one of his hits.
Among his many awards, John Lee Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 1991 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Two of his songs, "Boogie Chillen" and "Boom Boom" were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
John Lee recorded several songs with Van Morrison, including "Never Get Out of These Blues Alive", "The Healing Game" and "I Cover the Waterfront". He also appeared on stage with Van Morrison several times, some of which was released on the live album "A Night in San Francisco".
John Lee also recorded in the sixties with british blues band The Groundhogs. These recordings are still available as a CD "John Lee Hooker with The Groundhogs". More importantly, Hooker recorded with the Blues-rock outfit Canned Heat, delivering the album 'Hooker N' Heat' in 1971. Hooker was influential and topical even in his lifetime, as evidenced in the MC5 cover of "Motor City's Burning" on their first album, recorded almost immediately after the riots which are the song's topic.
Anybody Seen My Baby
John Lee Hooker Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Everything I could afford
Yes, I gave you everything
Everything I could afford
And along come another train
And you got right aboard
Tell her to please come back home
Anybody seen my baby
Tell her to please come back home
Tell her I'm [Incomprehensible] baby
And you know I'm all alone
Yes, I bought you a silver dress
And I bought her a golden [Incomprehensible]
Yes, I bought her a silver dress
And iI bought her a golden [Incomprehensible]
I even bought you some [Incomprehensible]
Just to decorate you hair
Anybody seen my baby
Tell her I want her to come back home
Anybody seen my baby
Tell her I want her to come back home
She got me walking and talking
Lord, I just can't rest at night
The song "Anybody Seen My Baby" by John Lee Hooker is about a man who has lost his lover after giving her everything he could afford. He feels alone and lost without her, and the chorus asks if anyone has seen her and could tell her to come back home. The man reminisces on the things he provided for her, such as a silver dress and jewelry for her hair, and compares it to the golden items he bought for the new lover she left him for. He is unable to sleep or find peace without her.
The song highlights themes of heartbreak, betrayal, and loneliness. The singer feels like he gave his all to someone who ultimately left him for something better. He is left with nothing but memories of the love he once had. The use of trains in the song may symbolize the idea of a journey, as the woman left him for the next train that came along, leaving him behind to pick up the pieces.
Overall, the song is a sad and reflective look at love lost and the pain that comes with it. The singer is left with nothing but regret and a desire for the woman to return to him.
Line by Line Meaning
Yes, I gave you everything
I provided her with everything she needed
Everything I could afford
I offered her all that I could financially manage
And along come another train
Another opportunity presented itself
And you got right aboard
And she left with it
Anybody seen my baby
Is there anyone who knows where she is?
Tell her to please come back home
Kindly request her to return home
Tell her I'm [Incomprehensible] baby
Inform her that I am feeling very lonely without her
And you know I'm all alone
And she is aware that I am by myself
Yes, I bought you a silver dress
I purchased her an elegant silver garment
And I bought her a golden [Incomprehensible]
But I also got her something of higher value
Yes, I bought her a silver dress
She received an exquisite silver apparel
And iI bought her a golden [Incomprehensible]
And an even more precious object
I even bought you some [Incomprehensible]
I acquired decorations for her hair
Just to decorate you hair
That she could amplify her beauty further
Anybody seen my baby
Is anyone familiar with where she may be presently?
Tell her I want her to come back home
Kindly inform her that I miss her very much and wish if she returns home
She got me walking and talking
She has me anxious and restless
Lord, I just can't rest at night
Oh God, I am unable to sleep peacefully at night
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Written by: K.D. Lang, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Benjamin Mink
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind